Former Pasco Mayor Matt Watkins visited 35 countries in 412 days and it changed his life | Opinion

At the end of 2019, I made a decision to leave my Hanford job. I was single, 50-something, home mortgage paid, and without children.

I decided to travel with a backpack, credit card, and a cheesy thesis: “Become a better world citizen so that I can become a better American citizen.”

Three years later, I’m back home and reflecting on how my travels to 35 countries changed me. The photos on my cell phone, the unique cuisines I had in each country, and the people I met still make me smile. But they also make me question what I learned.

I will recount some of my experiences during the Columbia Basin Badger Club’s annual meeting on Jan. 19, which will be presented beginning at noon online through Zoom.

During my travels around the world, I participated in a Hindu wedding in Penang, took a cooking class in Salzburg, celebrated Chinese New Year in Kuala Lumpur, wept at a high school turned prison that tortured and killed 20,000 people in Phnom Penh, got kicked out of Vietnam as COVID-19 began to rage, hiked an 800km pilgrimage across Spain, and completed other bucket list experiences.

It was March 2022 in Przemyśl, Poland, that my epiphany finally came. Putin had just invaded Ukraine and I was serving soup to refugees crossing the border. I had realized the unique kindness of the Polish people opening their borders to neighbors as they’d had done to them many times before.

Simultaneously I watched some social media feeds from back home flirt with populism and xenophobia, but also proudly watched the U.S. renew its pledge to world leadership via NATO.

Throw in Ukraine giving a master class on what it is to be a fledgling and scrappy democracy, and I was in the middle of a dramatic world event.

I was sharing a bowl of soup with a Ukrainian woman and her father who had just journeyed from the embattled Kyiv. She translated his relief at being safe, “It’s much better here. The sky doesn’t fall.”

I took in the larger meaning of those words slowly as I felt helpless realizing the trauma I could only vaguely understand. I could only nod back with an empathetic look. It was uncomfortable, cathartic, and divinely human at the same time.

And as I took another spoon of excellent savory chicken soup with tart cabbage, I remembered why I was traveling to begin with and Anthony Bourdain’s sage words: “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

I’m currently planning my next trip.

You can register for this event, which will include a Q&A session, at columbiabasinbadgers.com to receive a confirmation and link to join the Zoom forum. Cost is $5 for nonmembers, while club members can join for free.