We’ve all been there. First time away from home, sporting a nice tan from weeks of idling on foreign shores; possibly even a coconut shell earring or a tattoo if you’re really brave; long tousled locks held back by a hairband (if you’re a boy) or the bedhead look (if you’re a girl), aviators, baggy and raggy clothes and flip flops. It’s everywhere. They’re everywhere. Gappers.
The sight of some of them makes me snigger, others make me retch. What makes it worse is that I was once that person – though I maintain never as bad – but alas I was. Is that why I resent them so much now?
I have no problem with the gap year. On the contrary I think it’s one of the best ideas in the world, so much so that I think it should be made compulsory for all school leavers. The benefits of taking a year off to work and travel are wasted on few. It is an adventure in self-discovery, even if you don’t realise it. A year in the life of a teenager is always a big learning curve. Add to this the ‘away from home’ and freedom factors, and a gap year is bound to be hugely beneficial for personal development. But that’s just it… It’s all about ME!
As long as people a) are honest about what they are getting out of a gap year, and b) don’t think they are the first to do it, there is no problem.
The gap year has started to come under fire, no doubt as a result of people starting to question the worth of these boardshorted bodies wandering the streets of the world. The debate has become particularly contentious since Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the international development charity, launched a report arguing that many overseas gap year programmes – especially those in lower-income countries – do more harm than good.
As an old-gapper (O.G.) myself I can wholeheartedly agree with this view. Looking back on the project I took part in in Peru over three years ago, I can honestly say that I got an infinitely more out of it than the children we were helping. Don’t get me wrong, I do not think we did more harm than good but the reality is that gap year students for the most part will spend no more than a couple of months volunteering. While whoever they are helping will enjoy their support during that time, the effects are transient and the vast majority of gappers have no lasting effect on the communities they lived with. Though some will, in a negative way.
There is an overwhelming stereotype that gap years are the sole domain of the white middle-class. And while this a stereotype, it does exist for a reason. Moreover, the gappers I speak of in this article refer exactly to those stereotypes. So if you’re doing something unique on your year abroad, spending it with people you didn’t go to school with or, low and behold, people from another country, then ignore this rant. I, as do we all, refer to a particular kind of gapper.
We all know the type. The boy who followed his friends from the local STA branch half way round the world without ever looking at a map and realising where he was. The girl who got stuck in Goa for the entirety of her gap year, with only dreadlocks and body art to show for it. The group of school friends who’s month in Thailand is a blur of buckets of UV paint. These stereotypes were previously reserved for the well worn Asia to Australia route but the Latin America travel boom has seen these teenagers migrate westwards.
A friend of mine had the fortune of stopping by one of Buenos Aires’ most renowned hostels. It is the place to see and be seen on the South American gapper circuit and I’m sure most you know it, and perhaps some of you are even staying there now. It oozes gap year tragedy and group fun, but it should not be knocked for that. Rather for the type of people who stay there. While waiting for gapping daughter of some of her parent’s friends she had a glance through the guestbook. There on the open page lay the prophet if you will of the gap year tale: “Took coke all night. Slept all day. Amazing.” Sadly this is what many travellers’ porteño experiences boil down to: a twilight, drugged view of the city.
It’s all so predictable. They even dress and talk the same way. A bizarre characteristic of the gap year is the widespread approval of ‘poo chat’ and I don’t mean boring chat. I refer to the well-versed international traveller discourse about bowel-movements. Why is this so acceptable? All it takes is a knowing nod before you’re knee deep in poo.
It’s testament to how obvious and boring some people’s gap years really are. You can actually tell from someone’s clothes where they have been travelling. Students count down the days to the end of school… no more lessons, no more uniform, freedom. Then within hours of landing in their destination they kit themselves out in another uniform. In Southeast Asia it’s the fisherman trousers and fakes of every kind – handbags, t-shirts, DVDs. In Africa it’s the Kikoy and some ‘ethnic’ beads. In Australia and New Zealand it’s anything with Quiksilver and Billabong written across it. In India it’s some other form of baggy raggy trouser (to me the fisherman trouser, but I am assured they are different) and Himalayan slippers and hats. In Latin America it’s the horrific ‘traveller trousers’, the big hairy rug-cum-scarf (no-one really knows what they’re supposed to be) and some llama paraphernalia. Then you accessorise with the internationally recognised frills: flipflops (Havaianas if you’re anybody worth knowing), Raybans (Aviators or Wayfarers? Or Wayfarers or Aviators?), the oh-so-not-unique piercing, the drunken tattoo and of course the coconut shell signet ring (Daddy told me not to wear my gold one on the beach). Of course all must be worn with as much hanging out as possible… bum, boobs, pubes.
A friend summed up the phenomenon nicely: “When I was in Mexico I bought about 20 of those weird belt things because I saw an indigenous woman wearing one and thought ‘oooohh how authentic’. When I got home to London I wore it once and realised how awful it was. Thank God they only cost 20p.”
You think you may be getting away from it all on your gap year. Escaping the tedium of home, work or those people. But no. Name dropping gets worse east of the Indian Ocean, only trendy London bars are replaced by hip hostels. ‘Place-dropping’ becomes a favourite activity, second only to poo talk.
Lying on a beach in Mexico I was stirred by the sound of some English squall. “Oooh ma gawd!! Nooo way! Were you in Phi Phi two months agooo??”. No I wasn’t, but the groups of gappers behind me were. It’s like being back at school again. Instead of being the girl without a boyfriend in the 1st XI, I was the girl who HADN’T been in Phi Phi in April. The only one apparently. Each year there is somewhere ‘you just haaaave to go’. I guess I didn’t get the memo, or, more precisely, the seventeen thousandth group email planning it all.
This is, just, so true. I’m an OG only 3 years ago, but in that time I think the whole concept has changed, for the worse. Bedhair and multiple anklets/bracelets. Not huzzah.
I had the pleasure of overhearing a conversation between gappers whist sitting in a Recoleta cafe. One complaining to the other about how awful Bolivia was because she was followed down every street because she was seen wearing a Rolex. I mean please, do Bolivians have no respect? She should have bought herself a few of those bangles.
Made the mistake of thinking poo chat was acceptable when I had returned from travelling – it really isn’t. That said, sometimes poo chat is quite helpful because otherwise you spend the whole time thinking you’re going to die; chatting with others who have been in similar and sometimes far worse situations makes you feel a bit better about your, um, digestive malfunctions…