A Year On

It's a year since I came back from my trip and I have forgotten many things about it: forgotten the smells and the sounds of the places I visited; forgotten the misery of a different bed every night, forgotten how homesick I was. But there is one aspect of my trip that remains in my mind, that I can't and don't want to forget.

I am certain, after my short trip, that there is no such thing as cheap travel. In small communities in Thailand and Cambodia, it was obvious to me that although tourism is a fantastic resource, it destroys many natural ones as it develops. However, there are thousands of young people tramping across the planet who seem only interested in cheapness. Indeed their main concerns, or so it appeared, are where to eat, sleep and get drunk cheaply. It's easy to be poor for a while, knowing it will end, that we’re going to leave it behind, that we’ll remember it but rarely do anything to change it. Anyone like me, able to write a blog, or read it, like you, is unlikely to have any idea what poverty is and, if we’re lucky, we never will. Real poverty though surrounds those who travel through it. The tuk-tuk driver who wears second-hand shoes that don’t quite fit. The legless man propelling himself along the aisle of a train with his two arms, down the steps and along the platform. The hill tribe where a child has chicken pox but no one knows how to treat it. Being able to afford the luxury of poverty, for weeks, months, sometimes years at a time, makes those enjoying it feel that they are doing themselves some good but rarely do they think about doing good for the countries they visit. I kept thinking about this as I watched yet another argument over a few pence and the same image, of preacher-outfitted men and a barn kept coming back to me.

A decade ago in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania I had my first encounter with Amish people and ways. Horsedrawn traps, wooden scooters for the children, hand-dyed clothes, nothing motorised bar the odd strimmer in sight. I bought some postcards and put them in a frame. Children, a trap and a barn. Except this barn was unlike none other than I had ever seen. On the concrete base a wooden frame had been erected and crawling all over it, in straw not hard hats, trousers, braces and plain cotton shirts are the men of the community. Between them, they build a barn for their neighbour, for the community’s good. It’s an extraordinary, uncomplicated way of using a small amount of personal energy and multiplying it to achieve much more for others. Or much more than it could on its own.

At one point I was sitting in an internet café, booking a ticket back to Bangkok. A woman next to me was doing the same; across the room three others, Swedish or Danish, were booking three more. A room full of computer and literacy skills, full of energy being expended on plane tickets, on moving around. I started to imagine what would happen if only 5 or 10% of those hours were spent on projects, on something selfless, something to help the country visited. I started to think of those barns, of how much might get done if, for every ten hours spent visiting the globe, using up its resources whilst flying, whilst staying on islands that don't have enough water for locals yet alone visitors, another one was spent on putting something back, something to replace what had been taken. This may sound like the ramblings of yet another bleeding heart left-winger and maybe that's all they are. But whereas I’m not sure the planet can support many more flights, I'm sure it could use some more barn-raising.