Pre-ramble: It’s not a blog, mom, it’s an online journal

Those who know me know that I can talk a lot. I’ve always had trouble with brevity being the soul of wit, even if I’m not as bad as I used to be. Sometimes this is necessary, helpful elaboration; other times words just tumble out of my mouth/keyboard, over-analytic ramblings. The crumbs, rinds, crusts, and pulp of my thoughts that no one really cares about (if they even care about the core of what I’m saying to begin with). Personally, I’m a fan of eating the crust, drinking my OJ with pulp, and occasionally biting at a watermelon’s rind (and being reminded right after why we don’t normally eat the rind) I’m going to outline not only my travel plans for the next year-and-a-half here, but also the background of this adventure and my (constantly growing) travel philosophy. Mostly, I just like the sound of my own voice (or the sight of my own writing, in this case). So for fellow fans of crusts and pulp, read on and indulge me. But if you are already bored to tears please feel free to skip over this whole section if you want to just get into the actual traveling part, and I won’t blame you.

Some needed gratitude

It is important to begin with realizing just how fortunate I am to be having this experience. For much of human history, most people have stayed in the same village or city for their whole life while seeing very little of the world. Exceptions are royalty, soldiers, nomadic hunter-gatherers, and traveling merchants. There are also those who have been forced to travel: captured slaves taken from their homes, refugees fleeing war-ravaged lands, migrants desperately crossing mountains, seas, deserts, and “borders” looking to support themselves. As I write this, thousands of Central Americans march in a caravan to the border of the country that has helped destabilize the economies, governments,and environments of their homelands over many years. It may feel irrelevant to be mentioning all this, but I personally think it is wrong to talk of travel and not include such acknowledgements.

Many people today, even in the “wealthy nations” of the US, Western Europe, etc. still cannot afford to travel, due to money and time. Matt Kepnes does a great takedown of the tourism industry that self-interestedly promotes expensive luxury tourism (resorts, cruises, or just Disney) in How to Travel on $50 a Day, and I’ll be using much of his advice on my adventures. You can find cheaper tickets to plenty of great places and get budget and sometimes even free accommodations and food (that’s still comfortable and healthy). But many people, especially with families they’re taking care of, still can’t afford to save up enough or take the time for extended travel. You don’t have to look at more complex statistics to know that between rent, healthcare, utilities, food, clothes, taxes, loans, transportation, and yes, average leisure spending, folks working minimum wage jobs in most cities are nickeled and dimed, despite what many business leaders and politicians (Democrat and Republican alike) would have us believe. This isn’t a particularly edgy thing to say; many of us already know this. Even if people can save gradually, people so often get stuck with their housing and cars, and can’t afford to just up and leave their jobs. Forget it if you have a family. It may vary a bit country to country, and some decades are better or worse than others, but this is the case at least in most of the US and countries where the wealth gap is even greater.

I could not have saved for this coming year without being one of the 6% of people in the world who has a college degree, which allowed me to sell half my soul to a well-paying part-time job (in the standardized testing machine) to supplement the low-paying main job I sold the other half of my soul to (in the restaurant industry machine). I could not be doing this if I were one of many grads saddled by a mountain of student loans. It would be harder if I didn’t have my generous parents’ house to store my stuff in after I moved out of my apartment, and to rest at in the weeks between each of my trips. It would be much harder if my health was shitty (physically or mentally), and I am lucky that my health insurance plan happens to have coverage abroad. It is much easier that I speak English. It is much easier that I’m a US citizen, unless I perhaps planned on going to North Korea (though you may be surprised that most American travelers interact well with people in most countries the US doesn’t have good relations with). It is much easier that I am a male and white and not subject to racial discrimination and sexual harassment as I travel other countries as well as within the US. All these things for sure make life easier on a daily basis when not traveling. Perhaps the only part of my identity I could experience obstacles from is being Jewish, especially as anti-semitism rises more than it has in decades in the US and Europe, but that won’t cause trouble for me at airport security, and it is not outwardly noticeable to strangers on the street from my clothing (before you say it, plenty of white non-Jews have dark curly hair). And again, these are not radical things to say, I’m not hating myself for being a white male–they are just the facts of how my body and identities are perceived by the world.

And so I am more grateful than I can feel to be able to do this. More than just to the many friends and strangers who have traveled, this one is dedicated to the friends and many strangers who haven’t.

Why and how am I doing this (besides because it’s cool)

I realized a little after college that, of all the many things I wanted to do in my life, long-term travel was one that I would really only be able to do while I’m young. I’m not tied to a career yet, and I’m not settled down with a family. I could do some extended traveling when I retire, but I’ll be worn out, and who knows what the world will be like then, especially when half the places I want to visit might be partially or totally underwater. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sail every river, hear every language, hike every mountain, interact with every single culture, learn about every nation’s history and politics, dance to every song, see every old building and piece of art, try every food, or see every tree and animal. But if I had the opportunity to see some of the world, especially with such an uncertain future as we move further into the twenty-first century, I’d be damned if I didn’t carpe the diem.

