In this post, I’d like to take a step back and reflect on the Travel Litterature class this semester. First and foremost, I want to mention that the most important thing that I feel I’ve learned is the idea of ‘Voyage around my room’ where travel is really depicted as a mindset. There are some strenght and some weaknesses to this argument but what most impacted me was just that I had never though or reflected on travel at such a deep level.
This brings me to my second point. This class was interesting for the reflexions and discussions we made on different texts. Through travel litterature, we’ve explored, to name a few, the topics of culture, consciousness, gender role/identification and history. Another element that will stick with me beyond this class is the idea that travel influences the tourist and the locals. We tend to focus on our experiences and our perceptions of a foreign place. By doing so, we often forget to take into account what our hosts learned from us. Travel is, in a very litteral way, a mean of sharing ideas and thoughts. Some can even argue that the most important facet of travel is the cultural impact it has on the tourist, who experieces a new way of life, and the host, who learns of the worldviews of a distant nation.
What are your opinions of the class? What is the most important thing that you learned in the past weeks?

This semester, I am taking another class that relates to the topic of travel. It’s geography of Tourism. Lately, we’ve studied the topics of greenwashing and responsible tourism. Greenwashing means that a company claims to be green more for the publicity that goes with the tag than because of their convictions of helping out the social and environmental well-being of the destination.

One of the principal things that we’ve learned is that common, mass tourism is inherently negative. Issues such as waste, consumption, cultural effects or environmental degradation all point out to the need to re-evaluate the way we travel. To some level, the conclusion is that people should be more ‘travelers’ and less ‘tourists’. Obviously, no one can deny that spending 2 weeks on white-sand beaches isin’t a relaxing experience. Then again, the consequences of our stay can bring much more bad than the relative economic contribution to the country.

All this to say that in travel litterature, most of the texts we’ve studied seem to have that same focus, that same idea. For example, in ‘white girl goes def in Guyana’, the narrator was on a trip to teach locals about sexual protection. Those text all have a focuss on contributing, on giving back to the host community. Obviously that the main goal is to share experiences through litterature. Then again, I feel the more ‘traveler’ we are the more authentic our experience of our trip will be.

Do you agree? What makes a traveler or a tourist more beneficial for the locals?

In this post,  I want to share a particular experience where I was temporarly on the fine line between a tourist and a traveler. A few years ago, I traveled to Cuba with my best friend and his familly. The destination they choose was a very luxurious beach ressort in the island of Cayo Largo. In fact, they even made arrangements so that we would’nt have to be on the Cuban mainland at all, we arrived by plane to the island directly. Once on the ressort, I felt immediately that this was sort of like a dream place. Any need we had was attended to with the outmost care. We could order food anytime, have a drink on the beach and there was even a team of entertainers on the ressort that would organize games and activities for the tourists.

Despite being surrounded by Cubans, I had the feeling that something was missing. There was a kind of akwardness in the way that my friend dealt with the local employees especially because of the languge barrier. I on the other hand was quickly friends with anyone around. I was nicknamed ‘el gringo peruano’ which would translate in something like the white guy from Peru.

As days passed, I was more and more accustumed to being more with the employees than with other tourists or even my friend. I even spent some time at their village and went out to the same clubs they did at night. I grew very fond of them and after the trip I kept in touch with some of them. We shared so many things, most importantly topinions about how things were in Cuba and what would happen in the future. Surprisingly, most of them prefered things the way they are and advocated for a continuation of most of Fidel Castro’s policiy. When I asked but dosen’t that make your life hell, not being able to leave the country, being poor, having poor living conditions, etc…, most of them answered that that was the price to pay for never being sick and unnatended or for having a free education.

What all this means is that during that trip, I could really see how distant and unpersonal a ‘tourist’ trip can be but I still felt like a ‘traveler’ because of my closeness to their culture. Never have I met people more optimistic, fun and charismatic than in Cuba. In some ways, happiness is built into them. Having that connection to those people felt special and privileged and I am gratefull that I could have that experience.

