TRAVELING AS THERAPY
“Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Ennis.”
“Hi Joseph, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.”
I would describe the greatest challenge for me to overcome in my life and in my career as one stemming practically from birth or at least early childhood. The obstacle in my path was extreme shyness or I would even say that I had a severe form of social phobia which I have struggled with all my life. Even in the company of many people around me, I had always felt a sense of loneliness.
Painful experiences and painful memories, though subdued, do stay within oneself, but, as I have learned in later years, can also become a positive driving force developing character, creativity, and wisdom.
I do think that a driving force for change at all costs is also caused by the fear of one going back or retreating where one was before…that is my childhood fears of isolation and the walls that were created, and I created, around myself.
Most people I know today, observing my life and sense of humor as it is today, tell me that they find it difficult to imagine that I had ever suffered with an infliction such as this.
“Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?”
I pushed myself, searching for answers and solutions, in study and travel, and living in and experiences different environments, even in Canada. I completed a diversity of courses such as education, political science, criminology, and communications at different universities and ended, finally, with a degree in Psychology, and after several different short-term jobs, I decided to look well beyond my own culture and country for answers and experiences.
The first time I hitchhiked from Vancouver to Los Angeles and then through much of the United States, including the bordering part of Mexico, I knew that travel could bring me the comfort and perhaps answers where “self-help” or other therapies had failed.
Upon each return to my home country, and after French immersion in Quebec, I soon desired to continue and make a life of travel a major part of my life experiences. The desire to travel brought me, for lack of better words, “out of myself” by learning about others in the world, via traveling.
Within the next 20 years I would get to know or work and live in 51 countries, always staying on a tight budget, visiting numerous places and cultures.
I often challenged myself as a traveler, going to places not only outside of my comfort zone but to where tourists would not normally go. For the most part my experiences were unique, engaging, and beautiful, but in some cases, a bit life threatening. But all the while there was a growing feeling of choosing my own path, of gaining control of my own life, and in so doing, this gave me more confidence with other people.
Sometimes I went for weeks or even months at time in cultures never speaking or even meeting someone who could speak in English.
I traveled via “colectivos”, jeeps, and buses with crowds sitting on the rooftops and hanging-on outside, through all Central America, visiting the civil war in Nicaragua, studying Spanish at schools in Guatemala and Ecuador, and years later visiting almost every country in Latin America, teaching English in Colombia, Costa Rica, Brazil, and in later years Egypt, China (and ultimately, Panama).
I lived in Colombia at a time when my previous world was afraid to travel there, and I met some the most beautiful people on earth. Colombia remains one of my favorite countries and it was a selfish pleasure as it was nice for me that fellow North Americans were so afraid to go there…as I had it all to myself!
I visited Bolivian silver and zinc mines, the poorest in the world where I witnessed child labor in its more extreme form, and the high crime and desperate favelas of Brazil.
I met 6 Pakistanis in 1993, who wanted to smuggle themselves into the United States but could only get tourist visas to go to Ecuador. They would sneak through all the borders between Ecuador and the US paying bribes and putting themselves into grave danger just to hop into a car waiting for them to help them cross on the Mexico-US border. I knew this was dangerous as having already traveled through so many land borders of Central America one would have to be especially careful of the border guards who would sometimes falsely accuse a traveler of having drugs or simply stealing from travelers, so it would be especially dangerous if one didn’t have legal documentation.
It was my curiosity to see the world and meeting people in so many different situations and cultures that brought me “out of myself”.
I remember traveling through favelas in Brazil, a risky thing to do in the 1990s. Having studied psychology (I guess), and feeling the invincibility of youth, I found a weird enjoyment in being spotted or even followed by thieves, pretending to be unaware, and I took it as a game. I never really saw this game as risky as I studied my own limits and daring. I take with me many strange stories in places like Brazil, Romania, Ecuador, Guatemala, Thailand, and some instances where I would outsmart those who would have liked to have done me harm.
