Travelojos: Tips for Transitioning to the Second or Third World
The movie Wall-E depicts a futuristic world in which man has consumed everything on Earth. No longer populated by humans, the planet’s sole inhabitant is a robot named Wall-E who processes trash. This is a never-ending job because trash is all that remains.
Where are the humans? They’re on a huge cruise-ship like vessel that has been flying around in space for the past 700 years. Sheltered from all forms of discomfort, people use levitating chairs to move around the ship as they watch personal televisions and eat fast food.
With no need to walk, humans have evolved into corpulent creatures with little muscle mass. A man falls from his chair and languishes on the ground until a robot comes his aid.
Fortunately, by the end of the movie the humans realize it’s time they change their ways and return to Earth–even if it’s uncomfortable to do so.
The movie is parable of the dangers of the First World’s addiction to creature comforts. Just some of the downsides to the primary features of the so-called good life are:
- Cars: Have made it less safe to walk or ride a bike.
- Fast food: High in calories and low in nutritional value, it contributes to obesity.
- Television: Induces a passive state and bombards viewers with commercials, which helps perpetuate a consumer culture.
All of this is enough to prompt some people to fantasize about escaping from the First World. Elizabeth Eames Roebling, the person behind the Changing Perspectives blog, created a plan for transitioning to a Second or Third World country. Roebling is a former New Yorker who blogs about her life in the Dominican Republic.
For Roebling, the underlying dissatisfaction with life in the First World is actually a good thing. “Those who are discontent and yet hopeful are always the immigrants, the adventurers, and the colonists. Those with no hope just lie down on the couch and flip the remote”, she says.
The idea behind her plan is to immerse yourself in some of the basic aspects of life in the Second or Third World before leaving home. Her plan is divided into phases which gradually increase in difficulty.
The first step of Roebling’s plan involves gaining familiarity with the sounds and culture of the country you’ll be visiting. This includes:
- Becoming more accustomed to hearing the language. Watch the Spanish-language television stations, listen to Spanish-language radio stations.
- Listening to music from the country you’ll be visiting.
- Learning how to dance. Knowing how to salsa will make you more likable.
The next part of her plan requires you to wean yourself from the “comfort addiction.” To do this, you need to strengthen your tolerance for inconvenience by doing things like:
- Not using your microwave. (Many regions of the world don’t have the electrical capacity to support them).
- Stop using the freezer. (Besides helping you to save on electricity, this will force you to modify your shopping habits and buy more fresh food).
- Doing your laundry by hand and drying your clothes on a line.
- Giving away any clothes that you do not wear.
- Not shopping at huge convenience stores such as Target or Wal-Mart.
- Studying the exchange rate of the country you plan to visit and calculating the cost of your purchases in the country’s currency.
The next part of her plan focuses on overcoming ingrained habits and ways of thinking. Do this by:
- Eating in foreign restaurants that are staffed and patronized by people from other countries.
- Eliminating red meat from your diet. (Many regions of the world lack the conditions necessary for the sanitary sale of red meat).
- Buying vegetables you do not recognize.
- Substituting corn tortillas for bread.
- Putting a map of the world on your wall and learn all of the nations in South America, Africa, and Asia.
- Reading at least three nonfiction books about some of the more unsavory aspects of U.S. foreign and economic policies.
- Taking a weekend trip somewhere in the U.S. where you are an ethnic minority.
For the last part of her plan, she prescribes more extreme measure such as:
- Disconnecting your hot water for a week.
- Shutting off your electricity for 24 hours.
- Unplugging your phone.
- Not flushing the toilet paper down the toilet and using a waste basket on the floor instead.
A side benefit to following her plan is all the money you’ll save on water, electricity and clothes.
Roebling’s last suggestion is one of the easiest: Throwing a big goodbye party with all your friends so that you will be too embarrassed to come home in a month.
What are your tips for transitioning to the Second or Third World?
on Jan 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
Brilliant post! Thanks for the thoughtful transitioning tips!
Happy New Year!
on Jan 2nd, 2009 at 11:01 am
Thanks so much. I enjoyed reading your post on New Year green travel tips.
For those of you on Twitter, be sure to follow Traveling the Greenway at
http://twitter.com/travelinggreen
on Jan 8th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Sounds like a normal course for any American in getting the ways of the world and opening the cocoon he/ she’s been living in. As a mtter of fact there are plenty of Americans who are ‘worldwise’ but this article just shows the narrowviewed the general American view on anything non-American is.
Please US: “WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!!!” (freshly grounded). There are in fact other places than the US, my God!
I find this post very abhorrent towards any other country than the US in general and LA in specific. Please keep in mind that the US is not, by any means, the golden standard for the rest of the world…
I congratulate you guy’s though with the president elect who might help you loose (some) of your xenophobia.
Good luck!
on Jan 18th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Agreed, this is an excellent post that would be/could be echoed by many people who have gone to live in Latin America and perhaps other parts of the world. Mostly it should be valued by those who brazenly call themselves Americans (forgetting the egocentricity of that term).
What I most appreciated in this post is the emphasis on the so-called “culture shock”. You can in no way truly prepare for this aspect, so taking some of the “extreme” measures suggested in this post will give you some appreciation for it. The rest you will learn (painfully) by interacting with people.
You can master the language at home, but you will still be at square one until you actually spend more than a week in the new land and absorb more of the ways of those who surround you. After about a month you stop feeling like a tourist … and after a year or so you finally appreciate what you have learned. You will have stopped inadvertently insulting people by your “foreign” ways and your world will have grown in a way that you might never have imagined possible. When you finally do go back home, you will never be the same again.
on Jan 18th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I agree visiting another country and adapting to another culture and different standard of living truly is a life altering- experience. In my view, it’s an experience that makes life fuller and more enjoyable.