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Turning 50 is no small thing. Perhaps that’s why we make such a fuss of it—throwing larger-than-life parties, making purchases we’ve dreamed of for our whole lives and, of course, going on once-in-a-lifetime trips. Gabrielle Union understands this. A new BET+ series, Gabrielle Union: My Journey to 50 follows Union, her husband Dwyane Wade, and a group of close friends and family as they embark on what Union calls a “bucket list trip” to four African countries.
Union's love of travel and adventure is palpable across the two-episode series. From receiving Ghanian names (Akosua Safo for Union and Kwesi Safo for Wade) and seeing the horrific remnants of the transatlantic slave trade along Ghana’s coast to driving through swaths of wavy Namibian desert, sipping wine at a Black-owned winery in Franschhoek, South Africa, and dancing the night away in Zanzibar, Tanzania, she is tirelessly inquisitive and game. She sat down with Condé Nast Traveler to talk about planning the trip, how connections built while traveling can help heal trauma, and finding ways to “pour into” the places we visit beyond just writing a check.
You mentioned in the series that you used the Black Girls Travel Too community and had seen these destinations there. Why is it important for us to have online communities to plan and share travel suggestions with each other?
We only know what we know and there's a lot I don't know. If somebody else, especially somebody who looks like me, has been somewhere and they have amazing things to report back and they felt safe and all that then I want to try. I wish I had checked in before I went to Croatia. When Black girls enjoy a place, I feel like there’s a solid, solid chance that I, too, will enjoy it. It's a resource that I wish more people would use and there’d probably be a little less surprise when we go to certain places and how we might be received.
Why did you want this to be a family trip shared with your daughter as opposed to, say, a solo trip or girlfriends’ trip?
I wanted generations of Union women to be on the same trip, experiencing the same thing at the same time and I wanted to see how we all differed in our experience. I wanted to document it just for our family's sake.
We see a lot of negative stereotypes of Africa. You struck a delicate balance between showing that people can be underprivileged and the light and joy and community and great food and businesses and all of that. How did you make sure that balance was hit?
I didn't want to go in with any specific ideas. What we saw is what we saw, what we experienced is what we experienced, and if that is part and parcel to the location, let's be open to what that is. My biggest thing was “I don't want this to be about animals.” My child wants to go on safari. I've been on many safaris. It is wonderful, but there's nothing more wonderful across the continent than the people, so it was really about making personal connections. I was confident that those personal connections would be the most interesting parts. Just being open and not forcing any one storyline.
Often when we depict people from Indigenous tribes, there's a question of ethics. I'm curious about the conversations that you all had around portraying Namibia's Himba people, in particular.
They happened to live next door to where we were staying and they just casually invited us over like neighbors, so we didn't have a camera crew—just personal phones. There was that conversation about what's reasonable and appropriate while trying to respect the culture. There's American standards of what can be shown on television and then there's how [the Himba people] are comfortable and how they have been comfortable for eons and trying to find that balance and asking permission of everybody because not everybody said yes.
You said that so much was poured into you that you felt like you could go pour into others. Much of the conversation around sustainable travel is about how we go to places that are other people's homes and we take. I would love to hear a bit more about pouring into the places that you visit.
We've tried to diversify how we pour back in and just try to be open to how we got poured into—listening, shutting up, and asking “How might I be best of service in this place?"
I think because my story of survival, of violent crime and rape, has become more of a global story, it’s weird to say that I offered understanding. Unfortunately, the sexual assault of women and girls is an evergreen pandemic, and I will work until I have no breath left in me to try to change that. I can write as many checks as I want, but when you see somebody’s spirit shift because you can call a thing a thing and acknowledge pain, and you can say, “What happened to you is not something that should happen to girls or women, healing is your birthright and accountability is something that you can look for, ask for, even think about.” That is giving back.
Listen to more about Gabrielle Union's journey across Africa on the Women Who Travel podcast.
