Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Volunteering Abroad: Should You Do It? And Other Ways to be a Responsible Traveler

Episode Date: April 20, 2018

Shannon O’Donnell, an American who’s been traveling the world since 2008, literally wrote The Volunteer Traveler’s Handbook. Over the years, her website A Little Adrift has become one of the best resources for responsible tourism. NPR, National Geographic, the BBC, and other news outlets have covered Shannon, and her own writing and photography have appeared in BBC Travel, USA Today, Lonely Planet, and other places.    Shannon launched A Little Adrift’s sister website Grassroots Volunteering to connect travelers to local causes and communities. In recognition of her incredible work, in 2013 National Geographic named her “Traveler of the Year.”   In this episode, you’ll learn volunteer dos and don’ts, why most people shouldn’t volunteer while traveling, and why supporting social enterprises is usually a better way to support local communities. We also chat about Shannon’s new life as an expat in Barcelona. Visit postcardacademy.co for links to what we talk about.   If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and forward this show to a friend. If you’re feeling especially kind, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps people discover the show. 🤗   Instagram, Twitter, Facebook       Thank you to Six Miles High Design for creating the brilliant Postcard Academy logo.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy, your weekly travel and culture podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Mike O'Kettle. Listener Jeff Rodin saying that he spent about a decade abroad teaching, and he's now prepared to leave the States again for more teaching adventures, and he'd really like to hear more about travel as a volunteer. I couldn't think of a better guest to cover this topic than Shannon O'Donnell. Shannon is an American who's been traveling the world since 2008. Over the years, her website A Little Adrift,

has become one of the best resources for responsible tourism. An NPR, National Geographic, the BBC, they have all covered Shannon's great work, and her own writing and photography have appeared in BBC Travel, USA Today, Lonely Planet, and many other places. She launched a Little Adrift's sister website, Grassroots Volunteering, to connect travelers to local causes and communities, and her incredible work was recognized in 2013 when National Geographic named Shannon Traveler of the Year. In this episode, we talk about volunteered Jews and don'ts, why most people probably shouldn't

volunteer when they travel, and what you should do instead if you want to help local communities. We also chat about Shannon's new life as an expat in Barcelona. She is such a lovely person, and it was really an honor to speak with her. There's something here for everyone, so I hope you enjoy the show. Well, welcome, Shannon. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.

So I would love to start out by talking about how tourism can be a force for sustainable change. You provide so many great examples on your website a little adrift. And I wanted to talk about a specific one and VIA and why you like their model so much. So yeah, actually, travel as a force for good is one of the things I'm passionate about in general. And so VIA is a really, as you said, specific example. And on the macro level, I feel like tourism has this ability to shift resources from the West, from the more developed countries, the tourists who are able to afford travel. And when you are doing responsible tourism, you're leaving more of your money behind in the right places. So instead of multinational corporations, you are supporting local businesses.

And that's sort of the underlying ethos of all of my travel. That's my philosophy on travel is trying to find local ways to give money back. And when I am in a place for longer, I try to find an organization that can use my skills in an interesting way where I can help them sort of further their mission that also aligns with that. And that's where Envia came in. I moved to Mexico for six months and I connected with an Envia, which is a local microfinance organization.

But the microfinance organization doesn't rely on donations. It doesn't rely on the kindness of strangers to give money. Instead, what they do is they run tours out into their communities. They have five communities of indigenous Zapotech women who take out these microloans. And the tours visit four people. You can ask questions. You learn about their business. They're making handmade woven crafts.

They're making tapete's elaborate woolen carpets and beautiful aprons and hand-woven goods, that sort of thing. So it's very interesting for the tourists. And what happens is two and a half times over your money gets reinvested back into the loan pool that these women can then pull from again. And so for me, this is an absolutely, like, awesome business model. I love it so much because it doesn't, it's sustainable. And tourists could come. And so anyway, what I did for them was with the months that I had there, I went out and photographed the women for their marketing materials,

but also every time they were given a loan, I photographed what they bought with it. As a sort of accountability for, you know, on a business side, they can prove that the women bought what they said they were going to bought. And we can also use that collateral for social media and marketing. marketing brochures. So what's a memory from this experience that will stay with you? You know, it's not just a single memory, but they all sort of overlap. And they actually all involve food. So, you know, there was this one time, I went into one of the compounds. I had a meeting to meet with one of the women, and she was out at church. And so they were going to run and get her for me. And they had just made homemade ice cream. And so all the

children were piled around this, you know, metal container of ice cream that had just been made. And they scooped some out and handed it to me. And that was the hospitality I was shown. Some of these communities were very far outside of Wahaka. This is in Wahaka, Mexico, Oaxaca City. And so I would get on a bus for an hour and go into communities where no tourists ever went. And as soon as I came into a house, I was handed. They all knew by the end that I was vegetarian. So I was just mostly handed lots of corn products, you know, tortillas and things and invited in and given food and plied with drinks. And it's just the kindness of the people that was an incredible way for me to experience what I would have never seen. This part of indigenous Zapotech culture that you even you can witness on the Enviah Day tour, but it's very different to be invited into their homes and be a part of the experience with them.

