Third World Travel Troubles and Why You Should Go Anyway

I ran across this forgotten 2015 post accidentally in late October 2022. I decided to add Third World lessons from Guatemala, where I spent two weeks volunteering at a school whose mission is to lift Maya youth from grinding poverty to futures with hope and opportunity.

I also invited a new but dear friend, Laura Rich, to contribute to the "conversation" about Third World traveling, or in her case, living in a Third World country. Which puts her in with other EXPERTs who contributed to this post. (See below.)

BUT FIRST —WHAT IS A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY and WHERE ARE THEY?

Various maps identifying Third world countries differ. I don't know this map's origin, but a current map might put more countries into the "in transition" category. Or we can hope. On this map: Gray represents advanced economies,  yellow signals countries in transition, and green stands for Third World status. 

Third World countries have high poverty rates, economic instability, and lack basic human necessities like access to water, shelter, and food for their citizens. The countries are often underdeveloped, with widespread poverty and high mortality rates, especially for infants.

I've been mulling over how to describe the discomforts—and the joys—of traveling in the world's "least developed" countries, those pictured above in green. I know that the disadvantages loom large, but despite the drawbacks, I belieThird World travel's rewards outweigh the baduff.

Does spending 14 days in Guatemala, 18 days in Nepal and the same amount of time in Uganda, make me a Third World travel expert? 

Of course not! But I do have EXPERTS at my disposal (see below) 

I will insert my own semi-informed opinions. But first, the generally agreed-upon drawbacks to Third World travel:

Third World realities that can mess with you

1. Poverty. You cannot ignore it, and it can make you feel terrible, helpless, and guiltyContaminatedous water. You can't drink from tap and s, and must take care not to open your mouth in the shower, which is, by the way, a significant or luxury. P, plus you must be aware of food that may be contaminated with water at all times. Even with care, water-bornastynasty bugs can have their way with you if they manage to get in. I know this all too well.
2. Hard beds. Unless separating yourself from the culture by staying in super pricey hotels, your will to suck, by cushy Western standards. Your blow-up airplane neck pillow can come in handy.
3. Connectivity. Internet access is hit and miss, even in hotels touting Wifi.
4. Bad roads. Mostly, they're terrible, especially in rural areas. Don't try to rent a car or drive yourself. Street maps, road signs, road name and s, and traffic control devices (such as stop light cuesgns) are as rare as cloth napkins Mcdonald'slds. Outside of, and sometimes IN cities, roads are typically one lane, eroding, full of potholes, blind corners, limping, overloaded buses, and motorcyclists with a deawishesish.
5. Unreliable power. In Kathmandu, Nepal's capital city, electricity goes missing for approximately 12 houdailyday in something they call load-shedding. Don't look for a hairdryer under the sink, an unimaginable waste of electricity. Some hotels and businesses fill in with generators.
6. Air pollution. In Kampala, Uganda's capital city of nearly 2 million, the primary cooking method is wood or charcoal, as it is in rural areas. Most people boil their drinking water for an hour, so tons of particulates spew into the air daily. The Kathmandu Valley, populatiof on 5 million, has cleaned up the air recently by disallowing two-cycle motorcycle engines, disposing, somehow, of trash that used to be burned. However,  the day after we left, the airport was closed due to pollution-caused poor visibility. 
7. Sanitation/toilets. Prepare to squat at least some of the time. Our $35-per-night hotel in Kathmandu had flush toilets, although we had to pour a bucket of water down ours to make it work. In Uganda, our upscale hotels were equipped with modern plumbing. On the road, howeveas the bushes or sohorriblebad squat situations in gas stations. 
8. Crime, panhandling, begging. Worse in some places than others, but when you travel to areas where daily wages are around $2 US a day, your stuff looks pretty good. 
9. Border-crossing hassles/bribery. One of the experts, Chris, has paid a lot of bribes. I've only crossed borders on airplanes.
10. Being white and, therefore ricis h a stereotype not easily escaped.
11. Weird diseases that require visitors to get immunized before entering a country. Better than getting sick.

My Third World Travel Experts

Chris Korbulic, then 28, our son, professional kayaker, and photographer exploring rivers—and cultures—in countries including Nepal, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Laos, India, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Pakistan, and many more. I've listed only countrisconsidered least developed, less developed, or in transition.

