About halfway through his new book, Innocents Abroad Too, ODU creative writing professor Michael Pearson introduces readers to a rich South African woman.
Her husband is set to play host to Pearson, his wife and friends that day, and she’s curious about what they’ve seen.
"You have an incredible country," Jo-Ellen (Pearson’s wife) answered. "We saw the wine region and hiked up Lion’s Head. We went to Robben Island yesterday and to one of the townships the day before. It was very sad, but…"
"Why would you go there?" the woman interrupted, raising her polished nails and tapping them sharply against the window. "What’s the point in seeing all that? It would be like me going to the slums in New York City if I went there on vacation."
Pearson continues writing: "I knew that Jo-Ellen probably wanted to say that we weren’t on vacation. We hoped to be travelers of a different sort, but Catholic school training kept her silent."
Travelers of a different sort indeed. The Pearsons set sail in 2002 and again in 2006 to explore the world with fellow intellectuals. As a professor with the Semester at Sea program, Michael Pearson earned his keep lecturing in class and kept his "cool Dad" status by never doing so parentally outside of it. He weaves in his students’ stories just enough to remind readers of their presence, but never with the intention of contrasting their largely rough-and-tumble physical experience with his soulful exploration, although such a literary approach would have been appropriate. He and his wife aren’t out to commit the crime of drive-by tourism, racing to well-advertised traps, plunking down credit cards to collect trinkets and getting drunk on obnoxious behavior in foreign lands, lands whose people forgive only because they need the financial fortification. They instead fill their travel log with the people of the world and their life stories.
Pearson’s keen observations capture the essence of the countries he visits. The South African woman is at first attentive to him, placing her hand on his leg and leaning into their conversation to reveal her cleavage. Learning he does not own the "yacht" he’s traveling on, she turns her attention to a student. She demands that he fetch an umbrella to protect her skin from the beating sun. His olive skin has given her the impression that he is there to serve her.
In Kenya, the couple’s guide shares the rights of passage—unanesthetized circumsions and clitoridectomies for teens and lower teeth pullings for younger children—that the Masai people perform. His tone is "mournful" and "his dark, wide eyes" stare out at two mating elephants. The physical pain he witnesses and the mental anguish his tribe endures as the world encroaches on their lifestyle is painful, but heartache cannot break loyalty. He tells Pearson’s wife, "This is my home. This is where I was meant to be."
Another emotional encounter occurs in India, as the Pearsons participate in a parade of sorts in the Dalit Village, a village where "it was typical of a family of six or seven to live in a one-room home slightly larger than …(the couple’s) cramped cabin onboard the ship." They walk from house to house as the villagers look on. One woman reaches for Pearson’s wife’s elbow, and she stops to hug the woman. Pearson sees the woman’s eyes filled with tears:
"…It dawned on me that the woman was crying because someone outside of her caste was touching her. It was as simple as it seemed: she had never been touched by an outsider, by a pale-skinned member of another caste."
Pearson is present enough in the moment—and not his itinerary—to appreciate his wife’s interaction and its greater meaning: As a world, we face basic challenges that we can only overcome by first slowing down. The pause we take—and encourage others to take—might prevent us from being racist or classist. Early in his book, Pearson notes that the word "travel" derives from "travail," which most seventh grade French students know means "to work." Few travelers wish to think of their journeys as such, but those who do, like Pearson, realize that "work" can both exhaust and exhilarate. Few will be able to tackle what Pearson has firsthand, but reading the details of it might just provide the same sense of purpose Pearson garnered from his efforts. He writes near the end, "I realized that, for good and ill, these two trips around the globe filled my life with memories and ghosts, and I wondered if they would help me see my own country as a new land and live in it with the intensity and enthusiasm of a wayfarer among fascinating strangers." | 
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