So I began to plan. In the early stages, I knew I’d be able to use affordable hostels and public transportation in a lot of places, and find cheap (but good) food if I looked in the right places. But I still was very far from sure that I’d have the money to do this thing for a whole year. Then, last summer, my friend Daniel told me about WWOOF. World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms is one of the better known work exchange programs. Started in Britain in the 1970s, WWOOF connects you with small host farms who give you room and board in exchange for several hours a day of working on the farm. You can stay for a few days up to several months at some places, and most hosts don’t require experience. It sounded too good to be true, and there are some horror stories you can find online, but as long as you do your research, looking at reviews volunteers leave for some farms, it’s a good deal and a good experience. I immediately knew this would be the best way for me to see the world.

I’ve been more interested in plants and gardening for the past year or two, and in sustainability and environmentalism overall for longer, so experiencing organic farms will be an ideal way to weld these interests. Being on farms with locals will help me further learn about the cultures and societies of each land I visit, though I will be spending some time in cities through hostels to see that side of a country as well. Lastly, I hope to meet and learn a thing or two about Jewish communities in other countries, a la Benjamin of Tudela. The US and the UK of course have sizable Jewish populations, and even parts of South Africa, China, and South America do as well. Palestine & Israel…well, that’s a special case, as we’ll see.

The current map is Palestine/Israel (finishing in Jordan) end of October through December, South Africa (including stops in Swaziland and Lesotho) early January 2019 through March, Britain & Ireland (with an obligatory brief stop in Paris) end of March through May, the US coast-to-coast from early June into September, China mid-September through November, then finally South America (Colombia down through Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, & Uruguay) from December through March of 2020. I’ll be spending a week or so at my parent’s place in dirty Jersey between each trip, visiting friends and family; I’m not crazy enough to do 1.5 years completely nonstop!

On ethical and conscious travel

For some time now, many people critical of our modern capitalist economic system have been saying–in one way or another–that there can be no ethical consumption at all under capitalism, and I mostly agree. At some point in the supply chain, somebody gets exploited with a rotten deal along the way, be it terrible working conditions or not enough pay. I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough to further discuss this concept in-depth, and I want to keep this blog as jargon-free and accessible as possible (without dumbing it down too much), but I do want to mention two narrower ideas related to this that I’ve been thinking about during my preparation.

The first is that there is no ethical travel (or living in general) under fossil fuel industrialization.* Even as I nobly write in my notebook and online here about organic farming and environmentalism, pretty much every mode of transportation I take will be consuming finite fossil fuels that wreck our planet in multiple ways, especially airplanes. There is actually quite a large existing debate on this already around “ecotourism.” I will often take buses and trains, which will all be scheduled to run with or without me, but I will still be paying into their operation and contributing to demand, if ever so minutely as just one person. I briefly had the insane idea of taking a combo of my bike and buses & trains when I go across the US, but after riding 55 miles from Boston to Worcester in one day back in September with dear Daniel, I realize I will not be in shape to do that. Some brief research also suggested that intercity American public transportation is notoriously inefficient and costly (particularly the trains) for backpackers. Especially since I want to do coast-to-coast-and-back in just about three months, I will most likely be roadtripping it. The most I can do is be conscious of interacting with the land as genuinely and respectfully as possible.

*I am not a certified expert on fossil fuels and global warming, but let’s pretend that I am here

The second sub-ramble is that there is no ethical travel under the modern system of states, or what academics call Westphalian sovereignty (this blog is very accessible and jargon-free, like I said).* I would highly recommend the engrossing entry on the academically rigorous website called Wikipedia to learn more about Westphalian sovereignty. What I’m trying to get at is that pretty much any state that I go to, at some point in recent or distant history that nation probably conquered the people living there before and took their land, resources, and freedom. Even in Europe many Christian kingdoms and nations were founded on massacring pagans. And even if a state doesn’t have a clear founding history of conquest, you can be sure that its government, some corporations, or an unholy alliance of the two is certainly screwing over at least part of its population in some way or another. Again, the most I can do as a visitor is be conscious of interacting with the people as genuinely and respectfully as possible, and to not ignore the issues facing local people as I write about their countries. More on that below.

*I am not a certified expert on Westphalian sovereignty or the rise nation-states, but let’s pretend that I am here

