How to Prep for Visiting a Third World Country

Alyssa Hollingsworth | March 14, 2016

5. Start Dialing Back

Food and drink aren’t the only things we’re addicted to. One of the hardest aspects of life in a third world country can be not having regular access to screens and internet.

It sounds stupid to say that while running around with impoverished kids during the day, I sometimes found myself longing to sit in front of my computer and chat on Facebook. But it’s a reality of life. For many of us, for better or worse, screens are a sort of comfort blanket or a safe place. When we can’t have the amount of access we are used to, we get irritable, uncomfortable, stressed out, and depressed.

Start preparing yourself before you go. Get the goals for your trip firmly in your mind–whether you’re there to travel and learn, there to volunteer and build, or whatever you hope to gain from the journey. Concentrate on these things and missing Facebook will seem as trivial as it really is.

Alyssa Hollingsworth / Own Work

But you can also get your mind in the right place by scaling back while you’re still at home. Practice limiting your hours in front of a screen before you go. Turn your cell phone off sometimes.

If you get comfortable in your own skin before you have to leave the electronics behind (or, at least, drastically reduce your access to them), you’ll have one less thing to adjust to when you land.

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