Hi guys, my name is Aleah and I am the creator of the Black Travel Worldwide Blog. It originally started as an Instagram blog that allowed my friends and I to chronicle our travel adventures since we share the common love of traveling, but I want it to become a forum for travelers to get and exchange travel advice, suggestions, and information in effort to disperse as much information to as much people as possible with the hope that it also encourages others to travel and see the world. The world wasn’t created so beautifully for us to not witness it’s wonders and it is a pity that many people haven’t. It is important for me to use this blog as a means for people to access travel in a way that they weren’t able to before.
Now I’d like to give a little background on myself and where my love for travel originated. My family is from Carriacou, Grenada, an island apart of the tri-island country of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Traveling to the Caribbean in my childhood was normal for me, so it contributes to my love of travel in my later years. I remember visiting Grenada, both mainland and Carriacou, and Aruba when I was a child and prior to me being born my parents took trips to Bermuda, Canada, Trinidad etc. In my teenage years, I visited California for the first time, studied abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark and Amsterdam, and took vacations in the Bahamas, Mexico and on a Carnival Cruise Ship. It was during my summer studying abroad where I felt the strong desire to advocate for more students to take advantage of their study abroad programs at their school. My experience studying abroad was eye opening and simply amazing, so it made sense for me to take a work-study job as a study abroad adviser at my graduate school. Unfortunately, that came to an ends once I graduated, but it left a huge impression on me that influences this blog today. More recently, however, I’ve traveled to Germany (Frankfurt, Cologne and Dusseldorf), revisited Amsterdam on a small back trip with my cousin and revisited California. I’ve also partaken in Barbados Carnival in August, Jamaica Carnival in April, Miami Broward Carnival in October and New York Labor Carnival in September. There are so many places I have on my list to visit and this is only the beginning for me. My top three at this current moment are Greece, Morocco & Trinidad.
As for the inspiration behind the creation of this blog, it comes from all of my travel experiences and my time as a graduate student at The New School for Social Research studying anthropology. My core beliefs were questioned during those two years, but it strongly contributed to my decision to start this blog. People are so often caught in their own bubble that they don’t realize there is world outside of their own that contains people with different beliefs, traditions, values and customs from their own and so many beautiful sites meant to be seen and learn from. When we enclose ourselves in our bubble we block out the chance to educate ourselves on these differences. Traveling offers you the chance to step out of your comfort zone and encounter the unknown, the things that scare us the most. But it’s what happens after you encounter the unknown that becomes magic. The experience you have in an unfamiliar country, the things you learn, the friends you make and the memories you create, always stick with you. The unknown now becomes the familiar and we are no longer afraid of it. Traveling is a chance for us to familiarize ourselves with the world and what it has to offer. Imagine the appreciation we would have for ourselves and for the world, if we traveled to different societies to learn about them, understand what makes them different from ourselves and appreciate the beauty in it. People underestimate the power of travel, but I refuse to.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
------Mark Twain
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