You've been volunteering your whole life. I know back in your home state of Florida, you were doing volunteers. Could you tell me about some of your first volunteer experiences? Absolutely. in high school. I'm sure I volunteered before that as well. But in high school is when I really started volunteering a lot. I actually won the Volunteerism Award at the end of high school because I had done the most community service hours. I volunteered at that point at the SPCA and for a local park and that sort of thing. And so you don't have a lot of skills to give when you're younger. And so working with

animals and working with some of these sorts of things in college, I would go on to work with a homeless that fed people in downtown Orlando. I went to college in Orlando. And so that every, every new place that I've moved, I've always tried to find something that matched my skills. And when I was younger, I didn't have a lot of skills. So I walked dogs for the SPCA. So volunteering is something that you've carried with you your whole life. And you've also been traveling full time, more or less over the last decade. I would love to like go back to where you were when the salt began when you were living in L.A. Why did you decide to leave your life in L.A.? What were you doing and what prompted that move? When I moved to L.A. in 2006,

that's when I moved to Los Angeles. I had just graduated. You know, I had dreams. I had studied acting and online marketing. So I had two majors. I moved to L.A. on a whim, I had a friend, and I wanted to be a part of the entertainment industry. So it's so cliche. That's why I'm sort of like, pausing there, I'm like, oh, it's just so painfully cliche. But I also had online marketing work already. So the year before I graduated, I began working online for, you know, a friend that I had met who owned a business in Orlando. And that work slowly transitioned into basically full-time work. I had, I could work 40 hours a week if I wanted on his project. He would authorize that. And that way, I didn't have to do the super cliche thing of getting a job waiting tables

when I moved to Los Angeles. And so over two years, I realized that L.A. was not the city for me, but I did have this remote job. And I had proven that I could live in this incredibly expensive city. I did have some debt because I broke my arm. And you can't really have the broken arm. But yeah, I just want to be clear there because it's not like I was saving money. So I lived in L.A. I lived in this incredible, incredibly expensive city.

But what I figured out is that with my online work, if I left this city that was eating all of my money and had forced me to go into debt once I broke it. where I could actually save money, travel the world for a year, and see all the things that I had always told myself that I wanted to do because I had not traveled outside of the country until college when I did a study abroad program that I paid for myself and all that. But we were not a family that could afford to really go anywhere that our car could not take the five of us kids. Where did you study abroad?

I am in Italy in Bergamo, Italy. I love Bergamo. It's such a pretty city. So that's amazing that more than 10 years ago, you were already out the whole digital nomad lifestyle or location independent lifestyle. That's what it's called back then. Digital nomad didn't exist until about. Yeah. Was that tough working on the road?

Were you still able to enjoy that travel experience? Absolutely. So, you know, I got a lot of, people would throw me a lot of shade back then. In 2008, when I set out on the road, I had a beat-up Dell laptop. You know, it had an Ethernet connection. It still had a CD drive. I mean, we're talking, this is not the most sophisticated times. And nobody was writing about if I would actually find Internet on the road.

And so I knew that I would find it most at the time. But I did have a guaranteed minimum. I had to do 20 hours a week of work. That was the minimum. And then I could work up to 40 as the agreement. And when I told my boss was like, basically, I don't care where you are or what you do as long as you do you work, which is the ideal scenario, right? But nobody was writing about it. That's actually why I launched my blog, Little Adrift originally was no one was really not only writing about what it was like to work on the road, but what it was like to travel at all in 2008.

You could go into forums and, you know, lurk around and ask questions of people about people weren't really like pushing that information out there. So in 2008, Australia, I think the most I ever paid was something like $30 Australian dollars, and the ratio was in their favor at that time. $30 Australian an hour for Internet, like at a McDonald's. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was terrible. Australia has a monopoly. I think they still do, the Telstra, and they pay a lot of money for Internet.

And that was the beginning. I started an Australia, and I was like, ooh, this is not what I expected. But I would go on to find it, you know, at hostels. India was maybe the hardest. There was not a lot of understanding. There was not Wi-Fi, and people didn't want me to connect my computer via Ethernet into their networks because they thought that I would give them a virus. So it took some creative, and by creative, I mean money.

