The first thing Takayo Minakami did when she and her nine-year-old daughter Ghislaine got back from their trip to Ethiopia was sack the nanny. Then she told her husband there was no need to go for the fancy new wardrobe they had been eyeing up as part of a major overhaul of their Seattle home. The cheapest model would do fine.
Meanwhile, Ghislaine stopped fighting with her younger brothers and kept hugging them at random moments, for no particular reason.
“It was supposed to be a life-changing experience, but it was even better than we expected,” Takayo said.
Takayo, 41, and Ghislaine were part of a group of similar well-off housewives and their daughters and nieces aged between seven and 17 who recently flew from Seattle to Addis Ababa on a package tour organized by an aid agency.
Over a week, the group took in the sights, markets and flavors of the capital city like any other tourists. However, most of their time was spent on a dusty journey to villages two hours’ drive away, where they met some of the country’s poorest people, learned about their lives and checked out — among other things — their toilet facilities.
WATER TOUR
Water 1st is a Seattle-based non-governmental organization (NGO) that specializes in water sanitation and is one of a growing number of NGOs taking westerners on package tours to developing countries to see their work.
The “water tour” brochure for February’s Ethiopia trip promised would-be travelers a “once in a lifetime experience,” with the aid agency providing transport, translators, accommodation, food and contact with the communities and the local aid agency that Water 1st works with.
“It’s a better way of seeing real life in a country than you can see any other way,” said Kirk Anderson, one of the five staff who run Water 1st, which has raised US$4 million for projects in four countries since its launch in 2005.
“We try to make this affordable for as many people as possible while covering our costs,” he said.
The trip, excluding flights, cost US$1,600 a head.
“We don’t demand anything in return, but we make our money in donations when people get back home,” he said.
Some donors increase their donations from three figures to five figures, while others become loyal fundraisers for life.
Those who went on the Ethiopia trip said they had an “awesome,” inspiring time and learned a lot. The children were “like sponges,” one mother said, absorbing the reality of a world where children laugh and take care of each other despite having flies crawling on their faces and no shoes.
“The children were very dirty, very happy and excited and very welcoming. I played with a little girl who was really cute and super smart,” said Ghislaine, who is eager to go back.
The group is aware that critics may accuse them of poverty tourism — paying to look at the poor to assuage their guilt. However, most of those who traveled to Ethiopia talk of something more positive.
LIFE IN A BUBBLE
“We live in a little bubble — we are comfortable, we have nice houses, food on our plates, clean water,” said Susan Sercu, 39, who took her 12-year-old daughter, Giuliana, on the trip.
“What this does is give us more of a global perspective. It’s a chance to expose our children to what happens in the rest of the world. We want our children to be empathetic and informed,” she said.
“I don’t feel bad about spending the money because it was educational and now we can be a kind of spokesperson, hopefully spreading the word,” she said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema