Some Thoughts on Sh*thole Countries
View of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
By now, everyone has heard that last week the President of the United States wrote off an entire continent, plus a few other places around the globe, as “sh*tholes.” Forgive the clickbait-y title, because we really need to talk about this.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that a crass, ignorant man who prides himself on these qualities would make a statement like this. Nothing shocking there, really.
As distressing as the use of these words is, what concerns me even more is the fact that I can imagine many of POTUS’s supporters nodding along with his statement, thinking to themselves that all the criticism he’s receiving is unfair, because after all, “those places are sh*holes. He’s just telling the truth!” Umm-hmm.
I would venture to guess that approximately 95 percent of those same individuals have never traveled to Africa, Haiti, or any other such countries. In fact, a majority of them likely don’t possess passports and haven’t traveled outside of the U.S., or even their home states. And therein lies at least part of the problem.
I am NOT saying that lack of world travel automatically makes a person ignorant, nor that all travelers are enlightened, wonderful specimens of humanity. Neither of these things are true. And often, people who would love to travel the world can’t realistically afford to do so, through no fault of their own.
But the thing is, you can’t fully absorb what you don’t experience. You can’t really understand what life is like for people you don’t meet. And you can’t make sweeping statements about the places they call home if you don’t spend some time trying to get to know them and understand the lives they live and the challenges they face.
View of a mist-covered mountain outside Nairobi
Most of my travels have been in Europe and other similar parts of the world, but I have visited, and loved, some of those same places that were so callously derided with an offhand piece of gutter language as being worthless. I’ve met wonderful people in Uganda, marveled at the natural beauty of the plains of Kenya, sweltered in 100 degree heat in a small town in Cambodia, shopped at a market in Nairobi, and been taken to the beach by precocious, charming children in Guatemala. I’ve stepped out of my zone of the familiar a bit each time, and while I still have so, so much to learn about the world, the one thing I can state unequivocally is that it is full of good people, willing to share kindness with strangers while trying to make the best life for themselves and their families that they can.
Travel matters because it connects people. It breaks down barriers and stereotypes. It makes people and places real to us in a way that we can’t get simply by watching sensationalist reports on the nightly news, whose subtext is nearly always that everything is terrible and no one is to be trusted. But despite all its challenges, that’s truly not the world I know.
So travel as far and as wide as you can. Go someplace you’ve never been; meet people whose lives are different than yours; try to understand their story and their struggle.
And for the love of God, let’s all, at the very least, vow not to insult places we’ve never been.