It took me offering money, you know, every time, like, how much will it cost for you to let me plug that cat five cable into my computer right now. So what was your first volunteer project then? So that was the other thing is like just information didn't exist, right? Like that's sort of the, I learned in 2008 is that no one was really talking about things. And there were no indie organizations talking about how you could do low-cost volunteering. And so I volunteered in Southeast Asia. And then and that was just like three people I had.

met. But my first formal one that I had organized on the ground before I left Los Angeles was a month at a monastery teaching English in Nepal. And I had paid for that, organized it through a middleman and was going to be living in a monastery in the Kathmandu Valley in a town called Farping. And that actually didn't go great. The experience itself was wonderful. But the middleman took the money and the monastery ended up feeding me every day and didn't get any of the project fee. And that's what led me originally, like originally, it was that exact experience that allowed me to realize, one of the things I could do with my platform is not just write about what it's like to be a digital nomad, but share with people how these organizations are working and how they're using information as the gateway, basically, to allowing people to more ethically volunteer. Yes, you've written so much about ethical travel or grassroots tourism. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

And then also, what is the biggest problem with packaged volunteerism experiences? And how are your sites sort of helping to navigate this? Information is something that was commodified by the international volunteer organizations based out of usually the West. These big organizations that had fancy marketing budgets, people living in Western countries who needed a higher salary. And so the inflated fees meant that you were paying sometimes for amazing experiences, but sometimes for experiences that maybe weren't helping the local populations as much as you want. You know, these organizations back then and also now, but now it's easier to kind of find indie networks like the one I launched. But there were two facets. There were organizations that were taking more of the share of the money than they probably should have, then they would lead you to believe based on what they said that you were going to be doing.

And then there were organizations that were organizing projects that really matched what the volunteer wanted and not what the community actually needed. And so you were getting schools that had been painted bright, beautiful colors every year for the last 25 years. And children who didn't in those schools who didn't have the right textbooks, they had a beautifully painted school because that's what people wanted to do. But what they didn't want to do was stay home, send that money, and buy you. textbooks for the students. And so there's this disconnect that these organizations have always had playing on what we want as volunteers. We want the pictures. There's a reason that there are memes about volunteers like taking selfies with little African children. And that's what we've been sold and fed as what it looks like to volunteer. And that's not always the reality on the ground.

And so you started a site called grassroots volunteering in 2011. What is its mission? To connect travelers to causes and communities. And that's the baseline. There's two databases. One database is independent volunteer opportunities. They're vetted by the community. So it's open source to the point that anybody who wants to be aggressive volunteering

ambassador who's traveling can help find projects. But in order to keep multinational corporations out, it's vetted. It's not completely open source in that way. And so what you're guaranteed is these organizations are independent. They are not charging high fees. The fees are usually going directly to the project. There are no, there are a few middleman. Some of the projects there are a middleman on there, but it's because they have a great outline

and they're really clear. They have transparency. That's what you really want in any organization is transparency on what exactly they're doing so that you can make sure it matches your ethics. And the other database is social enterprises, businesses that don't require any volunteering, they require you to take a massage when you're in Thailand from women who were former prisoners who were trained because they can no longer integrate into Thai society once they leave the prison system. They've been trained. There's a restaurant and there's also a chain

of massage parlors in Chek Mai. And so it's that sort of thing where I tell people like, you really can feel good about going to get a massage and feel as good as someone who went and volunteered because they're both incredibly valuable. These people need business. These women have trained for years to be able to do this once they leave the prison system and they need support. And we don't have quite the stigma that Thai society does. So you can really change these women's lives by just spending money out of business when you're probably already going to get a wonderful Thai massage when you're there. Yes, guys. That's the least we can do is get a massage. Right. Sticking with volunteering for a bit. So if we're interested in volunteering internationally,

what are the first questions we should ask ourselves? You should ask yourself if you have the time to commit to the cause that you've decided to do. So if you've decided you want to teach, have you given yourself enough time overseas? And that's probably not days if it's teaching. And some things are. But, you know, doctors sometimes can do a weekend if it's been organized. Like there are so many different projects and so many nuances. But it's, I never, I tried never to say like you can never volunteer for a single day.

because there are projects where that fits. But for yourself, you have to ask yourself, have what I decided I want to do? Have I given myself enough time to do it? That's absolutely the first question, because if you've given yourself two weeks and you also decided you're going to visit every major site and tourist activity, and you're going to volunteer, like, maybe that's not the best match of a trip. And should we be paying money for these volunteer experiences? You know, it depends on the experience, but generally, yes. There's somebody who has to train you. Even if you are well skilled, right, they have to get you up to speed.

And I like to sort of, the shorter your experience, the more you can expect to pay because they're not investing in you long term. So they will lower the fee if you're going to be there for six months or even three months. But if you're coming for 10 days, you're going to pay more money for that. But by more, I don't mean, you know, I saw a Costa Rica volunteer experience that was $7,000. And I was like, I could live in Costa Rica for a year on $7,000. Like, where is that money going? And that's what I just want people to think is, yes, you should be paying, but it should match the type of experience you're getting.

