In terms of travelling, I have to confess that I am a very late bloomer. My first time away from the island, happened when I was almost 20 years old. Growing up in a big family (I have 5 other siblings), it was a bit more complicated to go abroad as a family. So for our summer vacation, we simply went to the sister island, Gozo, and spent a week there, enjoying the sun and the beaches. I don’t regret any of it, as I will never forget those days of being sunburnt all the way but carefree all throughout the holiday. Heck, I used to be carefree all throughout summer. But well, bless those childhood, student days.

As I grew up, and got into university though, my interest in what was actually out there, started growing. I had read enough about the world, I just needed to start visiting places. You might think that my first time… away from my homeland would be somewhere really close to Malta like Italy or Sicily, being the most convenient of places – really close to Malta, not that expensive to fly to, loads of stuff to do, and so on. But no… my first time abroad was a three week stay in…. Ethiopia. 

Yep, you heard that right. Actually, the first three days were spent in the hectic and chaotic city of Cairo, because of a long layover. What was the reason behind this, you might ask. Well, when I was young, and a bit still now, I was very much involved with social and humanitarian organisations. I am now employed with one local social organisation, but back then, I was a volunteer with a different organisation. Part of the work of this organisation, was to send a few volunteers to give a helping hand to the Missionaries of Charity in one of their homes around the world. In 2004, me and six other volunteers headed to Addis Ababa and Jimma in Ethiopia, with a heart full of courage and a mind full of fear of the unknown (especially me).

Now this experience has changed me in more ways than I could have ever imagined. 

Disclaimer #1: some of the stuff written below might sound obvious, and 15 years down the line of travelling has made it more obvious to me. But being away from an island for the first time after 20 years, stuff seemed different back then 🙂

Disclaimer #2: the quality of the photos might not be up to today’s standards as they were taken with a Film Camera… this was 15 years ago, so please bear with me 😉 

Love for the great wide world

Once I stepped onto the streets of Cairo, and soon after in Addis Ababa and Jimma, I could feel that the world was so much bigger than I had ever imagined. Coming from a very small island, we just have to drive for around 10 minutes (unless you’re stuck in traffic), before you reach the coast. But when you spend around 8 hours driving to go from Addis, the capital city of Ethiopia to Jimma, which is at the south of the country, I realised how huge the world is. I know, pretty naive of me right? But I’m being honest here, the world is huge. And the more I explored of it, the hungrier I got to see more of what it has to offer. 

Love for different lifestyles

I can’t deny that going to Egypt and Ethiopia, was a bit of a culture shock for me, as it was for the other members of the group. The crazy driving, the different food, the different smells, a crazier but simpler pace of life. All of this challenged me to become more open for change. It’s difficult to change your way of life when you go back home, but you get to acknowledge that not everyone is living in the same way as we do. And being open to new ways of life, accepting them and seeing the beauty in them, is what makes us better humans. Being able to live side by side with people who may not share your faith, your beliefs, your traditions or ways of doing things, it makes you see the human inside every person you meet. That is beautiful, and that is something that everyone should achieve. 

I can’t stress this enough, but everytime that I meet someone who has never stepped beyond Europe, I can’t help myself but try to encourage the person to just go. See what life is beyond our standard way of life. Because it is beautiful. Might get crazy sometimes, but in a weird, mesmerising way. 

Love for a simpler way of life

This might not be related to travelling much, but to the work we did once we arrived in Jimma. Over there, we met people dying from Aids or Tuberculosis, we met people who had just the bare minimum to live, children who were running and playing barefoot in the muddy streets… all of them had one thing in common though. A smile on their face. And to be honest, this is the thing that stayed with me all this time after this experience. 

When I got back home, I saw kids crying because they do not have a particular toy, people complaining because they couldn’t afford the latest phone technology. Heck I also complain sometimes that I wish my life was better and simpler. But then I remember how some of the people we met way back in Jimma, had nothing, or were on the verge of losing someone in their lives due to incurable diseases. And I remember how grateful they were towards life, and towards us, because we were there,  the ‘whites’ standing next to them. 

I believe that the more stuff we have, the worse it gets. Because we get greedy, and we always want more. A simpler way of life is something that I think this generation needs. We need to go back to our roots, and be grateful towards life, towards what we have, and aspire only to be happy, respect one another and just live, without any expectations.

Sometimes I think that maybe I should have started slower, gone to Italy or somewhere nearby, ease into the travelling vibes, and then hit the countries outside Europe after I was accustomed to the whole flying, being abroad scenarios. But then again, going to Ethiopia made me fall in love with the different lifestyles, made me more adventurous in a way, open to new perspectives. I can’t say that it wasn’t a big challenge for me. Being a very anxious person, I was almost certain that I wasn’t going to make it back home after this trip. But I did… and that proved that I can get past any challenging experience, if I am open to embrace all that it offers; embrace all the emotions, experiences, hugs from the people who are with me, the smiles on the kids’ faces that will stay in my heart for as long as I live. 

This trip was one of those where you ask yourself what the heck you are doing when you are there. But once you are back home, that’s when you realise that it was a trip of a lifetime – you are grateful that it happened, because you learned a lot, you grew in so many ways. And that is what life is about.

Damn, that turned into quite a philosophical post 🙂 But where have you been on your first time abroad? Feel free to share in the comments 🙂