Time away from everyday routine is no longer just for school-leavers, writes Sandra O'Connell
AT 45, Sandra Fee isn't your typical gap-year traveller. She is, however, part of an increasing number of grown-ups who think that gap years - traditionally time out spent travelling between school and college - are too good to leave to kids.
The Louth-based maths teacher took a career break in 2006 and spent two years volunteering in a teacher-training college in South America.
It was, she says, the trip of a lifetime, and she credits all of it to Babe the pig.
"I was sitting watching that movie one night when a line in the dialogue jumped out at me," says Fee. "It said: 'Little things that niggle and niggle and refuse to go away should never be ignored, for in them lie the seeds of destiny.' All my life I had wanted to volunteer abroad. Hearing those words made me do it."
She contacted VSO Ireland, an international development agency that works through volunteers, and took the first posting it offered her, in Guyana. "At the time I said yes I didn't even know where it was. I was looking for it on a map of Africa. [It lies between Brazil and Venezuela.] But I felt that wherever they offered me was where I was meant to be," says Fee.
It was, she says, the best decision she ever made. "I loved it so much that I was heartbroken when I came home, a year ago. I've already been back twice since. I gained a huge sense of personal achievement from having done it, and I'm a happier person because of it."
Older travellers are now a significant, and growing, part of the market for gap-year experiences. "Gap-year travel for older people, including retired people, is massive," says Phil Murray, founder of Gapadvice.org, a UK website that provides independent advice to travellers of all ages.
"A lot of them have seen their kids have gap years and now have the time and money to do it themselves. They've done the beach-and-cruise thing, and what many of them really want is something with more purpose, such as volunteering."
This summer Celia Gaffney, a Waterford woman, did just that. A grandmother in her 60s, she travelled to Vietnam to work at an orphanage for a month. "I wanted to go somewhere that would stop me thinking of myself for a bit," she says.
"I would die a thousand deaths if I had to sit on a beach for two weeks for my holiday, and I have always done voluntary work. This was a way of combining both."
The trip changed her irrevocably, too. "The filth and the dirt would tear your heart apart, and the children's faces still haunt me, but I was able to offer them an extra pair of hands, painting walls, feeding children and just playing with them," says Gaffney.
"While I would never have been a shopper for the sake of shopping, you come home with a very strong sense that buying things is not what life is all about."
Elaine Bannon, a finance professional, took things even further while in Kenya celebrating her 40th birthday in a five-star hotel. A chance visit to a local orphanage led her to quit her job and move over to help, setting up her own charity, Light of Maasai.
Her only regret is that she didn't do it sooner. "I do worry that I waited until I was in my mid-40s to start," says Bannon. "It is late, because maybe my energy levels are not what they would have been in my 20s, while on the other hand I have 20 more years of experience in life to bring to my work and maybe a little more patience."
Statistics from VSO Ireland show that she is part of a growing trend towards meaningful travel for older people. Currently, more than a third of its overseas volunteers are over 50, with 20 per cent being retired.
"In the last 10 years demand has risen significantly for more skilled people, which means older people," says the agency's director, Malcolm Quigley.
Bernadette Hussey, a fashion designer from Cork, found the gap-year experience so good she did it twice. She spent her first gap year, in her 20s, in Ghana. More than two decades later, when a redundancy package was offered at work, she decided to do it again, carrying out voluntary work in Mongolia.
"What a trip like that does for you is give you confidence on so many levels, spiritually and emotionally. You feel that whatever challenge life throws at you, you'll rise to the occasion," says Hussey. "That's a wonderful feeling."
Not all older gappers do voluntary work. Anne O'Keeffe from Cork was 25 years married before she got her first sunshine holiday. "We had five kids, so we hadn't the money," she says.
She has been making up for it ever since with gap-year stints, including mountain biking in eastern Europe and pony trekking in Lesotho. She sees no reason why older people shouldn't enjoy gap-year experiences.
"Go with a spirit of adventure. There's no age limit to anything; why should there be for travel?" says O'Keeffe. "You are as old as you feel you are. Once you have the right attitude, go for it."
Find out more
*VSO Ireland. Office 335, Capel Building, St Mary's Abbey, Dublin 7, 01-8147070, www.vso.ie
*i-to-i. Exploration House, 32 Grattan Square, Dungarvan, Co Waterford, 058-40050, www.i-to-i.com
*Gapadvice.org. 12 Hutchings Road, Beaconsfield, HP9 2BB, England, 00-44-1494673448, www.gapadvice.org
*Light of Maasai. PO Box 2, 00209, Loitokitok, Kenya, www.lightofmaasai.com
The children were absolutely gorgeous
HAVING DONE the traditional gap-year activities when she was younger - the InterRailing, the year in Australia, the island-hopping in Greece - Siobhán Smith was never a likely candidate for a two-week beach holiday. "I'd be bored," she says.
A decade into her career as an IT specialist, however, and the challenge she now faces is how to fit meaningful travel into the constraints of her working year.
This year the answer was provided by A Broader View, a US-based nonprofit organisation that matches volunteers' skills with projects in the developing world. "With A Broader View you can go for as short or as long a time as you want, from one week to any number of months," says Smith, who took a month-long IT-teaching post in Tanzania in May.
A Broader View finds the work, provides a host family for volunteers to live with and organises transfers to and from the airport. All you have to do is pick a time and book your flights.
Smith's stint at Hope Academy, a charitable school in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro, cost €700.
"In the mornings I taught the kindergarten class, and in the afternoons I taught older children in the local college, which was set up for people who have no money to pay for education."
It was exhilarating, if exhausting. "You can work as much or as a little as you like, and I think in retrospect I took too much on, because by about the third week I was exhausted," says Smith.
It was an enriching experience for both sides, she believes. "The children were absolutely gorgeous, and the Tanzanian people were so friendly." Indeed, she only felt nervous once. "It was my fault entirely, but when I arrived at the airport I realised I hadn't asked for a picture of the organiser of the Hope Academy," says Smith. "There were three men waiting at arrivals with my name on a piece of paper, and, just for a second as they bundled me into their car, I did wonder if I was doing the right thing."
Turns out she was. "I would really recommend A Broader View to anyone with only a short amount of time to do something like this," says Smith. "It was a terrific experience, with a great sense of having done something worthwhile."
www.hopeacademytz. org, www.abroaderview.org.