Medical volunteers always pay more because your fee is going toward borrowing some of the medical supplies locally that you're going to be administering. In addition to doing research on your grassroots volunteering site, what are some signs we should look out for to make sure we are working with an ethical? organization. So this is where you have to educate yourself. Research is the first sort of line of defense against contributing to the more negative sides of the industry because I can't just tell you what to watch out for and have you inherently understand it. You have to research some things in the industry. So I like to call them the two Ds, dignity and dependence. So a great volunteer program or,

and this is, this is a great international aid project. And volunteer programs sometimes like to hold themselves separate, but they are trying to act like an aid organization, a development organization in many ways. This is what they sell to people, is that you're helping develop these countries through your volunteering, and yet they don't often hold themselves to the same standards. So good development practices are that you limit dependency on the project and that the project maintains the dignity of the local people. And so does your volunteering when you go, does this project that you're working on through this organization, have a way out. Are they trying to make themselves obsolete? Most volunteer companies say no. So the Peace Corps has like a long timeline, like 50 years.

It's not that you have to be obsolete in five years, but is your project actually trying to build the capacity and have to make, make itself obsolete? And if the answer is no, then you're making a community project based on dependency. You're making these people, you're not giving them skills that will allow them to not need foreign aid. And the dignity is, you know, the United States should somebody say that like many projects instead of going and bringing old clothes and distributing and like handing out cans of food and being the benevolent Westerner who comes and saves the day, you know, the best programs are creating a system where if they ask for donations, they set up a shop where it's a locally appropriate fee and they buy that t-shirt. And the locals are able to

create a relationship where they are still taking care of themselves and they are not lower than the people who are doing the volunteering. What are some other volunteer do's and don'ts? You know, I have moved a lot away from volunteering and supporting volunteering in more recent years. I believe most people can better serve the communities that they want to visit and they want to help by doing responsible tourism in other ways, social enterprise and some other things. But so in terms of do's and don'ts, basically don't accept a project. Don't go on a project that you're not qualified, qualified with the time you have to give and the skills to actually make a difference. If it's a feel good project for you and you have concerns about the transparency of the organization or how that project is actually impacting the community and then just don't.

Like so many times I talk to travelers and it's something like riding elephants. and they say, well, I know I shouldn't do it, and they know everything about it, and they just do it anyways because they just want to ride an elephant. I go, like, where, how can we move forward as an industry until we make that no longer acceptable? So volunteering is, I know you want to help, but you have to understand, you have to know enough about the industry to really understand what help looks like so that you can also feel good about something as easy as we talked about, the massage. Like, you really should feel as good about that as somebody who went.

and gave a week of their time hugging orphans. Like, you probably did better. As far as, like, steering people away from volunteering, is it more because the average person just doesn't have the time to do that, or there's too many bad players out there? I think, yes, it's a combination of both of those things. I think most people don't have the time or the match of skills to actually do what needs to be done.

So the well-marketed experiences are not some of the best. What's actually needed is not often sort of sexy enough to sell to an international volunteer. So some work that I did right when I was photographing the indigenous communities in Furnvia, that's pretty good. Like that's something that you could sell in markets well. But the year before when I lived in Mexico, actually two years before that, I worked, I was living in north of Port of Ayurda in a beach town called Sanpancho. And they have a community center there. And sometimes the community center needed me to run their after school English language course. And sometimes they needed me to sit in an office and file paperwork.

And nobody travels to Mexico to file paperwork. But when I showed up in a VA, I lived across the street from the community center. I said, I will literally do whatever you need. Like, you don't have to give me the sexiest jobs that are, you know, that are going to be Instagram worthy here. And they were like, great, here's a stack of paperwork. And that's why I push people away from volunteering, because the fact is, is most people don't actually want to do what it takes. They want to be out in the field.

and moving the needle doesn't always look like you with a shovel in your hand planting trees. Like sometimes it looks like you filing paperwork so that someone else can plant the trees. This is great in a very refreshing point of view because, yeah, you don't often hear about the more boring side of volunteering. Yeah, exactly what you said. People are not imagining that they're filing papers when they are traveling across the world to help people. So, yes, let's talk more about social enterprise and other ways. that we can be good tourists and support local communities. So that's my passion is because it's so variable.

Like you can feel good about so many different things and everyone wants to feel good about their travels. But it doesn't look like any one thing. And whereas volunteering can often be sort of a little bit harder, like people anticipate they're not going to be staying in the luscious accommodations. Responsible tourism is something that you can do at every level. There are mega resorts now that have incredible eco programs. You know, some of the islands in the Pacific and stuff,

some of these resorts have completely changed the ecosystem, and they are almost wholly responsible for helping save coral reefs and these sorts of projects. And so with responsible tourism, it comes down to your actions, but also just in a way that you approach travel in a more holistic sense where you're looking for opportunities to support social enterprise, But you're also looking for ways to lower your footprint and sort of making decisions at every stage that usually really positively impact your trip. So that's what I love about social enterprise is some of my favorite conversations have come from these organizations that are helping social causes, taking street kids off the street and training them in hospitality or employing, you know, deaf workers or disabled workers.

