I shouldn't be able to travel. Not on what I earn every year. Every year I travel. This is a privilege that has turned into a necessity. How did this happen? I remember when I first began to travel. It was in the spring of 1990 when I went to Ottawa and Toronto for a week. I took the train back as far as Winnipeg where I stayed overnight then flew back to Vancouver. I was able to do this because my Christian community had money, thanks to one of our members selling her condo and our pooling all our resources. Then my mother died seven months later. I inherited money thanks to her insurance then off I went to Europe for over two months. I would have stayed longer but I had helped create some problems in Vancouver, necessitating that I accept some responsibility and return to help resolve some issues.
Eventually I was poor again. Then I sold some paintings, following reading a travel article in the Globe and Mail about the Monteverde region in Costa Rica. I flew down there for twelve days.
These three trips were life-changing experiences and when I was poor again I grieved over the loss. Being able to return to Monteverde became both an obsession with me, and an unreachable dream. I began to learn Spanish, harbouring the hope that one day I could get there again. I went from poor to destitute and eventually homeless. I didn't think I would ever be on an airplane again. My mental health went sideways and I couldn't work. I could say there was no way out, except to do the very best with my very limited circumstances.
This is when God began to move on my behalf. While living in an unsafe situation in a shared house I began running often into Judy Graves, the housing advocate for the city of Vancouver. She asked me about my housing then helped me get on a number of wait lists. I ended up in an affordable apartment, where I have been living for the past fifteen years. I began seeing a psychiatrist for four years who helped walk me through my issues of trauma from childhood to the present. I was already doing volunteer work with a church shelter program for the homeless. I entered a job preparation program through which I became eventually employed. Money began to accumulate in my bank account. I soon noticed that I had only to get a passport and I would be travelling again.
One year later I lost my job. I didn't know if I would be able to travel. I was learning Spanish, rapidly, and already was able to converse in the language. In 1997 an old man I had never seen before had approached me to give me a small Spanish dictionary which I took as a clear sign from God. In 2004, while my bank balance was quickly going south, I took new job training which got me employed in my current field of the past thirteen years, mental health peer support work.
I am still working in this field. I have also been on nine trips to Latin America since 2008: three more times in Costa Rica, five in Mexico, and two visits to Bogota, Colombia. My first trip was, of course, back to Costa Rica. I wanted to see if I could ever live there, decided that would not be happening then sprained my ankle on the uneven pavements of San Jose. Then I went up to Monteverde where I limped and hobbled on along jungle trails in the rain. My two subsequent visits have been without consequence and joyous. In Mexico I was sometimes ill, once very sick in San Cristobal de las Casas, and occasionally menaced and stalked by young criminals. I absorbed Mexican and Aztec and Mayan culture like a dry sponge absorbs rainwater and went from enchantment to frustration and back to enchantment again often one hundred fifty times on the same day. In Bogota I exulted in the most dramatic, violent thunderstorms I have ever seen, dazzled by the vibrant green in this land of eternal May and the tropical flowers festooning every single surface, and both amazed and saddened by the chronic presence of the military and seeing the impacts of war on trauma on the people all around me. I was also threatened by criminals posing as police and stalked and followed by obscure strangers. I have made more new friends in these places than ever I might have imagined and my Spanish has improved immeasurably by immersing myself for a month every year in the language of Cervantes.
Foreign travel gives me one month away from everything, one month to rest and recover from the many emotional and mental demands of my employment, one month to appreciate and learn new ways in a different country, one month for my friends and I to rest and recover from each other, and one month less winter because I'm always in the tropical regions of Latin America. I always return home with a new, refreshed and sharpened perspective on things, and of course a new sense of appreciation for my own city and country.
I would like to be able to go on doing this, but life brings us no guarantees. I like to be able to think that I would not perish from not travelling for a year or two, so dependent I have become on this recourse of escape. I am confident that if I am not able to continue travelling, for whatever reason, that I will still cope well and without difficulty find plenty to occupy my time and attention. As far as I can see, I will go on doing this, either until my health gives out, or until I get bored with travel, or until I kick the bucket. Whatever comes first.
I am not going to take this privilege, this incredible opportunity, this gift from God, for granted. No, Gentle Reader, not at my age.
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