BootsnAll Travel Community

"I'm looking for a masochist. If your dream trip doesn't involve a five-star hotel in Rome or Bora-Bora, but a bedbug-infested mattress in a malarial jungle as hungry jackals yelp outside - then read on.

Here's the article that he wrote to propose it (sorry, got it in an email, can't look for the link atm)

March 21, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist

On the Road, You and Me
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

NDJAMENA, Chad

Where's the best place to get an education? Some might say Harvard or
Yale, Oxford or the Sorbonne. But maybe you should add Ndjamena to the
list.

Universities are — oh so slowly — recognizing that they need to
prepare students to survive globalization. But most overseas studies
programs are both too short and too tame. They typically involve
sending a herd of students for a term in France or Italy, where they
study a little and drink a lot together, amid occasional sightings of
locals.

That's why I bring up Ndjamena, this dusty capital of one of the
poorest countries in the world. A student living independently here
could learn French and Arabic, and would emerge with a much richer
understanding of the world than could be taught in any classroom.

Traditionally, many young Britons, Irish, Australians and New
Zealanders take a year to travel around the world on a shoestring,
getting menial jobs when they run out of money. We should try to
inculcate the custom of such a "gap year" in this country by offering
university credit for such experiences.

So here's my proposal. Universities should grant a semester's credit
to any incoming freshman who has taken a gap year to travel around the
world. In the longer term, universities should move to a three-year
academic program, and require all students to live abroad for a fourth
year. In that year, each student would ideally live for three months
in each of four continents: Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

A student might, for example, start off teaching English and studying
Latin American history in Ecuador, then learn Chinese intensively in
Chengdu, then work at an AIDS clinic in Botswana while reading African
literature on the side, and finish up by studying Islamic history in
Istanbul. In each place, the students would live with local families.

Since the best way to learn about public health challenges is to
endure them, I would also suggest offering extra credit for any
student who gets malaria.

The cost of a year of travel would be far less than the annual cost of
attending many colleges in the U.S. Third-class trains and buses are
incredibly cheap; you can sometimes ride free on top of the trains. As
a student backpacker myself in India two decades ago, I once lined up
with the beggars and lepers of Amritsar to get free gruel from a Sikh
temple — but that embarrassed even me.

In any case, all this suffering builds character. And students would
get far more out of a year of travel than a year in classrooms.

Meanwhile, there's no need for universities to take the first step.
Spring break season is upon us, and university students are dashing
off to party in Mexico and Florida. So, you student readers, how about
dashing off instead to Mongolia, where you'll find plenty of sand —
the Gobi Desert — and get a truly exotic alcoholic drink: fermented
mare's milk.

As for parents, if you have a child graduating from high school or
college this year, forget about a conventional graduation present.
Instead, send him or her off with a friend with a one-way ticket to
Timbuktu.

Over a year or so, the kids would figure out how to catch rides with
trucks north over the Sahara, then hitchhike through the Middle East
and across Central Asia. After a temporary job in Calcutta to earn a
few rupees, they could migrate through East Asia and then make enough
money as tutors teaching English in China to buy cheap air tickets
home.

Now, that would be an education!

You may not know that one of the most cosmopolitan states is Utah.
That's because so many young Mormons spend two years abroad as
missionaries. They learn languages, live as the locals do and bring
back a worldliness that stays with them forever.

All this has been throat-clearing for my own announcement: In an
effort to put my company's money where my mouth is, I'm sponsoring a
contest in which I'll take a university student with me on a reporting
trip to a remote part of Africa. We'll visit schools, clinics and
villages, perhaps chatting with presidents in their villas and Pygmies
in the rain forest. The winner will write a Weblog for nytimes.com and
prepare a video blog that will be shown on mtvU.

So if you're a masochistic student — or if you have an ex you want to
send into a malarial jungle — you can find out more information at
nytimes.com/winatrip.

And even if you don't win, you can do this kind of thing on your own.
So I'll hope to see you hanging out in Ndjamena by the Chari River, as
the hippos bellow nearby.