These are two that I profiled recently in Vietnam. I was in Vietnam last year. And I could have just seen the beautiful city of Hoyan, which I did, which is a very photogenic city. But I was able to see this whole other side of it. And those are my favorite memories. Those are the stories that you go back and you go, wow, there's this organization. And they have the greatest boutique where you can find these incredibly well-handcrafted souvenirs that you'd actually want to put on the shelf. And you can also tour the workshop.

And they have these disabled locals who are given a life. and they're given the ability to have dignity, that word that I was talking about, by having employment. And that's the sort of thing where all I did was buy some souvenirs and tour workshop. But I really did contribute in a sustainable way to the livelihood of someone else. That's amazing. And I heard you on another podcast you were talking about visiting a Maasai cultural community. Yes. And that was a little further back.

I was in Africa in 2014. And that's a wonderful story. So it's also a point to the fact that it doesn't have to, you know, social enterprises don't have to look like any one thing. So Salaton is a chief. And before his mother passed away, they agreed to start a project that basically tried to end female general mutilation within the Maasai community, but themselves.

So there have been NGOs working on this issue for decades, like 50 years. I mean, people in Africa, this is something that the international aid community has been trying to end. And Salaton decided to internally, he is a Maasai chief. He is well positioned to sort of champion this cause and change some of these practices. So what he and his mother envisioned was a responsible tourism, a social enterprise that basically allowed tourists to come and experience the Maasai culture in a way that didn't put them on display, but also then contributed to projects that will. allow them to fund their work ending a female general mutilation. And so what happened is I stayed with them for a week at this camp that they've designed. And it's not far from the camp where his Maasai tribe live. So they come and they serve you.

And you're in these beautiful huts, well appointed. It's very well done. And they take you on a tour to a school where they have, I think it's 20-something girls who have come from all over the Maasai Mara. Some of them are local. Some walked for days and days across the wilderness, sleeping in trees to avoid the actual, like, you know, lions. And they did it because they knew that he would let them go back to school

instead of being married off at 11 and circumcised. And so this work is something where I paid a decent amount. This is a mid-range experience. It's not a budget. I paid a decent amount of money. But what I got in exchange was an insight into the Mosside culture and the ability to walk with warriors through the wilderness and sleep under the stars.

And they planned a whole dinner. for us. They accommodated me as the vegetarian, but they slaughtered a goat and, you know, everybody else thought that was really cool. Yeah, and so it's part of the culture. Yeah, and that just sounds like an amazing experience, one, but also it's working because you're working directly with the community. I mean, I think it says a lot that NGOs have been there for 50 years and why do you think they've been having such a hard time? Is it because NGOs don't involve the community enough? You know, it's both, it's, you know, we come at it as foreigners, right, with this perspective of it just needs to be stopped. And there are rights, right? Like, now that they can't

hunt lions. So it was a right of passage for the females, just like killing a lion, going into the wilderness and then doing this was for the Maasai warrior. And so we have shifted by conservation efforts, we've taken away the Maasai warriors ritual. And then now we came in as foreigners and we said, like, you just have to change this. This is not okay. But it was a part of their culture. The older women in the community all had it done. And so these outside organizations, they just don't have the cultural insight to understand that it has to be replaced with something. So Salaton is sort of working with elders in the community. He's not just telling the current generation, you know, like don't circumsend your girls. He's trying to work with elders to come up with a way to shift the

culture from within to still honor what that ceremony represented because it isn't all bad. You can't just go in and say this is a horrible practice. It represented something to them. And so when Celetone sort of approaches it, it is to try to understand how they can keep what it meant in their culture while also shifting the practice. And so what has that translated into? I'm just so curious about this if they're shifting away from dental immunulation, but they still want to keep some sort of like right of passage. What are they doing now? So they will nick the girl's leg. Like they still do the entire ceremony, but they nick the girl's leg instead so that she bleeds and everyone treats it as if it was still the case. Unfortunately, part of the ceremony also went

with child brides. And so they're also trying to keep girls in school and work with elders to agree that like, you know, 10 is, and 11 is maybe not the best age to marry off. So some of these girls were being circumcised at like 10 years old. If they bled, if it was their first period. And so it is a long shift. I think that's the thing. It's like 50 years is these organizations have made some progress, but it also takes the buy-in of the chiefs. And so Salatone is the chief of a community, and he has the ear of these other communities. And it's this sort of internal force that is needed. And what I love about it is, I didn't, they didn't ask me my opinion on anything. Like when I was there, they took me and they taught me about, you know, which plants, medicinal plants I could do.