In travel litterature, we’ve seen how some people are more tourists while some are more ‘travelers’. What would you say about yourself? Motorcycle trip across south America or 1 week vacation in a luxurious beach ressort?

This year, it will be the first in four years that I am spending christmas in a place where there is actually snow. Since I am 15, I’ve been escaping the winter and managing to spend the christmas holidays with my dad in Peru. In the next few lines, I just wanted to share my ‘christmas’ experience in Peru, a country were 99% of the population has never seen snow.

Many things struck me as odd the first time I went there. Everything felt strange and unfamiliar mainly because we were, and I remember this clearly, December 20th and there was no snow. When I arrived to Peru, I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a jacket for the plane’s airconditioning. Little did I know that the heat after mid-december quickly escalates to the high 20′s. Jeans were obviously not the right choice. Going back to the first thing that struck me as odd. As I was ridding down the avenue from the airport in the front passenger seat of my dad’s front car, I remember seing the weirdest thing… There were light posts that had been decorated with the hanging figures of no other than a traditional snowman. My first reaction was one of laughter obviously. As I explained to my dad the absurdity of having a decoration which no one in the country would ever feel, touch, or even experience the wonderfull feeling of making a snowman, he explained something that made me rethink the holidays in Peru.

What he basically argued, in a very serious manner, was that first of all, few people cared about the decoration. Peruvians decore their streets much more than here. There is no issue of laicism because it is a christian country and hence anyone can decorate as much as they want. Artificial christmas trees at least 10 metres tall were seen anywhere there was space for them. What my father explained to me was that Christmas in Peru was still very much about familly gathering. It had little to do with snow, santa clauss, raindeers, or any other elements that we often use to lighten up our holidays. The contrast was an interesting one…while in Canada it is common sense that we decorate our streets and houses because every decoration brings back to an idea, a concept, an experience that we relate too and that usually brings us happiness. In Peru, the joy was in seeing people, in spending time together. Decorations were in fact nothing more than accesories used for their aesthetic value and not because they reminded peruvians of anything.

As a last anecdote I want to include, I wanted to mention that in Peru, one of the most popular Christmas songs starts with the following line : Oh, blanca navidad, suegnos, I con la nieve alrededor… (on the rythm of ‘oh, quand j’entends chanter, noel, je vois revoir mes joix d’enfants…’). This song, which is heard on the radio and known by anybody, translates into ‘Oh, white christmas, dreams, and with the snow all around… To be honest, I have lived in this country, I was born there, I go there twice a year on average and I still cannot make sense of how and why did that song make it into the classics of Christmas time.

Can anyone else relate to differences in the ways people live the holidays? What are the holidays like in your country?

History is a very important characteristic when it comes to reading a travel memoir like Honeymoon in Purdah. The reason for this is that the explanation for a wide array of behaviors that might seem strange to us are rooted into the past of the people that practice it. In Iran, one could argue that the iranian revolution itself and all the religious customs that were reintroduced into society are the consequence of a growing popular ressentment with the Shah and his policies. That example is the principal manifestation of the crucial importance of history to our understanding of other customs. Also, history has a double meaning that is interesting to explore in the context of Honeymoon in Purdah. As I’ve mentionned before, the History (with a capital H) of Iran as a country, their collective experiences and events, has shaped their values and behaviors into what they are. Nevertheless, there is another side to the coin if we take into account that each of the many characters that the author meets is imbedded with his/her own history. What I mean by this is that the individual experiences of any given character influence him as much or even more than the collective iranian history. For example, we see very different opinions of the Shah if we consider the views of the ‘old man’ from the mosque (pages 89-98) versus the one of Mohammed and Abba. This is because every character is influenced by his own personal history.

Hence the double meaning and importance of history in this book. A travel memoir cannot be properly understood before exploring the historical context of the country or region being visited.

In this post, I simply want to adress what I feel is a very important connection between Chimamana Adichie’s talk on the danger of a ‘Single Story’ and the passage in Honeymoon in Purdah where Wearing narrates her experience with the mexican lady Esperanza and her familly. To put any reader in context, this refers to pages 206 to 225.

