Pilot and columnist Patrick Smith has a thought-provoking piece on his recent trip to Senegal in west Africa.

He encounters issues that many our volunteers often do. What happens when you’re faced with extreme poverty? Do you despair? Try to help? Become cynical about humanity? Ignore it and go home and forget about ever traveling again?

For most people, there are no easy and clear-cut answers to these questions, but it is interesting to see Patrick exploring his unique point of view. Unlike some of his readers’ reactions, I strongly believe that the only wrong answer is to not travel at all.

He writes:

If I have grown more cynical in recent years, it is travel, I think, that has pushed me in this direction. Exploring other parts of the world is beneficial in all the ways it is typically given credit for, and I remain appalled by the average American’s geographical know-nothingness and lack of interest in visiting foreign countries.

I am of the mind that every American student, in exchange for financial aid, ought to be conscripted into a semester (or more) of overseas service. Certain international travel, like the purchase of a hybrid car, should be tax-deductible. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have such a vulgar sense of entitlement and a xenophobic worldview…

But traveling can also burn you out, suck away your faith in humanity. You will see, right there in front of you, how the world is falling to pieces; the planet has been ravaged, life is cheap, and there is little that you, as the Western observer, with or without your good conscience, are going to do about it.