And it didn't require being a volunteer or offer an expertise I don't have. Like, I supported their cause merely by interacting with their tribe in the way that they said they wanted. So I saw in Tanzania, I was on a safari into the Nogorragorigar crater and we stopped at a Maasai camp. And they had been displaced and it was this sort of canned. one hour long experience where they come out and they jump up and down and they dance for you and then they lead you around and they try to make you buy something and then you get back in your safari car and then you drive away. And it was intense because it felt like a human zoo. Like we were just there to photograph these exotic looking people. Whereas what I did with

the Masai Magimodo, the name of it is Magimodo. And there are two of them. So you want to make sure you were at the one that Salaton runs. And so Magi Moto, is a very different experience. You don't feel like a zoo. You don't feel like you're there just to photograph the exotic people and move on. He has allowed his tribe to dictate how the tourists will interact with them

and then they decide where that money goes. And that's sort of my favorite part of it. It's an exchange where we're all really curious about the tribes of Africa, but they've been objectified a lot and basically formed into human zoos for safari cars. We were just one safari car of probably 20

that this small tiny Maasai camp is going to perform for in Tanzania. And it was just a really stark difference to see the one in Kenya, where they have developed a responsible tourism method that better honors their culture, while also moving the needle on some serious social issues. I have really enjoyed these examples, so thank you so much for that.

These are the more memorable experiences. Like, what I want people to understand is when people see some of my travels or the conversations I've had, they say, well, when I travel, like, I never get invited to a wedding, or, you know, have these cool conversations. And I'm like, well, this is sort of the basis. The transformative travel experiences, these really neat things that we all sort of hope for when we get on the road. A lot of it comes from my approach to travel, which involves this responsible tourism,

this idea where I want to learn from the community and I'm going in with a really respectful and curious nature and asking them just to like let me see parts of it. So anyway, I just think that responsible tourism is one of the coolest ways to actually have the experiences most people want when they are in a new culture. After about a decade of full-time travel, you recently moved to Spain. What prompted you to sort of find a more permanent space in? Why Spain? Yeah, I was tired. Ten years without a home base is a long time. So I have mentioned, right, that I lived in Mexico for, you know, five, six months. Six months is the most I've ever stayed in one space.

spot and I've done that maybe three or four times of the last 10 years. And a few years ago, I was ready to settle down. That's partly why I moved to Mexico. And it just wasn't, just didn't want to live there. I liked Woha a lot, but actually it was a health issue. Like my allergies are too bad there in the spring. And so I moved on and I walked the Camino de Santiago last summer. What's interesting is I really wanted to settle down.

I had been in Mexico and I walked the Camino partly for clarity, but, you know, you know, for many reasons, but at that point, I was not going to move to Barcelona. And this was just, this was less than a year ago. Could you speak about what the Camino is and why you were doing it? Yes, so the Camino de Santiago. I did the Camino Frances. It means the way of St. James. And it's a Catholic pilgrimage route dating back to the Middle Ages.

They believe that St. James' remains came on a boat over to Santiago de Capostela, which is in Western Spain. And so this route is basically there are routes all over. They believe that the way of St. James means that if you're a European or from their lease, you just leave your front door and you walk to Santiago de Capostela. That's what they used to do. That used to be it. And so people would just sort of like walk that way and you would go and it was this cougarman route and you would wear a seashell and sort of be protected because you were on this Catholic pilgrimage. Now there are a few set routes and the Camino Frances is the most popular one.

It is 500 miles, 800 kilometers from St. Jean de Piedport in France. And then you go over the Pyrenees and you walk. So it takes about five weeks. And you just walk every day for somewhere between 20 and 30 kilometers is normal. That's what most people are walking. And it's a very social route, a lot more social than I had expected. There's lots of people doing it for various reasons. People from all over the world come and walk it.

And each night you stay in Alberds or private residence. is, but because this pilgrimage route has been around for so long, there are monasteries and churches along the way that host people every night, every single night of the year. You can walk and sleep and walk and sleep and make your way to Santiago. And after the Camino, I came here. I came to Barcelona for a week with my niece. She was 14. She walked it with me.

And I looked around and I was like, you know, this is good enough. I had sort of, I've seen so many beautiful places in the world. I was looking for something that was perfect. And I speak Spanish. There's a beach. The temperature here. The climate is very similar to my hometown in Florida, you know, with the very hot summers and a bit more mild winters. So within the month, I had an appointment at the Spanish embassy and had embassy consulate in Miami and sort of started this process.

