To Ghana

There are many reasons to travel, in the go-see-the-world sense of the word. Sometimes we want to go and see things, and bring home pictures of Niagara Falls or the Washington Monument or the kickoff of a football game. Sometimes we want to understand another place or culture, and bring home memories and experiences and the thrill of making unexpected friends. Sometimes we want to escape our "normal" lives, and leave behind rain and (seeming) drudgery to go spend time on a sunny beach. Sometimes we just want to discover for ourselves, hunting out those few magical moments that occur only when your senses are bombarded by the foreign and your awareness of your surroundings is heightened.

Because of its nature (two years living in one place, one foreign place, with foreign languages and foods and customs and approaches to life) Peace Corps is one of the most intensive travel experiences that I know of. Intercontinental flights and communications have shrunk the world, so that an American businessperson can fly to London, sit in a meeting, and fly home all in the same day. And a tourist can rush through the European capitals a day or two at a time, bringing home a photo of the Eiffel Tower without really pausing to get a feel for the ebb and flo of the place. But a volunteer in a developing country has few options but to take a deep breath and dive into the life of the place.

Peace Corps was developed with three goals in mind. The first is obvious: to transfer skills and specific knowledge to those who lack them, whether in school or on a farm or in a hospital. The other goals are more abstract: to share the American experience with foreigners who might not otherwise have direct knowledge of "us," and to bring a little piece of the foreign culture home to share with Americans who might not otherwise have a direct knowledge of "them." (There were, of course, at least two unwritten goals of Peace Corps--the national one of challenging communism, and the personal one of developing skills and confidences in the volunteers that they could never get in a classroom or from a Paul Theroux book. In the event, one could probably argue that it is this final "goal" that is the most enduring achievement of Peace Corps, having created hundreds of thousands "experts" on rarely touristed parts of the world.) The overall effect on the volunteer is to instill a deep respect for the customs and culture of the host country. It will not bend to accommodate you; you must adapt to it.

I do not mean to ignore the very real service of volunteering and attempting to improve the conditions under which people in many parts of the world find themselves. Nor can I draw an equivalence between the volunteer and the citizens of the host country (we can always get on a plane and come home, or call a friend and get cash wired to us). My point is merely that the experience of volunteering in a developing country is the best sort of travel that I know of.

The costs of this kind of travel have risen enormously for me in the last couple of years. Over the last few weeks, as I've mentioned that I was going to northern Ghana for three weeks to help a school develop a website, the reactions have varied between "Uh, really?" and "Are you crazy?" I suspect that, deep down, my wife feels that way too, and will probably have some harsh words for not-there-me during one of Katie's temper tantrums in the next few days. But, despite the doubts and the naysayers, she was incredibly supportive as this trip came together, and never once gave expression to what must have been an intense inner conflict of my leaving. I will miss them both so much.

So I am off, on what promises to be the last "traveling" I will do for a few years. I'm about to board the flight from JFK and hope for the best. There will be goods and bads, highs and lows, funnys and sads, even in a short three-week trip. It is terribly exciting, and I'm already experiencing that dilation in time that comes with new experiences, for the first time since Katie's birth. And worried, for the first time ever, that the trip will be difficult beyond the normal discomfort and confusion because of the pure selfishness of the thing.