Is it Morally ok to Travel During the Pandemic?

by Samantha Burmeister | Jan 14, 2021 | Traveling

A few weeks ago, I met a man who convinced me that not traveling right now might be the biggest moral misstep. Here’s why.

For most of 2020, I tried limiting my movements. “Stay at home!” they said. “Traveling and coming into contact with underserved communities will kill people!” they said. “That’s someone’s GRANDMA!”.

So, I took that advice to heart. I moved to Mexico in August, but spent several days at home in a row, isolating with my two roommates. Then, I moved from Puerto Vallarta to Playa del Carmen, where there were no mask orders or isolation rules. The most we see is masks and temperature checks in large establishments.

When I arrived in Playa, I considered diving but held off. Was it right to ‘force’ people to work and cart me and my equipment out to sea in a diverse group of people that could be carrying the virus? Was I putting the people in the service industry at risk?

After some waffling, I decided to do a shark dive with a friend.

After my shark dive, I remembered why I was in love with diving and decided to sign up for three cenote dives the following weekend. It was between these three dives that I spoke with my instructor about the morality of tourism during the virus.

What he explained to me changed my mind about traveling during the pandemic

Playa del Carmen, as are many tourism-based economies, are not cultures that value saving. For example, when people are no longer able to work, they live with their families. Their families then feed them and ensure that they’re comfortable until they die.

However, that means that not only is there a financial burden on younger, able-bodied family members, but there is also a perpetuation of a hand-to-mouth mindset. Whether people bring home 100 pesos or 100 dollars, they will spend it on their way home.

Living in a collectivist culture means that a person’s earnings aren’t necessarily their own. They belong to the collective good. In this case, it’s the obligation to take care of the many generations living with them.

What does this mean for tourism during the pandemic?

Ultimately, people depend on the day’s wages to feed their families.

This isn’t in all cases, but what it means in an economy like Playa is that money runs out quickly when there isn’t available savings or income in a family unit.

In other words, people were starving. This makes people more vulnerable to disease, malnutrition, and makes them even more susceptible to COVID-19.

In Bali, another tourism-focused economy, there were hundred and thousands of digital nomads that got their visas extended to continue living on the island. Then, Indonesia stopped allowing people in and stopped extending people’s visas. The Balinese people are dying of starvation due to the lack of tourism money coming in.

This is not a White Savior statement

People love to say, “Oh, they love the American Dollar over there”. Yeah, duh. People need money to eat. But that’s no excuse to dehumanize people over their economic differences. I love the American Dollar, too.

This is the opportunity to realize that people who aren’t getting tourism money are starving. This makes children’s’ education nearly impossible (just as hunger impacts education in the US), it makes old people even more vulnerable to the disease, and it means that people are living in cramped quarters during a pandemic.

So, it begs the question: What’s worse, not traveling and doing tourism activities and people starve, or traveling and people maybe are exposed to a disease that everyone will eventually be exposed to, especially here in a tourist area?

Honestly, the people are making the decision to open. They need the money, because it’s a risk they’re willing to take. Not because ‘they need American Dollars’ but because they need to eat, and to support their families.

What would you do in their situation?

I decided to quit blogging

by Samantha Burmeister | Oct 26, 2020 | Traveling

EDIT 2022: You can now find me at www.nomadcopyagency.com or on Instagram here, or LinkedIn here.

About a month ago, I had one of those mini breakdowns. You know the type. Every few years (months? weeks?) when you doubt everything you’ve done in life up to this point, then pledge yourself to becoming a monk because it seems easier than whatever this is.

The good news is, I’m not becoming a monk.

The better news is: I gave up on blogging. So now I’m going to blog about it, naturally.

What you should know before you read this whole thing:

When I’m sad, angry, happy, weepy, or whatever else, I write. If you see me writing in real life, it’s because I’m emotional. I’ve always known this about myself.

That’s how my blog was born. I was so excited about life, about travel, and about sharing it with the world.

Then, I kept blogging because I’d started blogging, not because I had any grand feeling toward it.

It culminated for me one day about two months ago. I told myself I’d sit down for the day and fix the bugs in my site, then crank out a post or two. Instead, I just sat at my desk and had an anxiety attack.

After the funny heartbeats and shortness of breath went away, I started to write. Not here, but in my journal. The place that my fears, my sadness, and my frustrations go. That’s where the best of my writing and the worst of my thoughts go.

So, here it is.

And, for the record, it’s not what you’re used to from me. It’s a stream of consciousness, and I’m not asking you to like it. I’m not asking you to share it, either. The weekly readers might send an email about it, and that’s fine. I appreciate the support.

Also, I’ll keep writing on this blog. But I’m doing it for myself from here on out rather than for the shares and the traffic. Writing has always been my outlet, and when I have them, I’ll share stories, too. But from here on out, I’m going back to the way I like it.

Everything below this heading is what came from that journaling session.

We’ve all had something taken from us this year. So perhaps I’m not special in thinking this. But there’s plenty to be gained as well.

Between extra time with my family, finding comfort in solitude, and seeing kids learning outside of the classroom, it’s hard to feel this salty. But I do. I want to take all the time that everyone got back from their endless commutes and use it for something beautiful.

But I can’t. I don’t feel like I can. In fact, I feel like all the work I did and all the things I tried in the last 6 months were for nothing at all. So much of my lifestyle disappeared with the travel industry. I thought that if I dug my heels in, I’d be fine. I thought that if I just pivoted, I’d be good. Maybe if I learned a bunch of cool blogging skills that I’d be able to pull old stories out of nowhere. Worst case, I’d learn a bunch and overcome, best case, I’d come out ahead.