The good, the bad, and the subjective

I do believe that it’s important to acknowledge all of the above if I am to try being a responsible traveler. I should take note when I learn of the darker sides of the places I visit, not pretend that every place I go is sunshine and butterflies. At the same time, I want to be just as careful not to over-focus on the negative social issues and politics of each place, in a “poverty porn” kind of way. It would be disrespectful and dishonest to do so; at the end of the day, I want to write about each culture and people on their own terms, as human faces and not as statistics, because they deserve more than to just be a news story whenever something bad happens in their country or city. Some journalists and scholars have written extensively over the past few decades about exploitative conflict tourism, slum tourism, and natural disaster tourism, as well as “dark tourism,” the latter of which is actually the basis of a new Netflix series that I have not had a chance to check out yet. Such simplistic and ultimately self-serving attitudes to travel often end up dehumanizing and commodifying the places and peoples who are struggling against disaster or oppression. Only researchers, actual activists, and journalists can really go to troubled parts of the world and write about them genuinely (besides locals themselves, of course), and even they too often don’t do such a great job representing a place or an issue, either by getting it wrong entirely, or worse by distorting an injustice into a two-sided false equivalency in the name of the Golden Mean of neutral objectivity. (Side note that I don’t think I’ll have to be cautious about how to treat visits to say medieval torture dungeons, or ancient battle sites, as the tragedy and suffering associated with them are so far removed by time)

Hunter S. Thompson once said “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can’t be objective about Richard Nixon.” While sentiments against objective media could be shared among plenty of out-there folks, like edgy, fedora-wearing, militantly atheist conspiracy theorists on the internet, I think Thompson is completely right here, and that will show in how I write about my traveling at times (I’m definitely not militantly atheist and don’t wear fedoras, though perhaps I could occasionally be described as an edgy conspiracy theorist). This adventure and my journal will not be an attempt to channel my inner Gonzo journalist, much as I would like it to be, but I will embrace being subjective as I reflect on my traveling, rather than pretending to be an objective observer. I am a person with my own life and background that shape my perspective and opinions on the world as I learn more about it. My feelings and thoughts will be an inseparable part of the travel experience. This goes for positive as well negative reactions to what I encounter. While history and politics are always complex anywhere, you shouldn’t be afraid to still form basic opinions on something while acknowledging you’re far from being an expert. You don’t have to live in a country to realize that something its government is doing is immoral on a basic level. At some times I may be too quick to make pass judgment on a land’s history or politics, while at others I may be too cautiously neutral, or I may as an outsider get some basic facts wrong entirely. I will seek to find the right balance, but I am human, and any such errors are mine, and I am open to being corrected when I get it wrong. I will try to avoid the other extreme of making my accounts too heavily opinionated and preachy; I’m just a random guy from New Jersey and I don’t want my own voice to drown out the voices of the people I encounter, and in most cases I really won’t have the in-depth knowledge and experience to give an authoritative opinion myself.

I expect that I will have to be most conscious of all this during the Palestine & Israel trip, but I will also be seeing the legacies of recent oppressive systems and conflicts in South Africa and Ireland, totalitarianism in China, and inequality of all sorts across the US and South America. Even so, the mission of the delegation I’ll be on in the first two weeks of Palestine is already out of clear political solidarity, not just to see it for the sake of it because it’s “tragic and interesting.” Also, I should mention that I’ll mostly be seeing the happy side of farming as I travel, with Palestine again being an exception, where the Israeli occupation makes business extremely difficult for the Palestinian farm I will be staying at. I will be on fun small organic farms, often family-owned, while across the world in the past several decades big corporate agriculture (“agribusiness”) and neoliberal policies have been destroying environments and people, leading many small-scale farmers into such desperation to the point of committing suicide (again something I’m not a certified expert on, but should be mentioned as I begin). Lastly, I will try to keep dirty language to a minimum here, especially if my sister Jodi reads any of this to my seven-year-old niece (though I imagine she would have the good sense to censor those out), but sometimes expletives are just so fucking useful for describing some things.

I do not know everything about the land and people of Mahwah, even after growing up there for twelve years, and I know even less about the land and people of Worcester, where I went to college and worked for six years. I will not become anything close to an expert on the lands and peoples of Palestine, South Africa, Ireland, the United States, China, Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. I will be content with just learning a little something about each. And plenty of people–travelers and of course natives–have already written about all these places and peoples; their culture, their history, their food, their politics, their music, their triumphs, their tragedies. I will not be “discovering” anything new–but I will certainly be having new experiences for myself, and intend to share them with my friends, family, and potential strangers at home and beyond.

Shut up and get on with it, Berman

TL;DR–traveling for funsies is a privilege, I’m gonna be working on some cool farms much of the time, traveling contributes to pollution, all countries are messed up in their own ways, some more preachy stuff about finding a balance between writing about the those messed up darker and more positive aspects of the world as I learn about it, I’m going to include much of my own opinions and thoughts (but hopefully not too much), and I probably am not gonna do that great of a job writing about it, but I’ll still go ahead and try, with all of those qualifiers. My writing will get dense at some points, and there will be all sorts of things I include–nature, culture, food, politics, history, art, religion, random stories with other travelers and locals, and other ramblings, so feel free to just skim around the things that don’t interest you as much. I would say thanks for reading this stupidly dense intro, but by reading it you’ve indulged my habit of rambling, so to be frank I’m actually a little frustrated with you now for enabling me. But I’ll forgive you. I will thank you in advance though for reading the actual upcoming entries relaying my humble story as one person out of many traveling some foreign fields (hey that’s the title of the blog) during one short year in my short life on this earth. First stop, Palestine.