Whenever I would return to Canada, I felt the uncontrollable desire to travel more and more, finally going through all of Europe. I went all over the Black Sea Coast and went by Checkpoint Charlie in the last days of its existence and saw them chipping away at the Berlin Wall in 1990 and then visited East Berlin to marvel at the hope that these events were giving us for world peace.
I made it to 6 Islamic countries on my travels and lived in China. China remains one of my favorite countries and I taught English there in Beijing after witnessing the Prince of England leaving Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. I visited Mongolia as it was just opening as well as Vietnam, witnessing the Vietnamese excitement of its newfound open-door policy of finally having cultural and economic trade with the West.
I went through deeper personal life fulfilling experiences all over India doing Buddhist retreats there and in Sri Lanka. I met the Dalai Lama, Jain Saints, the Mother Theresa mission, and even Sai Baba and visited the Osho Ashram as well as numerous yogi centers, Aurobindo and Krishna Murti. I stayed at the Sikh’s Golden Temple, and I had a comical experience eating Richard Gear’s cake in Bodh Gaya at a Tibetan retreat center, and in Bodh Gaya, it being the birthplace of the Buddha.
I stayed in a sweat shop residence in Indonesia around factories where people were making about $2-$3 a day.
I had an awkward experience getting into a Mosque in Sabah, Malaysia, and had many conversations with youth on houses supported by stilts in Brunei, talking about the Sultan there living in luxury on the island of Borneo, who ruled just across the water from his palace. They explained to me how only he likely had the alcohol prohibited by Islam and they had to settle for getting high on certain types of pharmaceuticals.
The Sultan’s very wealthy real estate loomed in the background across the water as we talked around wooden stilted houses on water, as I asked them if they thought that over there do they think that alcohol was really prohibited. By that time the answers were obvious.
I liked to study social and political life everywhere I went as well as simply hang-out with the ordinary people. I was the kind of traveler who would arrive in Paris and skip the Eiffel Tower, preferring instead to travel through the small towns and villages of France just chit-chatting with the average person.
In Belfast my curiosity drove me to an area called Falls Road and Glen Road when and where the media warned people not to go. I was most disturbed by noting the cameras and surveillance system set up at that time.
Times were desperate in Romania after the revolution. Locals told me that I am now arriving at a time when miners from the country had just been brought in to crush a student revolt, only a short while after I had arrived in Bucharest. Afterwards, I traveled along the Black Sea Coast, visiting the towns there.
Through all of this I traveled alone but never felt alone as I felt I was with and getting connected to everyone on the planet. And every day was a new day of adventure.
In Cuba, like many places, the advantages of traveling alone were obvious. The Cubans would talk a lot differently to a lone traveler than what they would say in front of a group of tourists, or organized media companies, or those arriving on government grants. Cuba was also considered the safest place in the world to be at the turn of the millennium (midnight, 1999-2000) and the time in which I was there, in case of a breakdown of the world’s computer centers due to K2N2.
My “social phobia” as I had called it before, even came into question as I met and engaged with people in so many different complex circumstances, and eventually meeting people in ways in which many around me would have found uncomfortable. So was I even still “shy” or did I graduate from an introverted person to an ambivert, or even sometimes an extrovert as well.
When I finally arrived here in Panama, I got jobs teaching at different universities and homes around the city.
As I had the experience of being a foreigner in so many places of the world, I had finally lost the feeling of being a “foreigner”. Being so comfortable in so many places of the world made my next adventure of being a foreigner opening a Spanish school in Panama seem natural. I knew there would be challenges but I was so used to taking risks and meeting so many different people I felt very equipped to take on the many idiosyncratic cultural challenges that so many other newcomers found so difficult to adjust to.
