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Alumni Abroad
November 2003 |
Joanna Karwacka '99 and David Krantz '98 were International Studies majors at Dickinson. In July, 2001, they left the U.S. on a one-way ticket to Caracas, Venezuela. Last year they wrote to some of their former professors and the alumni office describing their adventures travelling in South America.
Joanna and David recently sent another email message describing the second year of their travels abroad.
You can see some terrific photos of the trip on their web site, www.askadavid.org
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Dear Professors:
We are writing to you today to let you know that we have just come back to the U.S. from our two-year journey through South America, Poland and South-Eastern Africa.
You may recall our last letter to you, sent from Bolivia over one year ago. We are happy to say that we have continued to travel and maintain our web-site (www.askadavid.org). There you'll find photographs with detailed captions and accounts of our adventures, as well as maps detailing our route.
Since we were last in contact, we continued our journey through South America and pursued a volunteering opportunity at an eco-lodge in the Bolivian Amazon. Having begun our adventure through social service in July 2001 (running a bi-lingual summer camp in Venezuela) we wanted to bring our stay in South America to a close by volunteering our time and skills once again.
The eco-lodge, located deep in Madidi National Park, is owned and operated by a small jungle village, and was established with the help of Conservation International. During our six-week stint, we taught English to the indigenous lodge staff, translated customer evaluation forms from English into Spanish, and advised on customer service, sales and marketing improvements. This challenging cross-cultural experience was a rewarding way to wrap up that phase of our journey.
From South America we went on to stay in Warsaw, Poland for six months. We regrouped, reconnected with Joanna's family, taught English, researched graduate schools, and planned the final phase of our adventure.
We had originally considered a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway, from Moscow to China and on to South East Asia but were discouraged by SARS, the Moscow Theatre tragedy, and the Bali terrorist attack. We ultimately set our sights on Africa as a good choice, albeit not exactly a land of safety and stability itself.
We were in Africa for a total of 4 months. We started out in South Africa this past April, criss-crossing the country in a small rental car. Our first encounters with Africa's big game left us awestruck, and the long-lasting, deep color-infused sunsets were unforgettable. We hiked and camped in both the highlands and coastal regions of South Africa's many national parks and reserves. Apartheid has left deep scars of distrust and, sadly, limited our person-to-person encounters with the locals.
We also toured Namibia, a vast, barren, desert-like country with lingering sunsets and enormous red dunes. We enjoyed the solitude that driving alone together gave us and even camped in the wild to avoid the tourist route.
The South of the country was unpopulated while the North was a mixture of different ethnic groups and immigrants from Angola. We finally enjoyed meeting some of the rural villagers and we gained an appreciation for the nomads and semi-nomadic peoples that inhabit the area (despite the hot, dry, dusty drive over hundreds of kilometers to get to them).
At the end of June, we took a 22 hour bus ride from the capital of Namibia, Windhoek, to Victoria Falls, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. (We avoided the latter as Mugabe's tyrannical grip on power continues to cause unrest and supply shortages). A lack of public transport meant that we had to hitchhike through Zambia. We were extremely lucky to join two South African families in 4x4's going our way for 10 days. We found Zambia to be incredibly poor and rural yet beautiful in its simplicity.
In Malawi, we took a three-day steam boat trip North through the blue fresh waters of Lake Malawi. Sleeping in a private cabin made us feel like old-time travelers from the turn of the century.
Our last weeks in Africa were spent traveling through Tanzania. We particularly enjoyed the beaches and ancient trading history of Zanzibar island. During a 6-day budget safari to the Serengeti and surrounding parks, we witnessed the last days of the great wildebeest migration. The landscape and images were reminiscent of the Great Plains of the American West.
All in all, we found Africa to be more challenging than South America: our baggage went missing twice by different airlines, we got lost for 24 hours during a hike in the Swaziland highlands, we wrecked a car in the desert and got the flu in the Serengeti. We had hoped to volunteer in Africa as well, but were forced to cut our time short due to challenges with malaria (all is well and healthy now).
Our encounters with Africa's natural and cultural beauty, however, made it all worthwhile. We saw great strength and determination in hopeless situations and tremendous dignity in simple lifestyles.
Another great, though different, challenge is now before us as we begin to re-establish our lives back in the DC area. We are currently in the process of moving our things out of storage, searching for jobs, planning our wedding, and applying to graduate schools. To have all of these tasks 'on our plate' at once isn't easy.
We hope this semester is going well for all of you, and we're excited (if not a little jealous) by so many great changes at Dickinson since we left. Of course we'd love to hear from you, so please check out our site and send us an e-mail.
Sincerely,
David and Joanna
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