The Value of Voluntourism: Interview with Stephen Greenwood
In a time when voluntourism – the act of travelling to volunteer, or volunteering to travel – is becoming big business, there is one question I keep coming back to: Does voluntourism help the people who are supposedly being served, or is it primarily for the benefit of the volunteer?
It’s the question I asked Brian Hermon about his volunteer work in Ghana; and it’s the same question I asked Chris Guillebeau, who also volunteered for a time in Africa.
And now Stephen Greenwood. Last year, Stephen spent five months living in Tanzania, shooting footage for a documentary and film about an orphanage in Arusha, a city in northern Tanzania. His blog, Observations, is a treasure chest of insightful snippets, beautiful photos and probing questions. After spending an afternoon browsing through, I asked Stephen to share more about his experiences in Tanzania.
Recent blog entries
Disappointment: When Places Don’t Live Up to Your Expectations
Expectation is a dangerous thing. The higher the expectations, the greater the chance they’ll be dashed. But when it does happen, know this: it happens to lots of travellers.
To prove it to you, I rounded up 19 travel bloggers and asked them to share a time when a trip or place didn’t live up to their expectations.
Why We Travel: Nancy Sathre-Vogel’s Story
What could possess an otherwise perfectly sane family to take off to pedal bicycles 20,000 miles from one end of the earth to the other? I wish I knew…
We were just your ordinary, everyday, American family one day. And the next we were anything but. In May 2008 the four of us were living in a typical American home in Boise, Idaho. The boys attended fourth grade at a local elementary school. I taught Special Ed at a local high school. John was serving as our stay-at-home dad, fixing up the house and doing other assorted chores. In short – life was typical and predictable.
But a month later, the four of us were living a life very few can imagine. We arose every morning in our tent, packed our sleeping bags, strapped all our earthly belongings onto our bicycles, and pedaled away to face the adventures of the day – of which there were plenty!
Why We Travel: Mark Shrime’s Story
All it took was a nun.
The flight from New York City to Paris and on to Benin was about as uneventful as flights go; maybe half an hour of turbulence and two complimentary glasses of cognac rocked the entire sixteen hours of travel. Until I landed in Benin, the only thing eventful that had happened to me was that, despite my best efforts, I thoroughly and completely lost an armrest war to my left-hand neighbor, who seemed to consider that his window-seat ticket also bought him a controlling share in the adjacent aisle seat.
Given that he was approximately double my size (you will see…this promises to be a recurring theme), I’m surprised I lasted as long as I did—which, to be fair, was only about 27 minutes. I had little choice but to become intimately familiar with the contralateral armrest, and each passing, just-wide-enough-to-make-you-rue-elbows, duty-free-stocked beverage cart propelled by plastic smiles.
Tell Somebody: How to Get Over the Fear of Travel
I was walking along the Regent’s Canal this weekend as a new resident of Islington in London and wondering how I got here. Not, mind you, in a negative way. Not like those who – ball-gag in their mouth and gun to their head – wonder “How did I get here?” Rather, I was wondering in the happy, positive way of someone who is enjoying themselves at a really fancy party with exciting people.
One year ago in February of 2008, I was living in Toronto with little idea that I would be an ex-patriot Canadian by June. I would say that life moves in mysterious ways, but in reality there is no mystery to it. I chose to move, and did move, and now I am an immigrant to a new country, finally living my dream to live abroad.
The question some of you might be asking is how I did it, because it can seem like one of the scariest concepts ever. How do you take that step and travel, when it can seem so daunting?
Why We Travel: Craig Heimburger’s Story
I was working full-time in Phoenix and doing evening classes for my MBA (paid for by the same consulting company that I’d later leave just weeks after finishing my degree). I was happy, getting plenty of love and leisure in that lifestyle (despite the terribly full, yet routine schedule).
Corporate brass wanted to promote me to a senior level that would’ve probably doubled my salary and expanded my ability to enact change within the organization. By most standards these dimensions of personal and professional success would’ve been enough to keep the lips of most any 25-year-old grinning from ear to ear, behind a glass of rum at least half his age.
How to Blog from a Cyber Café
For a large portion of my travels I did not have a laptop. When it came to blogging about my travels this brought up a heap of new problems. I had no choice but to use public computers, some located in pretty dodgy cyber cafés. Others located in shut up tight ultra modern machines that don’t let you do anything but surf. Here are a few tips and tricks I used when travel blogging from cyber cafés.
The Pros and Cons of Travelling with a Laptop
My husband and I have been traveling with our laptops for the last eleven months. We’ve visited sixteen countries, taken eighteen flights, fifteen trains and eight long-distance buses, not to mention numerous subways, tuk tuks, long tail boats, scooter taxis, local buses and lots and lots of walking.
And throughout the whole journey, a pair of MacBooks have been along for the ride.
For us, the question of whether to bring our laptops wasn’t really even a question. But it is something we get asked about a lot by other travelers – so here’s my take on whether or not it makes sense to bring a laptop on your journey.
My Travel Blog Saved My Life
I’ve never been very good at keeping in touch. I expect my Facebook status to skip hand in hand with my Twitter account around the fires of my Flickr pages and the result be that everyone knows just enough. When my laptop allows Skype into its inner quarters, I begin my conversations with “so sorry I haven’t been in touch…” and The Other End routinely console me. My Myspace is slumped in a shiver and a dozen ‘RE: Where are you?’ lie beneath dust and disgrace in any one my three spam-infested inbox’s. Postcards? I’ve sent a couple. Text messages? Reserved for belated birthdays.
Travel and the Financial Crisis: What Argentines Have Taught Us About Survival
Here I sit in the patio of a café in Buenos Aires’s small but vibrant Chinatown, dunking a biscotti into a cup of espresso, an indulgence enjoyed underneath the simple pleasure of a tree’s leafy shade. Life is good. The smells of cocina asiatica waft through the air, and the Spainese mix the cooks speak drifts out through the window. It is hot, hot-hot-hot, but the waiter has brought me two glasses of sparkling water and an extra biscotti as a treat to beat the heat. And it’s working.
At my feet lay the shopping bags holding my boyfriend Nick’s Christmas present: spicy curry powder, dried basil, ground paprika, whole wheat flour, chocolate, home-made granola, and micro-brewed beer. So much less than I would like to give him—our careers here as English teachers do not leave us flush with cash.
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