Having taught English around the world and seeing the different approaches to language learning showed me the importance in education of not having a one size fits all approach to learning a language. My philosophy for a successful school would be for the school to cater as much as possible to the needs of each particular student as much as the diversity of the peoples I had met in my traveling life, and the importance of shifting methodology or even changing teachers if not suitable the student’s needs. Such an approach worked better for the long run of the school and for the long-term benefits of all the teachers.
As our students came from every continent, I could relate.
Having learned Spanish in both Guatemala and Ecuador years before through traveling throughout and developing and understanding of the Spanish speaking world, having so much experience with so many different cultures it seemed destined and appropriate that I would open an international Spanish school.
“Joseph, Why Panama?”
And why not Panama?
In 1999-2000 the Panama Canal was in the final stage of being completely handed over to Panama. The US administration of the Canal departed, and the country was going through a massive growing pain, with new ideas of survival in a new economy emerging. The fact that Panama was opening to international tourism, global business and banking, and retirees and new immigrants were coming from all over the world to travel or live and work there. Also, Panama was growing as an international trade route and banking center due to its geographical position and the fact that the Panama Canal drew people from everywhere.
Since I had been so well traveled, and by now had so much experience in meeting people from everywhere, I would be able to identify with and talk and relate to people that would come to Panama from all over the world. With most new students that we receive I have already had some good and not so good experiences in their own country.
Setting up a Spanish school seemed destined to be the perfect kind of business for me in Panama. This business was the perfect match for me when I run through my own life experiences. We aim at students from all over the world. Many are travelers and adventurers or at least willing to try new things themselves as I was. I can somehow relate to their history and culture and place, or if they are travelers to other Latin Countries, to where they may be coming from or going. I also have a deep understanding that each one of us comes from specific circumstances and have our own unique way of learning and experiencing a language and culture.
One of the things I thoroughly enjoy at our school is when 2 or more people from vastly different parts of the world, have biases or racial or religious stereotypes about each other, or have vastly different personalities come here with the common goal of learning Spanish, and they get to know and understand each other and leave with this beautiful experience. These are the kind of strange skill sets that have come from traveling.
It is often said that it takes a business about 3 or 5 years to get off the ground and succeed. But how I measure success, I could see this was going to be a sure thing within just 3 months of its opening in December of 2001, not only financially, but also socially for me as it gave me another outlet for personal development and getting over whatever remaining fears, I had with people that I had to deal with.
My self-confidence, developed as a nomad of diverse cultures and with the many good and bad experiences has helped me to understand others and feel empathy for their own often difficult life and political circumstances.
As I had been to just about any place and felt a deeper understanding of their cultures, it was much easier for me to relate to the students that arrived from all around the world.
Some years later, I met my beautiful Panamanian wife, and we had our 2 greatest life achievements, 2 girls in attached photos, who we both love and adore. My wife is a PCA and now the administrator of Spanish Panama Language School.
Together we work and focus on giving good quality Spanish education to the numerous non-Spanish speaking foreigners that arrive in Panama. In the last years we have also diversified further and also focus on teaching English to Panamanian and global students, tutoring local Panamanian school kids, and receiving school groups in the US and Canada who would like to visit Panama to understand Panamanian culture and learn Spanish learning during their “Spring-break”.
“As you know, we’re big fans of Spanish Panama Language School. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?”
Together we work and focus on giving good quality Spanish education to the numerous non-Spanish speaking foreigners that arrive in Panama. In the last years we have also diversified further and also focus on teaching English to Panamanian and global students, tutoring local Panamanian school kids, and receiving school groups in the US and Canada who would like to visit Panama to understand Panamanian culture and learn Spanish learning during their “Spring-break”.
On any day in our school you will also see that we bring other benefits with people from multiple cultures together as they share in the common goal of learning about each other through language.
“Any big plans?”
To grow the school as an active force in the community. To expand the English program and school tutoring programs for locals, and to receive more high school groups, particularly from the U.S. and Canada.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.spanishpanama.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spanishpanama/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thespanishpanamaschool/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/LSpanishpanama