Trekking with gorillas in Uganda, hiking up mountains in Nepal and climbing glaciers in New Zealand may sound like an adventure straight out of Hollywood, but for one lone woman, it became a reality.
In Sept. 2000, Rosetta Russo began traveling east from Eugene and just kept on going, volunteering for days or weeks at a time in different countries around the world, until she returned to Eugene in June 2001. Her travels took her from the United States to Uganda, Kenya, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand.
Russo will share her world traveling experiences for the International Resource Center’s series “Travel Talks” at 7 p.m. Thursday in the International Lounge.
The “Travel Talks” are part of a program the IRC began in February to bring travel topics to campus, IRC coordinator Anne Williams said. She said she met Russo in Sept. 1999 while volunteering at the Child Advocacy Center, and when the idea for the “Travel Talks” program came about, she said she immediately thought of Russo’s solo trip around the world.
For some travelers, “volunteering is a nice way to go,” Williams said — it offers a different kind of experience from the normal vacation.
Russo said she began planning her voyage when a friend told her about volunteer opportunities in an orphanage called Makindu Children’s Center, located in a small village in Kenya. Though she did not officially become a volunteer for the center, she spent three or four days playing with the orphans.
Although the kids didn’t speak English, she said, they were used to interacting with foreigners using facial expressions and hand gestures. Despite the poor economic and education levels in the underdeveloped countries, she said she was surprised at the number of people who spoke English.
“English is a universal language,” Russo said.
In Nepal, Russo said she worked at a camp called Friendship Club Nepal for two weeks with 30 other volunteers from around the world to build steps from a village in the mountains down to the main road. She said the existing trail was often washed out from heavy rainfall.
There was no electricity and no running water in the village, she said, but at night, the villagers would play drums, and they would teach her their cultural dances.
“It’s not just all hard work,” she said.
Williams said Russo’s trip was especially appealing to the “Travel Talks” series because she is proof to other potential travelers that unconventional trips are possible, even for women on their own.
“She did it all by herself,” Williams said.
Russo said she left the United States by herself, but she always met other travelers and locals in the inexpensive hotels, guest houses and local families with which she stayed.
“I was never really by myself, because there’s a whole world of people” out there, she said.
Russo said she recognized the danger of being a woman traveling alone, but said she felt safe by using basic awareness and common sense.
“I tried to keep out of dangerous situations,” she said, and most of the time, the other travelers looked out for each other.
Dangers did manifest themselves in other ways, she said. Trekking with gorillas in Uganda sometimes brought unnerving encounters with wildlife, she said. The guides, armed with guns and machetes, led the tourists to the animals’ nesting spots.
The gorillas are wild animals, she said, but they were used to having people come everyday.
She was able to stand within a few feet of a gorilla, but she was not allowed to touch it because gorillas do not have the same immunities to disease that humans do.
“A cold could wipe out the entire pack,” she said.
Despite the danger to themselves, the curious gorillas had been known to grab tourists and drag them a few feet, she said, but if the captive goes limp, the gorilla will drop him or her, she said.
Travel “can also be about having experiences that you might not have planned,” said Anthony St. Clair, writer, editor and traveler for www.BootsnAll.com, a Web site for travelers.
St. Clair, who attended the previous “Travel Talks” in February, said he enjoyed the informal and informative atmosphere of the discussion.
“It’s looking at travel in a different way,” he said. Travelers “can discover some possibilities they wouldn’t have imagined.”
Russo said she came back to the United States with a new kind of awareness about the people who inhabit the world.
“We’re really just one body,” she said. “People think of these countries as these mystic things, but people are really united.”
She said once people see past the cultural stereotypes, the locals were really interested in learning about her.
“It’s a really small world,” she said.