“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”
St. Augustine 354-430 AD
From his personal travels across the Mediterranean from North Africa to Italy, Augustine knew of what he was writing. Travel for us today is so much easier than it was for Augustine. Click on the computer, choose your flights, type in your credit card number, and bingo! You’re all set to fly to almost any where in the world. But exactly what are the benefits of travel?
As a child in Winnipeg, travel meant the use of my tricycle, my bicycle and our family car. Getting a driver’s license at 16 and later a car, allowed me to travel further. After university, marriage and full time jobs, I had enough surplus money to start seeing other parts of Canada. With its’ French language and joie de vivre, I fell in love with Quebec. Atlantic Canada left me hoping to get an exchange job teaching in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
British Columbia has mountains for skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer, and like the Atlantic Province, it has ocean waves…. even bigger than those on Lake Winnipeg! Northern Canada was immense. It has few people but billions of trees, rivers and lakes, and if you travel to the Arctic there are no trees and some huge mountains. I also began to notice the poverty of many northern people, and to realize that I had been born into a Canadian family with many blessings.
Eventually, our 3 children married and moved away from home. And although my wife continued to work part time, I retired after teaching school for 40 years. New questions now arose about travel. Where to go? What to do? We presently have the blessings of health, enough money to visit some more exotic places, and the ease of jet plane travel. So my wife and I became snowbirds with trips to Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
We also have become members of Friendship Force, an international cultural exchange organization. The theory is that members of your local FF club, after thorough planning and consultation, may travel to other FF places in the world. We have lived in the homes of FF friends for a week in Taiwan, Hungary, Brazil, Turkey and Russia .The reciprocal side of FF is that members of other clubs may decide to visit our club. Then we have the opportunity to host and show these FF members around our city.
All travellers will have their own experiences, and some of these may be sad experiences: hearing the tragic story of a Japanese survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945; the story of 20 million Russians who died during WW2; and the stories of Cree in northern Manitoba who can no longer drink the water or eat the fish in their communities because their rivers have been polluted by the construction of massive hydro electricity dams.
But travel also has given me many benefits: new friends, a chance to appreciate the history and culture of other countries, and perhaps some wisdom and tolerance. I came to love hearing the beautiful call to prayer sung 5 times a day from the minarets of Muslim mosques in Turkey. The call to prayer reminded me that previously, some Christians stopped their work to pray the Angelus five times a day.
Visiting Taiwan, the island republic off the coast of China, provided me with a total immersion cultural experience and a reminder that approximately 20% of the people in today’s world are Chinese. A Chinese proverb says, “It is better to travel a thousand miles then to read a thousand books.” I think St. Augustine would have agreed with that proverb.
Finally, travel has given me a perspective on just how blessed I have been to live in Canada. And as a bonus, travel has given me the opportunity for the Great Escape provided by jet planes, warm climates, and lush green vegetation in the midst of the frigid temperatures of snow bound Winterpeg.