Throughout the time she spends with Esperanza, Alison Wearing discovers that even though up to this point she has seen religious rule being strictly obeyed and enforced everywhere, she now meets a lady that dresses in vividly covered clothes and, unlike most of the other characters encountered until now, seems to mock the religious status quo. She continuously argues that Iran is a place filled with love and kindness and that the religious rules are not necesairly enforced. It is quite interesting too to see that in this same passage, a secondary character (Emma) brings up the point that western countries are lacking some fundemental values. For example, Emma explains that her nieces have tragic problems : Two (…) suffer from anorexia, one is pregnant at sixteen, their best friends having abortion and drug problems (Wearing, p. 213). The same character argues a few lines after that she is enraged when her english relative are condescendant with her own daughter and that they believed that she is oppressed.

What this all sums up too is that Wearing is witnessing a manifestation of the ‘danger of a single story’. Through her meeting with these women, she has a more complete view of the country that until then she believed to be strict and oppressive. Even though she had met with Iranians that were perfectly happy, she still witnessed opression in the form of the imposition of the chaador or when they were arrested for taking pictures earlier in the memoir. Her experiences and what she had previously heard about Iran could’ve easily misleaded her to believe that the country was coercive in it’s imposition of religious standards and that those norms were negative. In this passage, she is proved wrong on both fronts through her encounter with Esperanza who doesen’t comply with all the religious norms and through her dialogue with Emma that puts the whole value system of Iran into perspective by comparing it to what she believes to be a western society whose moral ideals are decaying.

The main idea of this movie was to depict Iran as seen from an insiders perspective. Alison Wearing’s Honeymoon in Purdah, on the other hand, shows Iran from an outsiders perspective, a mere glimpse of the complex culture that is beneath. Are these two views truly opposed? At first glimpse, yes they are. The first presents Iran like a very oppresive country were women, in particular, are second-class citizens who have little to no rights. Honeymoon in Purdah shows a beautifull country where despite the cultural behaviors that shock the two travelling westerners, there seems to be an openess, a charisma and a generosity that seem infinite.

Despite the oposition of these views, I feel one thing to think about is that we can look at them as two superimposed aspects of Iranian culture. What I mean by this is that these two point of views can coexist, we’ve seen that not all in the movie is depicted as bad (the policeman passage) and we also have to keep in mind that the movie is about ex convicts which face a great deal of stereotypes in most if not all countries in the world. Hence we can understand why they are depicted as having such problems and having to face so many obstacles. The underlying issue of the movie is of course the treatment and consideration of women. The book Honeymoon in Purdah even depicts Iranian women as being more liberated than American women because they have a much stronger law enforcement system which, the women in the book believed, made their streets safer. Another important aspect to think about is the argument of the religious old man who we’ve discussed last class. He argued that Iranians (presumably indluding Iranian women) wanted to live a life of religious achievements, to live according to spiritual guidance and strive to be religiously ‘righteous’. This of course cannot justify the unjust and unfair treatment to women that is shown in the movie but it does to some extent give us a better insight into the issue.

All this to conclude that Honeymoon in Purdah and The Circle are both oposite but coexistent views of Iranian culture in the sense that they are superposed. Much like an onion has different layers, I feel that these two point of views are different levels of understanding and enculturization. At first, Iranian culture might seem welcoming and open and the women can seem to have wonderfull and meaningfull lives, but at some level they can also be victims of injustice and prejudice.

We’ve recently looked into the topic of ‘old-fashioned tourism’ and ‘travelers’. The common conclusion was that tourists are looking for superficial experiences and rest, both elements they can find by staying at chain hotels and visiting tourist attractions. In contrast, the traveler wants to experience the local’s culture before hand in the sense that he/she wants to have a real connection to the peoples of the host country.
The issue that came to my mind is whether there is a ‘better’ tourism. Can we really objectively say that a ‘traveler’ is better than a ‘tourist’? If so, for what reasons could we say so?