I went, this is it. Like I've just reached the limit that I looked around in Barcelona seemed. It's a beautiful city. There's a good ex-cat community, and nowhere is perfect, but this place is pretty close. As an American, how are you able to live in Spain? Yeah, good question. I wasn't sure the whole time I was applying for the visa. I wasn't sure if I was going to get it. They don't have a digital nomad visa. So there's an artist visa in Germany, and Portugal has one that is much easier to get. And Spain's is not incredibly easy to get. I have what's called a non-lucrative. visa and it's my understanding that usually this visa is it's written for retirees so what they want is they want you to have a social security check coming in they want a guaranteed monthly income of a set amount and if you don't have that because like a paycheck doesn't count since you can get fired they want guaranteed income you have to have all the cash in your bank account for a year

and so that's what I did is I showed them I applied and I had the amount of money that they said I had to have in my bank account, which is what they sort of deem as a year's worth of living expenses for Spain. And then they approved me. That's fantastic. Do you know offhand, like what the minimum requirement is for Barcelona to have in your bank account? Yes. My memory of it is, I think, 26,000 euros. There's a set in. So at the time, I think, whatever it was, it was like 32, $32,000 US dollars. And it's not just Barcelona. That's just the Spain amount. So to apply for the non-lucrative a visa, you have to have that in saving. And you've just moved there about a month ago.

So how is life in Spain now? Oh, it's really good. I've moved a block from the beach in Barcelona, A little sort of working class neighborhood. You used to be all the dock workers and the fishermen and stuff. And it's a really adorable. It's a late night culture, though, which is something I've not used to. My roommates, until I can move into my new place, I lived with, um, with two other people. And they would eat dinner at 10 p.m., which is much common. It's common here.

And I would start dinner at like 637. And they would tell me, they would get so mad at me. They're like, oh, we smell your food and now we're hungry, but we don't eat dinner for like four more hours. Yes, I found that a challenge as well. So I haven't been to Spain in quite a few years. But when I was there, I stayed with a friend and her family for a few weeks. And yes, I found that late eating quite challenging. But then, also as a vegetarian, I found it Spain really tough. And I actually thought, you know, I don't think I could live here. So how are you surviving as a vegetarian in Spain? Well, you know, the Camino was really difficult. I ate a lot of bread and cheese and some fruit and veg, but you're in really

remote areas of Spain. So when I decided to come here, I also like you, I was like, oh, I'm just going to have to be cooking at home all of the time. But Barcelona has a surprising number of vegetarian restaurants now. And they're amazing. So you can't eat them at them all the time unless you have a lot of money. But they're really better than you would think. So when I was here, I was at Barcelona, oh gosh, 2012. And like you, I was like, oh gosh, I'm hungry all the time. They didn't really have a lot of vegetarian restaurants, not that I could find. And it's completely different now. La Serrieria is a co-op. And they open at one from like one to 10 so you can do a a light lunch or dinner there or something.

But it's incredible. They do a menu d'altia that I'm in love with. And so you pick, you know, a starter and then a main course. And then I'll often have like a little coffee to finish up. But some of my favorite food, period. Like they do a really great job. They have creative dishes. It's not just like tapas.

They have, you know, whole grain breads, everything that many vegetarians love. I know some vegetarians are white bread and pizza type people. But if you like, fresh vegetables and like a range of ingredients. It's by far my favorite spot in the city right now. I pretty much survived on tortilla. Oh, yes. Potato. What did you even call it? Like a frittata. Yeah, I actually, the reason I didn't mention it is sometimes I block it out. That is what I ate every single day on the Camino. That's how I survived. That's how I survived. And then one night my friend's mom made veggie paella, which was delicious and actually very nice of her.

But, yeah, they had like the ham out on the kitchen counter just for like a little snack whenever anyone wanted to peel them up. And yes, it was so meaty. And how would you describe the drinking or like going out culture? Oh, man. If that's, it's just, it's incredible. Like they're, it's a very social culture. The tapas bars and wine bars, you can go anywhere in the evening. Again, like we said, that it's late.

So if you want, you know, in London or New York, you go out at five or six and it's like social hour. Everybody's there. And then here it's, you know, five o'clock, everybody is not out. They're like waking up from their siesta. And then, you know, you have to go out later. But the wines are really affordable too. So for a couple of euros, you can get a glass of local, different local wines and socialize tapas. It's very, very lovely.

Yeah, I remember going out with my friends. We were in Madrid and went to this bar at the stadium. And I got home at like two or three. And I felt like, oh, my God, I've been out all night. And the others were like, what? We wouldn't even call this going out. Like, because we had gotten home too early for them. But for me.

Yeah, it's true. So that's the exact same experience I had last month. So one of my roommates, he had a house party. And so it was great. I got to meet some of his local friends. And afterwards, you know, it was like everybody left around midnight. And then they said, great. Now the club doesn't open until 1 a.m.

So we're going to go out dancing. But we have to know, it was like everyone left at 1130. They were like, yeah, but we have to sit around here for an hour because we can't actually go out until 1. And I said, I'm sorry. We're going out at 1? Like, everything should be closing, but no, the club opens at one. And so then we went to a dance club. And it was really good fun.