It's important to say that my thoughts on why a First-Worlder should travel in Third World countries, are, obviously, coming from a privileged middle-class white dude. Also this is travel, not vacation, so the goal isn't to relax and come out feeling rejuvenated. It's to see and experience totally foreign places and people and maybe even suffer a little for it. After a good travel, you'll feel like you need a vacation. 

Traveling in Third World, or "developing" countries, or whatever PC label you want to call impoverished places with more poverty and misery than we could ever comprehend, is important. 

And it's fun. There aren't nearly as many rules or enforced laws, which can be great, but can also make travel a logistical nightmare. Also cultural taboos are often just as important as laws but much harder to recognize. 

In the US, we think we're deprived. We're not free enough, rich enough, safe enough, we don't have enough time. But we are actually so safe and free and rich that we manage to create danger and chaos and misery for ourselves where it mostly doesn't exist. 

And then we create stereotypes. For example, everyone in Pakistan must be a terrorist or always scared and hungry. Wrong, actually. In my experience, Pakistanis showed overwhelming kindness and hospitality to us weird kayaking foreigners, and they took great joy in what I perceive to be pretty miserable conditions. They also seemed to have rich family lives. 

If you're lucky and you travel just right, you won't just see misery and hunger and thirst and danger, but you might actually experience them, and with your First-Worlder goals of learning about yourself and the world and empathy, your experiences will teach you much more than your eyes ever could. 

When you return home, you might recognize the great quality of life you are privileged to enjoy. And hopefully you'll feel richer, freer, and safer than before, because you are.  

Another travel danger; you might come back and sound like a self righteous a-hole too proud of your travel experiences. Chris Korbulic

Kara Blackmore, then 20-something, a cultural anthropologist working as a writer and cultural consultant in Uganda. A Cambridge graduate, she's traveled much of Africa, and many other countries, and is a contributor to a popular guidebook to Uganda. She's a good friend of Chris', and when we traveled to Uganda in 2013, she arranged our itinerary and spent a few days with us, including bush camping.
Kara is talking about Uganda below.

         I've added a few images from our Uganda trip. MK

The traffic: Go because you will see what can fit on the back of a bicycle or motorbike.

Watering trough via bicycle.

The local food:  Go because the immigrant Ethiopians make it delicious and the Belgium bakery takes the cake.

The malaria: Go because if you get it you can empathize with people and have the best diet plan ever. This could be said for amoebas too. 

The cost: Safari travel ain't cheap, but the reward for being in what Hendri Coetzee would call "nature's VIP lounge" is well worth the price.

Lion cubs on our early morning safari after bush camping.

The poverty: Seeing disparity is uncomfortable, and we should travel to remind ourselves that the great things are so simple and the simple things are so great. 

Go anyway because the colors in the art will make you feel alive. 

Go anyway because seeing charismatic mega fauna in their domain is soul restoring.

A great thrill in my life, taking this photo.  

Go because something will surprise you in ways you could never imagine.

One incredible surprise...

after another... 

Go because, just when you think it is the best day ever, 

there is more!

                                                   Kara Blackmore

Michele Templer, then 66, Peace Corps Volunteer, Swaziland, Africa. Michele was then two-thirds of the way through her two-year commitment and wrote a compelling blog about living like a local in a rural Third World country. I give her, and other PCVs, huge credit for displacing themselves for two years on behalf of the human race. I asked why she believes others can benefit from visiting the Third World. Here, she's talking about Swaziland.

Why go? You mean, of course, besides the unimaginably beautiful scenery, rugged, untamed, rolling in all directions? And besides being the different one, the outsider, the one who attracts stares and curiosity, the one who is seen as a stereotype...(A "rich" white person.)

So perhaps it's the self discovery, when our givens are questioned. It's not the expected challenges - unsafe drinking water (never brush your teeth without using bottled water) unreliable electricity and internet, and questionable public transport. 

No, I think it's the givens that slip off the wallpaper and come smack us on the nose. Things like the social cues and expectations that we take for granted and others don't. Like being aware of time, for example, and being places "on time." If you say you're going to show up, do it. Say no when you mean no. Offer emotional support when someone is hurting. If you see someone who needs help, give it. These are my givens, and they're not universal.

