I had a long intro typed up here, but no matter how I edited it it just sounded like me on a soap-box. I'll trim it down to it's main points so we can explain how we got here, and then get right into the story:
First: I'm a nerd. Always have been. This is something everyone told me was wrong with me right up to the advent of the internet. That's when all us nerds got together and found out there were more of us than there were "normal people". We also found out that we tended to be much happier people as well. This is something I wanted to teach my kids early on:
"Not only is it ok to be exactly who you are, you should embrace it"
Second: Travel (I don't care where to. Next door, next city, next state, or next country) is necessary for a better future. And do it now because there is no guarantee of a future. This is a story I can't trim down, so you're going to have to chew through the raw version (and for that, I apologize)
my grandparents took me on a cross-country trip in their motorhome. We hit every historical site in the US (or at least it seemed). I saw everything from “Mount Rushmore” to “Fords Theater” to “Crazy Horse National Monument” when it was just paint on a rock. And I met people. Many many people. Different people. People so different that when they asked me simple questions like “did you eat yet for lunch”, my poor grandmother had to translate as I had no idea what the heck this thick accent was!
When I came back to my 5th grade class that September and learned about Lincoln being shot, I got to say “holy shirt, I’ve been there y’all!”
My grandfather would die two years after that trip of cancer. The man worked his whole life at a job he absolutely hated. A job that caused him so much heartburn that he would eat tums by the handful and then the guy died after his second RV trip in a retirement he spent his whole life looking forward to…
Not me, I said. No Berkin way am I wasting my life at a job I hate for some promise of “later”. For me “later” is not a guarantee.
And I’ve been very cautious to NOT follow in those footsteps ever since.
Alberto Santos-Dumont believed that air-travel would bring about world peace (linked, so you don't have to look him up). If people traveled, they would meet other people and realize they weren't so different. If they did that, then maybe they would quit fighting.
I believe in this very much. Mark Twain had similar things to say:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Naturally, when I had my kids (and when the opportunity arose) I absolutely HAD to take full advantage of it (and take advantage we did). Unfortunately my eldest is getting older now, and I can tell I've only got a couple more years left before those teenage hormones took over. That means I had to plan the vacation to end all vacations while I could. And that meant going to Africa.