This week’s Best Women’s Travel Writing 2010 contributor has published fiction, poetry, and essays in Ms, Poets & Writers, Kweli, and Guernica, and has won fellowships from Bread Loaf and the Macondo Writers’ Workshop: Jennifer De Leon. Although she calls Boston home, Guatemala is her motherland.
When did you first hit the road? How did it go?
I was sixteen years old when I responded to a flyer hanging on the wall of my high school guidance department. Summer Programs! France! Italy! South America! Africa! Immediately I inserted a 
quarter into the payphone (yes, I was in high school when we still had payphones) and I called the number. I was told that the tuition for the summer program in Kenya (the one I wanted) was $4,000. This fee did not include the price of the ticket (another $2000). Surprisingly, Judy Levine, Director of Summer Camp and Trip Resources, didn’t hang up when I told her I had about twenty dollars, more if I returned the jeans I just bought at the Gap. Judy came to my house the following Saturday. My mom put out Ritz crackers on an oval plate and my dad made iced tea. We talked. We continued to meet this way, after school, on weekends, and over the phone for the next eight months. On July 4th, my parents drove me to the JFK airport in New York City and waved goodbye to their daughter as I boarded a flight to Zimbabwe. The year was 1996. It took a hell of a lot of ganas to pull that one off—fundraising, letter writing, convincing my parents to let me go, borrowing camping gear—but that quarter I used in the guidance department was worth it. That flyer changed my life. After Zimbabwe came Quebec, then Vietnam, Paris, Nigeria, Ghana, Germany, Spain, Costa Rica, and of course, Guatemala. In Read the rest of this entry »