Children are to be encouraged and praised. They eat first, and if there's not enough, the adults eat a little less. Especially the older adults who aren't as active.  And children do not exist solely to fetch and carry for adults. .  

And then there are the things that rankle. The women carrying unbelievably heavy loads, often with children on their backs, while the men walk unencumbered. 

The manual labor that in the States is done by machine. 

The time needed for just the basics of life - cooking on wood fires requires fetching and cutting wood and inordinate amounts of scrubbing pots, for example - and doing ALL the laundry by hand, weeding between the rows of maize with hoes or cattle harnessed with ropes around their heads and horns, everyone working in the fields.

It's the patriarchal culture (it occurred to me today that most of the developing countries are patriarchal - makes you wonder about the economic effect of oppressing women, doesn't it?). 

So how do these things make someone want to travel to a developing country? I think it's about not being aware of givens until they are no longer inevitable. It's more than discovering how others live, it's finding our own beliefs and exposing our own blind spots. And, of course, along with incredible adventures, and self-awareness, such travelers come home with a deep appreciation for all that we have...Michele Templer

My two cents
Traveling in developing countries is worth the trouble because the brain, body, and psyche shift to adapt to extreme foreignness. 

Shifting is good. It dissolves complacency. As Michele points out, being in a developing country challenges our "givens". Such displacement made me rethink everything I thought I knew about religion, money, longevity, discomfort, death and dying, endurance, politics, spirituality, relationships, childhood, nature, animals, generosity, intelligence, curiosity, antiquity, education, health, history, and human nature. How's that for a list?

In other words, practically everything is called into question. The world I thought I knew is not the same as the "worlds" I temporarily inhabited. Travel makes for a different reality, but Third World travel is in a class by itself.

And then there's the beauty and awe factors, the reasons many people travel to Third World countries, especially Africa. In Uganda, I did not expect to be giddy and tearful at the same time while spotting animals I'd seen on TV ain nd magazines for years. 

But when lions, zebras, crocodiles, elephants, hippos, gorillas, rhinos, exotic bi,rds and on it goes were close by and not in a zoo, I was brought to tears. I now dream of giraffes.

In Nepal, it was the mountains and the landscape that brought me to my knees. And the incredible antiquities in the numerous World Heritage Siteso along city streets ain shops.

And, of course, foremost, the wonder, warmarm, bri,ght and beautiful people who treated us with incredible kindness and care. Nepalese may be the most welcoming people on earth.

Observing the vitality and resourcefulness and, at times, joy, of the people in both countries humbled me. Could I live as well as they do were I in their circumstances? Could I be as strong? As graceful? Laugh as much?

Like my son Chris said, I hope I don't come off as a "self-righteous a-hole too proud of my travel experiences." PK and I agree; we are proud of the wonderful and challenging experiences we've had, especially in Nepal and Uganda. The stark differences between our world and the one(s) we visited don't make us smug about where we come from and what we own. 

On the contrary, they make us question how much we need and what being "happy" means.

PK says:  Being brought almost to tears by the joy around you, while seeing, at the same time, conditions that might bring despair in our world, make you question what matters. 

Indeed it does. 

And that's why you should "go anyway."

UGANDA 
Being a Traveler in Uganda -  SCARY!
Gorilla Tracking -  ETHEREAL
Chimp Tracking  FUN!
Rafting the Nile - SCARY!
Bush Camping - LIONS ROARING NEARBY
Uganda, Best Travel Day Ever  TIED WITH FIRST POST
Murchinson Falls National Park Wildlife  TOO MANY CROCS

NEPAL 
Feeling the Love in Nepal
Fear, the Truth About Ziplines 


GUATEMALA

Serendipity then and now

Serendipity officially means accidental good fortune. When I started this post, I intended to write about January gardening. That took me, somehow, to Africa and travel, and then to discontent with my ordinary life and then to childrearing, marriage, and the march of time. And back again. You'll find no gardening here.

 Serendipity—a pleasurable outcome of  brain exploration translated to fingers on the keyboard.  Writing.

 Ever since returning from Africa in mid-October, I've been discontented with ordinary life. No one is cooking for me. No one is driving me around. No one is concerned minute-to-minute with my entertainment. (Thank you, Kara Blackmore and TIA.) There are no giraffes, elephants, lions, gorillas, rhinos, impalas, springboks, cape buffalos, chimps, hippos, exotic birds or even crocodiles parading or posing for my enjoyment.

