An American Returns Home

(Buenos Aires, Argentina) - I didn’t plan the trip with this intention, but it is fitting that my four month journey across the globe ended at a place known as El Fin del Mundo - the End of the World.

While at least three places in Tierra del Fuego claim to be the southern most inhabited point (other than Antarctica), Ushuaia, Argentina is the largest city in the region with a population of close to 6,000. That is about twice the size of the largest Chilean town on the other side of the border. So in Ushuaia there is the Fin del Mundo diner, the Fin del Mundo hotel, and Fin del Mundo hats and t-shirts.

It is in this hard and cold place, that I could finally conclude the world has grown so small that national borders are quaint. 

“Yes,” I say to the Chilean border guard, “you can search my luggage. But in a few minutes we both know you will stamp my passport and I will be off to Santiago.” 

“Yes,” I say to the Cambodian immigration agent, “No one in Vietnam initialed my papers as I was leaving. Are you going to send me back?” 

In Delhi, I thank the man behind the glass partition at the airport who tells me with the visa he has just stamped I can come back to his country as many times as I want for the next twelve months. His stamp is not what gave me the power to travel to India. The $90 I paid for the visa did.

It is as if the immigration powers of every country have not received the news about WiFi, the internet, international commerce and the direct person to person exchange of information and ideas that makes efforts to control mobile populations impossible.

From Hanoi and Phnom Penh in southeast Asia, to the the southern portion of India, to the Chilean desert and the tip of South America I was never disconnected from my life in Connecticut or the rest of the world. For approximately $200 USD a month, my phone was my all purpose tool for booking flights, hotels, drivers and anything else I needed regardless of my location. If I was lonely I could call or text a friend. If I was lost my phone talked me through the streets of nearly every place I’ve been. 

My first day in Hanoi the driver of the bus I took from the airport dropped me off at a random location in the middle of the city. Making the first use of my map application I put in my headphones and guided myself - and some German travelers - to our hostel. One night in the dark of the Atacama Desert, where there is nothing for miles around, I used my phone both to navigate and as a flashlight to get me safely home. If I needed a translator - my phone could do that as well.

From my perspective as an American I found it difficult to escape the United States. In the most unlikely places, including El Fin del Mundo, I would stumble upon well known American brands like; Nike, Converse, Timberland, Patagonia, McDonald’s, Burger King and Starbucks. Arriving at the international airport in Goa, India, I was told to meet my ride at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

If you are feeling down on America right now you should know the rest of the world does not feel the same way. The rest of the world still wants to be America and many people I met expressed a desire to not only visit, but to live in our country. Judging by what they wear most of them specifically want to live in Brooklyn, New York although some admitted to me they could not easily point out New York on a map.

A Chilean truck driver who was teaching me Spanish on a flight to Santiago thought New York was near Texas. I helped him with his geography and he told me it is his dream to “go to Texas, buy some jeans and cowboy boots, drink cold beer, eat barbecue and dance with a woman with big blonde hair.” I told him that “in America, anything is possible.” I also told him about the Lyle Lovett song, “That’s Right You’re Not from Texas…but Texas wants you anyway.” He seemed encouraged.

If I had five dollars for every woman and child I saw wearing a “Brooklyn” t-shirt or a New York Yankees hat I could extend the length of my journey for another four months. I not only met people who lived in the nine countries I visited, I met people from around the world who were also traveling. With the exception of one (a Russian) they all had praise for America. Many would begin a conversation by saying, “We love America.”

In Vietnam and Cambodia several young people in their 20’s spent long periods of time talking with me as a way of practicing their English. I taught the receptionist at a hotel in Hoi An, Vietnam how to say and use the phrase, “bright and early.” She worked so hard at it. It was especially hard for her to say “early.” When she got to the word she would stand on her toes as if the leverage would help. She tried again and again until she got it right and the next evening she told she would see me bright and early the next day.

Perhaps the seed of an idea for my trip was planted in elementary school when I read “Around the World in Eighty Days.” Back then just getting past the title was a mind-blowing exercise. Around the world in eighty days? How could it be possible? And of course, that was the point wasn’t it? The title was premised on the thought that no one could imagine pulling off such a feat.

Today it is not only possible, but you might be surprised how many people are simply exploring the world full time on any given day of the week. I am not talking about retirees. Most of the around the world travelers I met were between twenty and fifty. I met one couple in their thirties who quit their jobs in California after getting married about a year ago. They decided to travel until they run out of resources and before they have children. The last time I checked on them they were still in India two months after I left.

Just a few days before my final flight home I met a woman in Argentina who has been backpacking for nearly a year with her two daughters - who looked to be between 9 and 13 years old. All three of them had large packs and one of the girls had her’s covered in patches from the places they have been. Once they are done in South America they are headed to South Africa where they plan to begin their journey to the top of the continent before returning to the United States.

I met a freelance journalist headed to Antarctica for a second time. She told me about another trip she took on a container ship from Germany to Montevideo, Uruguay. Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, is packed with tourists heading to Antarctica. In fact, Ushuaia is somewhat like Kathmandu, Nepal in that respect. Travelers heading for Mt. Everest stop first in Kathmandu. Travelers heading to Antarctica stop in Ushuaia.

If there are two issues that seem to be touching every part of the world right now they are the environment and economic justice. Sometimes the two are tied together. In most countries I visited people complained about how hard it is to get ahead economically and they often blamed their government for failing them. Some going so far as to call their government leaders corrupt. Not surprisingly, some of the governments failing their citizens from an economic perspective are also failing in the area of environmental protection.

The issue of economic justice came to a head in Santiago, Chile in the first month of my trip while I was in Cambodia. Protests broke out in November and they are still taking place today. In April, there is a national vote scheduled on writing a new constitution.

The unrest in Chile led the organizers of a world summit on the environment to move their meeting from Santiago to Madrid the week I happened to be in Spain. There too, the streets were filled almost daily with protesters demanding that governments worldwide do more to protect the environment.

In India the two issues of economic justice and the environment clash in the most dramatic way. Air pollution is choking the population in most of the major cities. The Supreme Court issued a warning while I was in Mumbai that declared Delhi to be “a gas chamber” and urged the national and local governments to take immediate action. Despite India’s standing on the world stage as a major regional power millions of its citizens live in poverty and feel powerless to affect change, especially on an issue as complicated as the environment.

Almost every conversation I had with a foreigner included questions about the American president. Will he be impeached (and by that they meant removed from office) or will he be re-elected? I did my best to explain what is expected, but usually ended by saying these are unusual times and it is impossible to predict what will happen. For the most part they did not seem worried about the leadership of the United States. Their attitude was amused curiosity.

On a train in Peru I met a retired American soldier who served in Iraq, a Columbian who is studying English this semester in Virginia, an Indian studying engineering in Texas, a Kenyan who lives in Holland, and two sisters from Morocco who live in Paris, France. By the end of the day we felt like friends and our national origins were unimportant except as a means to learn more about the world from different perspectives. Anti-immigrant sentiments may be growing in nations around the world, but the people I met were unconcerned. They were making their own decisions about where they were spending their time.

You will often hear people say that the more you travel the more you realize we are all the same. I am not sure that’s entirely true. There are cultural differences in every country I visited. Some small and some huge. I think it is more accurate to say we all want the same things in life and those things are pretty simple.

Most of my conversations on the road centered around what it is like to live in one country or another: How much does it cost, what are the people like, what is the weather like, is it easy to travel from there to other places, what are the challenges, how is the government and so on. All these questions are really based in the core question: Can I build a good life there? Can I be happy there? And those questions also suggest that, at least for the varied group of travelers I met from around the world, many are willing to migrate if it is a risk worth taking.

That is one big lesson I learned early in the journey. A growing number of people around the world, especially young people, are not as tied to the country of their birth as previous generations may have been. Yes, there have been great migrations before, but technology now enables the imagination. There is no need to sit on the shores of Europe longing for the chance to travel to America. Now you can just do it.

To define it as a lack of national loyalty is too harsh. It is more a realization, helped by the economic circumstances and technologies of this era, that is leading more people to conclude that they have the tools to make a better life for themselves anywhere they choose.

I am my country now.