My book The Vagabond’s Way has a mini-chapter entitled “The Definition of ‘Traveler’ is Broad (and Vibrant),” which examines the notion that “middle-class folks from industrialized countries aren’t the only people taking journeys.”
I allude to a number of situations that illustrate this (based on travel experiences in India, Mexico, Laos, and Sumatra), but the most poignant example ties in to this photo, taken the day I followed the sound of gospel music into a church service filled with Sudanese refugees in the Old City of Damascus in the spring of 2000.
The fact that Muslim-majority Syria had opened its doors to African Christian refugees was telling in and of itself (a good decade before huge numbers of Syrian refugees were fleeing a war in their own country). But what struck me in the church in Damascus was that the Sudanese I met there were sophisticated travelers, all of them fluent in multiple languages, who’d been wandering out of necessity for years.
I kept in touch with the church minister I met that day, and last I heard most of his parishioners had settled in Canada. I’m not sure what became of the baby in his father’s arms from this photo, but I’d like to think he is now about to graduate from university in Ontario, with vagabonding dreams far gentler and more whimsical than the travels his parents endured.
As I say in my book: “On the road, it’s useful to keep in mind that laborers, migrants, and domestic tourists aren’t just legitimate fellow travelers — they are often a window into a richer understanding of the place you’re visiting, and of the travel rite itself.”
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account.
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