Oops. Forgot to mention zebras, who seemed eager to have their picture taken.

There's also a terrible absence of drifts of exotic flowers, and forests consisting of what look like giant houseplants. 

Pincushion proteas, indigenous to the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, South Africa, is among 7,000 species thriving in one of the world's great botanic gardens. We spent nearly four hours exploring the eye-blasting magic at the foot of the famous Table Mountain.

Sometimes in Uganda or in South Africa—which I haven't blogged about yet —you can't decide where to look. There's so much to see, so much to do. And the people. Suffice it to say that ordinary life for most Ugandans is different from mine. Their realities make me embarrassed about the luxuries of my privileged never-had-to-think-about-food-or-water ordinary blue-eyed life. Also makes me ponder, what do we really need?

This beautiful Ugandan teenager is making her fifth one-mile round trip from her home to the Nile River balancing 50 pounds of water, which must be boiled at least an hour to be potable. Note that her balance is so good the jerry can lacks a plug. Such are the skills necessary for survival. 

Back in rural Southern Oregon in the dead of winter, I am having to work at being delighted, excited, awed or inspired, as if those are the states-of-being I expect or, more importantly, deserve. That's what Africa did to me. I got accustomed to daily delight, excitement, awe and inspiration. I can tell you, it's not a bad way to live.

Except for a couple spectacular days at the Oregon coast in mid-December, (photos here), dullsville is where I'm at now.  Usually, when returning from a "holiday" as vacations are called in South Africa, I am ready to be home. This time, not. I'm restless, resurrecting that irresistible urge to be on the move that spurred me back in the early 1970s, before babies and jobs and house payments tethered us.

 I say "us" because I've been partners with the same man for going on 41 years. We have our own early histories, but at this point, our shared time predominates. We've been together a couple decades longer than the ages we were when we met. Who knows when you commit to someone that this can happen? If you're lucky, it does.

In Mexico 2006

When our first child arrived in 1977, the itchy feet gave way to nesting and to kid-loving to the center of my being and back. The reason most parents can put up with sleepless nights and toddlers screaming in the grocery store, is that kid-love consumes them.

Chris, left, and Quinn Korbulic, 1999

I love our adult sons, but not as viscerally as when they were babies, toddlers, young children, and even despicable (sometimes) teenagers. They're cut loose and my oh my, who they have become pleases me so. How I adore them still. We won't even get into the grandchildren. Another time.

Back in the day, and besotted with kid-love, I was content with camping and rafting and the occasional two-week summer vacation along with the pleasure and pain of raising children, sustaining a marriage, developing a writing/editing career, and getting acquainted with the Earth in our backyard: the garden, the Rogue River and environs.

I often told myself, and others who would listen, that there's more than one way to travel. Explore your life and journey philosophically, if you can't get out there into the world geography. Having two kids, two jobs, little money, and two or three weeks vacation per annum, I embraced the philosophy route. Time flew. It flapped its wings and dive bombed year after year, pecking me on the head, "You're another year older!"

Now time is pecking me in the eyes, dammit. Get away! Slow the hell down!

Still, I don't regret any of it. I would never give up having raised our sons because both are gifts that keep on giving. And life has come full circle with me being the touchstone for my 98-year-old mom who is in assisted living one mile away.

However. I'm now thinking ours would be a great place to be coming back to. Someday. In the meantime, I will continue to appreciate the small things, and large, that have made this piece of ground home for more than 40 years. It won't be long before we'll be on road longterm and so glad to have a piece of the Earth to settle back into, as birds returning from migration.

Ironically, as I was working on this post, I excavated, from the bottom of a trunk, a diary from 1972. Here's something I wrote August 24 of that year... I was 28 years old.

Driving over the Big Horn Mountains. Stoned. Looking at cows through binoculars and talking about time. A little poem:  

I'll travel til there's no wind left in my soul. Then I'll be old. 

Well, now I AM old, so I'll say the same thing today except for one word:

I'll travel til there's no wind left in my soul.

 Then I'll be dead. 

Leeks in all their glory in our garden. What you can't see or hear are the bees. The bees. Hundreds of bees. Maybe as many bees as there are in all of Africa. Right in my own backyard. Just in case.