So I did. I put my head down and cranked out 60 hour weeks. Then, I learned about coding and SEO and Pinterest strategies. I took what I had done intuitively with my blog and learned the ‘right’ way to do things.

And I hated it.

In reality, all that learning and trying and whatever else left me feeling more stuck than before. So, I decided to ignore the thoughts that came up when I thought about ‘blogging’.

I don’t want to do it anymore.

I don’t want to write to the masses, and think about if Google will rank my post. I don’t want to code in intricacies and network with other bloggers. Bloggers are mean! I don’t want to write about ten things you should do wherever and what water bottle you should buy.

Instead, I want to sit in a stranger’s presence until they aren’t a stranger anymore, and learn new words, and share a laugh, and then tell you about it. I want my life to be lived without the context of how, or if, I’ll share it later. I want to share it because I have feelings about it.

And with blogging, I can’t do that.

Not if I want to be ‘successful’.

So, screw it. I’m done with blogging. It’s not my job, and unless I do all the things I don’t want to do with my words and time, I’ll never make it a job.

Instead, I’m going to keep traveling, and learning through my experiences. And with the current situation globally, I can’t do that in good faith.

I can’t go sit with a stranger and be sure that I didn’t carry the pandemic to them. And I don’t want to promote anyone else doing it, either.

I will continue to write, and share what I write. Of course I will. Right? Write. I’ll do it publicly, in captions and blogs. But they won’t be ‘optimized’. I’m stripping it back to just being me.

Which leads me to this:

There’s no guidebook for how to stop traveling.

My identity was wrapped up in my ability to travel. Even before doing it full time, my lifestyle was that of a traveler. And then I spent six months in one place. And now another 4 in another. Not a single night away from my own bed.

I went from a month here and a month there, with aspirations of a few weeks in another place, to nearly a year of small circles and a cloudy crystal ball.

There’s nothing that tells me what to expect when the road comes to an end. Will the next road be built? Will I build it? I’m no engineer. I can’t change visa laws or create vaccines. I can’t even see through the fog.

People were cheering for me.

But what happens when I stop cheering for myself? There’s no wind. no sails, and the anchor is still down. I couldn’t continue on if I wanted to.

So here I am, having stern chats across the alley with the neighbor in broken Spanglish. Chats telling him that his dogs bark all night and I can’t sleep. They bark all day and I can’t work, or take calls. Calls to promote a blog that I no longer want to write because the most authentic Mexican experience I’ve had is yelling at my neighbor about his damn dogs.

I don’t even get to say that I’m done. The universe decided that one for me.

Does that leave me to go home with my tail between my legs? No. Just because the ‘passion project’ that stemmed from the passionate life is an endangered species doesn’t mean that I have a home.

Home? That place that my parents live. Where my bank accounts are held. Where my LLC is registered. The place that I pay taxes. I don’t feel like I have a place there, either.

Life is better outside. It feels safer here in so many ways.

Travel will change you.

Travel has changed.

And ‘home’ has changed since I left.

The world blames my countrymen. My countrymen point their fingers at China. China points at a small population outside of any government’s control.

These aren’t the unknowns I asked for

I no longer work in travel.

I no longer work AND travel.

Options

Cyprus. Cuba. Caymans

Macau. Malaysia. Mauritius.

South Korea. Singapore Seychelles

Taiwan. Turkey. Thailand.

I saw an article that said that all of these countries can visit more countries than the U.S. can right now.

If I go to the U.S., I’ll be grossed out and frustrated by blame. Is it so wrong that I’d rather take a 38% tax rate and be taken care of than my 25% and see no protections. It’s a culture I’ve long struggled to respect.

So a trip to Osaka will now be relegated to Omaha. Cali to California. South Africa to South Dakota.

I did my best to relieve myself of all of this. These aren’t the unknowns I asked for.

Reactions

I travel because I run in to complicated situations, and get to learn them out. Feel them through. Emerge better.

So, what happens when I take the adventure and freedom, then strip it down.

Put spontaneity in it’s corner.

All that’s left is being far from home, and alone.

I went through the phases

Houseplant murderer. You know, for an aspiring plant mom, I didn’t do a very good job. Sorry, mom.

Duolingo needs dusting off. Now, thrice daily, a green owl leaves me feeling personally victimized by my ambition

Tiktok isn’t just for Gen Z. Honestly, I came out on the other side with a few dance moves and a ton of respect for the young ones. The kids are alright.

Of the many phases of isolation, I didn’t expect to land on ‘quit your passion project but keep living exactly the same as you were’. But here we are.

I wanted to shower the world with little stories. Little drops of hope that one day, hopefully soon, they can travel too. My only desire was to make the world a little smaller by bringing new ideas into peoples’ awareness. Bury, bloom, grow.

What I got was a metaphorical monsoon.

I once was blind

If freedom gets twisted into ‘F you and your mask’ and good American values mean selecting a rapist to make decisions about how I handle my body, then the American dream is off the table. It only ever existed for people almost like me, anyway. How can I feel good about contributing to the ethnocentric cycle of what it means to be an American when the title is no longer desirable.

It used to be a question of where was safe to visit. It feels daunting to think of going home.

If it feels that way for me, I can’t imagine how it feels to be born in the ashes of what was built on backs.

And the best-case scenario is that one old white man who is deplorably out of touch with the needs of his constituents will win the right to further sink the ship.

But now, I see.