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August 11, 2016
abingtonsuburban.com
An Enlightening Journey
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SUBURBAN
Local college student made the most of South Africa trip by Caitlin West STAFF WRITER
Natalie Carleo saw plenty of wildlife and took tons of photos in Africa, but she also returned home to Clarks Summit with a new understanding of the continent’s people and the hospitality they showed their guests. A 2014 graduate of Abington Heights High School, Carleo majors in communications/ digital multimedia/journalism and minors in French at Susquehanna University, which requires its students to study abroad for at least two weeks. On May 18, she was one of 15 students from the school to make the 18hour plane ride to South Africa, where they spent more than two weeks visiting cities and villages, living with locals, learning about the area and journaling about the experience as part of the university’s Global Opportunities program. “I think everyone on my trip really got the message and the meaning of it, and that was really awesome that we had a really, really, really great group. ... We’re going to have this bond forever,” said Carleo, a 20-year-old junior. A lot of students pick popular spots like Italy and Australia for the studies, she said, but when she came across the opportunity in South Africa, she thought it seemed different and applied. Students who participate in the Travel Writing in South Africa program write a personal journal while overseas then submit an essay about the experience and take a travel writing workshop in the fall. Carleo is basing her essay on the hospitality she encountered in South Africa and neighboring Swaziland, which the group also visited. While they stayed in apartments and hostels in cities such as Johannesburg, they also spent time living with locals in villages where they had to haul their bath water in buckets and heat it themselves. One village in which they stayed did not have electricity. “When you think about people in America, they’re very hostile and lots of people only live for themselves,” she said. “In South Africa, no matter what town or village I went to, every-
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one was so nice and so welcoming. … People who barely have anything love everyone.” While in one of the villages, Carleo befriended an 8-year-old girl whose family she stayed with. When the group departed, the girl gave her a note that told her how much she loved Carleo and would miss her. And while South Africa might be at the opposite end of the world from Northeast Pennsylvania, the world is not as big as it used to be — Carleo is now Facebook friends with the girl’s parents and a few others she met in Africa. “It was crazy how you could have such a connection with someone for three days that you’ll remember for the rest of your life,” Carleo said. “In America, that just doesn’t happen. ... You made such a connection so fast. It’s amazing.” The group went on safari car tours and camped in one of the country’s national parks, where Carleo said “there were rhinos everywhere.” They took a walking tour there and came across leopard tracks and monkeys. But the group didn’t have to look far for exotic wildlife, even in more settled areas. Carleo and Carleo, with some of the friends she made on her trip some friends were walking back to to South Africa. their rooms one night when they “I think it’s because they don’t have what were alerted to a hippo sleeping in a yard nearwe have,” Carleo said. “When they get out of by. Hippos are to South Africa like bears are to school, they don’t go home and put on their Northeast Pennsylvania, she explained. laptops. … They go outside and play with each “How we have squirrels in our towns, they other. I think that just creates stronger bonds have monkeys,” Carleo said. “There were and stronger relationships. monkeys everywhere.” By the end of the trip, she said, she and her When she returned home, Carleo realized fellow travelers were best friends, and the exshe now has stronger relationships with her perience left her wanting to return to South friends and family, which she attributes to the Africa one day to see the people she met there trip. The people there are nice and welcomagain. ing, and life for them is “just all about family,” “I told them, ‘Don’t forget about me. I’m she said. coming back,’” she said.