They are, my roommates were both gay. And so it was a gay dance club called Safari and had a great, it had some good music. It was my first time in years. I haven't really, I remember when I was a backpacker coming through Europe, I went to some things like that. But it was really good fun. You know, we had drinks and they had the lights. And we got home at like 5 a.m. And I decided I was too old to potentially live in Barcelona.

little long term. But once in a while, it's fun to happen like that. So how did you find your apartment? You know, there are a lot of scams here. So Barcelona is known for the pickpocketing, but also because there's such high turnover, there's so many students here who come to school and they're constantly on student visas and they're coming through. And so that has created a sort of really scammy ecosystem. Craigslist is out. I wouldn't ever go on there. I did. And then they have this Airbnb scam where they email back and they're like, oh, if you know what Airbnb is, we're going to have you pay us there. And then it's like a cloned Airbnb site.

Oh, that's scary. Oh, yeah. And it isn't just like one person. It was a few. And it was not just Craigslist. So that's where I'd emailed like four people on Craigslist. And every single one came back with that. And then on one of the other websites I did.

So I found the listing from my current apartment. And it was done through Keith Barcelona, a. real estate agent and that's how I think most people do it and you have to budget for it because when you use a local real estate agent here you pay them the one month's rent so whatever place you decide to take it is one month's rent to them and then you have to pay two months rent basically security deposit and your first month's rent so to move into a place you have to pay upfront four months rent basically and you're not ever going to get one back that is kind of that's pretty steep so and you would still go through an agent then even to find a room

in an existing place I joined a lot of expat Facebook groups and there are people there who are like talking about their different rooms and I and where I found my place so for the month interim I arrived in March and I saved an Airbnb for a week and then I found this place and I was really lucky because apparently it takes some people two three four months before they find a place but I saw this place and I took it immediately I'm in a really I ideal neighborhood and I'm paying $850 euros. When I lived in L.A., 10 years ago, I was paying far more than $1,000 for my share of a place in the valley, which is not ideal property.

So comparatively, like, living is much cheaper and then you can go out and you can have a coffee for a euro. And I found that on the Camino. And although some places in the Gothic quarter are going to charge, you know, 250 euros for your cappuccino, if you are in, you know, if you're not in the most choice location. If you're just like in the neighborhood, you're not sitting on the robla. You're going to find euro, euro 50 drinks, glasses of wines that are two euros. You can eat tapas. So you can really have a lot of nice things for not a lot of money. Final question. So I know that you really like speaking to

young people about travel and global citizenship. You didn't have the easiest childhood, it sounds like. So what would you share with a student who thinks traveling someday sounds great, but it's just not possible because of financial or some other circumstances. Yeah, good question. I think, you know, I have, I get emails sometimes from high school students who tell me some of these things, right? They have had maybe a childhood more like mine where there wasn't a lot of money or there were some other, you know, dysfunctions that make them believe that a person like them

couldn't travel. And I held on to that belief for a long time. Like, how could a person like me travel the world? Like nobody, nobody does that. if you are that type of person, you must have had a different background. And the number one thing I held on to and have held on to is that if it is your chief goal, right? Like, I didn't want any of the other trappings of the middle class life I saw. Like, I didn't need a nice car. I spent, I saved all of my money once, once I decided that I wanted to live this life of travel. I started

putting all of my money there. And in order to do that, you have to prioritize. prioritize, focus, and then you can get there. Anybody can save up, right? Like, once your basic needs are met, we're not talking like extreme property, but it's an experience worth saving for, and if you really want it, you just have to remain focused on that goal and put, you know, make the vision board, put up the pictures of all the places you're going to go, and you can do it because that I have. And I am, you know, like you said, I am from a more disadvantaged background, but I knew what I wanted and I have sort of ruthlessly pointed my life and the choices I made, the jobs, the decisions, the people I kept in my life so that I could create this type of

lifestyle. Well, thank you so much, Shannon. This has been a really fun conversation. Where can people find out more about you? Hi, I am on my two websites are littleadrift.com and grassroots who's volunteering, and then a little adrift. I'm on Facebook and Instagram on a little adrift, and then Shannon RTW on Twitter. I'm everywhere. Everywhere on the social media, you know, I try to keep up. Well, thank you again.

This has been wonderful. I so appreciate your time and your questions. Thanks for having me. I hope this episode has inspired you to treat yourself to some socially conscious products and services on your next trip. Thank you again to Jeff for suggesting this topic. If you have a particular theme or a city you'd like to hear more about, please visit me at postcardacademy.co and let me know. I'm actually headed out to volunteer at a hospitality

night with my friend Carlotta. Hospitality night is like a soup kitchen, but the emphasis is more on treating yes with dignity and kindness, not just serving the food. Carletta does this every Thursday in London. It's something I used to do a lot in New York, and so I'm really looking to getting back out there and being of some service this evening. Next week, I'm headed to Berlin, one of my favorite cities. So if you have any travel tips, you want to hang out. Come find me on postcardacademy.com. Finally, thank you to everyone who has already subscribed to this show.

You guys are the best. I really appreciate your time and all of your suggestions. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. And have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends.

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