First, let’s look at the motives that encourage each type of travel. For tourists, the main motive is resting, being on vacation and also visiting ‘exotic and strange’ places. In other words, they want to take a brake and wonder at foreign cultural attractions like monuments, ruins, customs and beliefs. On the other hand, a traveler wants to connect, wants to go beyond just discovering a new culture, he really wants to immerse in the host’s life. The motives behind that could be mere curiosity or a need of having some perspective, something to compare and contrast our own culture. For example, in living with the Masai in sub-saharan Africa, one could see that our own culture has lost the sense of collective pride and glory that is still embedded into the Massai culture.
My personal opinion is that there is not necessarily a better type of travel. Travelling in and of itself is an industry that is constantly being criticized for it’s often negative impacts. Whether one travels to bond with new cultures or to discover different landscapes and architecture, tourism still has the potential for both great good and great wrongs. I believe that the question of weighing ‘travelers’ and ‘tourists’ really comes down to how willing the foreigner is to protect and to avoid harm to the local’s lives. A tourist that just wants to travel for the sake of seeing wonderful landscapes in New Zealand can have more positive impacts than a traveler that would want to live amongst the locals. If the first is conscious of his impact on local environment and culture, he can do much more good than one that would want to live amongst the locals without first taking into consideration how different their life is and how disruptive that ‘travelers’ presence can be.

One of the things that strike me most from Honeymoon in Purdah is the overwhelming sense of generosity and selflessness that we feel the Iranians have. As I was finishing the book, it so happened that my wife’s grandmother wanted to visit us. She is peruvian, as we are but she was visiting a relative in the U.S.A. and wanted to visit. We immediately made arrangements for her stay at our house and we both refused categorically that she stay at any other place in the whole entire country. This being despite the little space we have living in an appartment, we still insisted that she stay with us to be close to her and, for me anyhow, get to know her better. When she arrived, I found that me and my wife behaved in a very similar way than the Iranians. The most obvious way that we were completely generous to my wife’s grandmother is that she was, upon arriving to montreal, expressely forbiden to pay for anything at all. We even outsmarted the Iranians, we actually did not let her go to a bank or money exchange office so that she would not even, would she secretely sneek out at night to buy things for us, be able to pay.

Anyhow, many are probably wondering why this relates to Travel Litterature. What I realized after reflecting on this is really how what we experience during travel trascends the mere moment. Travelling and seeing other customs helps any individual have some perspective on his or her way of life. I wouldn’t think of myself as a selfless person, but during my wife’s grandmother stay, despite that my wife and I aren’t materially wealthy, we went to huge extents to make her as comfortable and happy as possible using any ressource we have. Spending is no longer a concern when it’s used to make someone else happy, and that is really what the visit of Ms. Libertad has made me realize.

This blog entry is based on the class discussion about the reading ‘Voyage around my room’. To recall, this reading was about an author narrating an experience where he decided to look at his room, a very common place where he spent most of his time, from a new perspective. He looked at anything around him with a new eye, trying to push aside everything he already knew and seeing what else could be seen. He discovers that one could marvel to such a simple thing as a bed simply by wondering about all the events that a bed can host. To resume his point, one could say that De Maistre argued that travel and the feelings we experienced when travelling were not necessarily because we saw new things but rather because we were in an unfamiliar environment. He believed that a similar effect could be triggered by simply looking at a familiar environment with unfamiliar eyes.
Does travel really consist of a simple state of mind? I believe not. The argument of novelty being an interpretation of things is very subjective to say the least. I do agree that one could look at one’s surroundings with a new mindset and realize many little things that were left out of the habitual idea we had made ourselves of that element. Then again, I completely disagree with the statement that this could possibly amount to the same feeling as looking at a new feeling. The main difference is that as much as one could want to toss aside all that we know about a habitual place, it still doesn’t alter the fact that on some level, we know that we are someplace familiar. I believe the feeling of being in a different city, even in a different neighbourhood, has no equal. I feel that we feel so differently because of the idea that we re seeing something for the first time. Every time that one encounters a new situation, a new place or even a new person, one soaks in everything possible. Could this be innate human curiosity? Even though my argument still seems as subjective as De Maistre’s, I stand by it, at least as an alternative explanation to the enjoyment of travel.