My German friends went on a holiday to Kenya. They flew in a special chartered plane to Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa, visited some game reserves and returned to Germany.

“Well”, we warmed up for news when they returned. “How was it?”

“Fine,” one of them said.

“What exactly did you see?” we asked, noticing that there wasn’t much coming forth naturally.

None of them was able to describe what exactly they saw.

Traveling is a Learning Experience

It turned out that these friends of ours had gone to Kenya in a group, carrying with them German medicines, foods, water and so forth. They had stayed in a German-owned hotel and kept to themselves as a group thus missing all the fun of travel.

Travelling should be a fun-filled learning experience. When you leave your home and you familiar culture to visit others, you are actually saying you are a special person who is willing and eager to learn. Traditional Africa recognized this special character of travelers. Men had a special fire place near the entrance to their homesteads where they would welcome and learn from travelers. Travelers brought to them stories about other peoples and cultures, animals, insects, folklore and economic opportunities. To travel is to sample foods, to wear different clothes, to sing different songs… to experience new ways of life.

Travelling to Africa as my German friends did encourages misconceptions about our continent. And worse, if they are writers, they miss a wonderful opportunity to learn and gather materials for their writing. Yet for anyone, writers included, the continent offers plenty of opportunities to learn, plenty of opportunities make your soul grow and plenty of opportunity for the travel writer to make money writing.

Gather Article Materials as You Enjoy Yourself

The following tips can make your travel to Africa much more fun, meaningful and a profitable source of your writing materials:

1. Remember that traveling is a learning experience. Don’t go with preconceived ideas about what you will see. Be curious and engaged, always ready to learn something new.
2. Focus on the positive in order to gain more from your travelling experience
3. Determine to truthfully share what you have learned with others. Not everyone is lucky or rich enough to travel. But we are all eager to listen, to read and to know and to understand how people other parts of the world live. If you have the privilege to travel, then you have the duty to truthfully share your experience and education with others.

If you are a writer, write articles and share your experiences. Publish the pictures you took and show them to your friends and family. Of course, you can earn money giving speeches on what you learned to schools, universities, clubs and other organized groups.

After living in Europe for a few years, I wrote the novel, The Surface Beneath, which describes my experiences in Europe and especially in Germany. I believe the book has been very helpful to those travelling abroad for education.

• Determine to become a change agent. Most travelers – and travel writers – are looking for what they think they audience back home will be anxious to hear or read about. But you should be different. Great travelers such as the North African Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1369) took learning from travelling seriously and devoted more than 30 years of his short life to travelling, learning and writing about what he learned. From him, the world has learned a lot and many “souls have grown” from his experiences.

You too, can do the same for your own sake, for the sake of your audience and for the sake of your pocket.