This piece was written by Global Citizen Year alum Maria Morava (Senegal, ‘16).
When done with purpose and intention, a gap year can be the foundation to success in college, life and beyond.
“You’re adorably out of touch,” Louise Linton’s words dripped from her manicured finger into the nucleus of her latest controversy.
Linton, wife of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, is in the eye of a social media storm once again. Before the recent Instagram tantrum belittling an Oregon woman (and her family), Linton once had her own viral hashtag: #LintonLies. This latest controversy has only reignited our memories of Linton’s late, great essay: How my dream gap year in Africa turned into a nightmare. Not to mention her self-published book, In Congo’s Shadow: One Girl’s Perilous Journey to the Heart of Africa, in which she lies about being a “central character” in the Congo War. She was able to play this central role while living in Zambia, of course.
Yes, Louise Linton. Now we remember. The self-described, “Skinny white muzungu with long angel-hair”. An anomaly in “darkest Africa”. Linton’s essay and book about her gap year in Zambia in the 1990s had properly pissed off Americans and Africans alike, using nearly every trope that exists in the white savior, colonialist narrative. With a new example of Linton leveraging her wealth and power to shame people, it is apt to re-examine her monumental discrediting of Zambia, Africa, and – by association – the gap year.
I want to compare Linton’s sentiments to one of my first nights in Senegal, West Africa. I was eighteen, recently graduated from high school, and on a gap year after high school with Global Citizen Year. My host sister was showing me around the city. She was eighteen, like me, but could’ve easily been ten years older by the way she showered me with security. We walked for awhile, in silence and broken Wolof, and each time we approached a road-crossing she would grab my hand and lead me across the street. I didn’t protest. I needed my eighteen year-old host sister to hold my hand while crossing the street. It was dark, and my mouth still couldn’t make Wolof words, and the cars came fast. I needed her to lead me.
Maria sitting with her extended host family during her gap year in Senegal.
Linton describes her gap year in Zambia as a year of “lost innocence”. She does not know that a gap year, if approached with a truly open mind, can instead return you to innocence. And if you let it, being in a new culture can reopen you to a childlike state: full of wonder, mistakes, and dependency.
Being in a new culture allows you to reach the marrow of what it is to be human, and it can get messy. Immersion is hard. It takes commitment to openness, to curiosity, and to grit. It takes surrender – this is Linton’s problem. She didn't surrender. She didn't loosen her grip on her Prada bag and let her preconceived notions, self-investment, and savior complex topple out of it. She wanted to be connected with her community, but she didn’t want to hold their hands to cross the street. Cross-cultural immersion means emptying your cup, as Buddhism refers to it, so it may be filled with the knowledge of others. Linton did not empty her cup.
Instead, she came bearing word-weapons more harmful than her imaginary enemies. She wrote about the sad hungry child sipping Coca Cola on her lap, but did not care about his education enough to believe he might read it someday. Her cup was full – brimming with fear and judgement – and overflowed into a defaming work of fiction masquerading as a manifesto.
I don’t pretend to compare Linton’s experiences with mine. While we both took a gap year in Africa, I know that every experience is different. I cannot compare our experiences – but I can compare our intentions. Linton’s intention was to be a savior. And it created uproar and fear. My intention - along many other gap year takers and specifically those who do so with Global Citizen Year - was to learn. Our learning created a movement for global citizenship and cross-cultural connection. I won’t let Linton’s privilege and power write the narrative for the gap year.
Now more than ever, young Americans are eager for the opportunity to become global citizens and citizen diplomats and, ultimately, a new generation of leaders. They are traveling abroad to confirm what they know instinctively and what was reaffirmed a million times over on my gap year: that there is no “other,” there is only “we”,
It is time to cross our border, to connect with other cultures, and become a generation of global citizens. We must do this and share the stories that arise from it responsibly, until we drown out the stories of the out of touch and aloof. So when Louise Linton next points a callous-less finger, may we all know better than to believe a word she’s written.
Originally from North Carolina, Maria Morava completed her Global Citizen Year in Senegal in 2016. She will be a sophomore at College of the Atlantic majoring in Human Ecology. She enjoys exploring the connections between her varied interests, particularly in women’s rights, international relations and storytelling.