The ‘broken’ travelling couple who scrub toilets to survive
It was not exactly this that I wanted to write about on my first post as an exchange student, but I felt a sort of obligation to touch the matter of the couple who dropped out of steady jobs to travel around the world but “ended up” poor and scrubbing toilets.
The recapitulation: In May, 2015, Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger decided to swap their experience of more than a decade in advertising agencies for a self-knowledge journey that would last one year. They created a blog and social media profiles to show how far they could go in relation to South Africa — the place where the adventure began.
Well, being reached almost half of the foreseen time, they decided to talk about the plan’s most painful part in a text called “Why we quit our jobs in advertising to scrub toilets”. There, Chanel reveals what is obvious for any exchange student: those interested in travelling need to get dirty, because only millionaires are able to waste so much time without the need of getting into the underemployment.
Here in Dublin, for instance, it is possible to find Brazilians in cafés, kitchens, pubs, hotels, holding signs on the street (bear in mind that we are talking about a place where it rains every 20 minutes), babysitting, cleaning the others’ houses… Most of the people that are here for studying purposes end up turning to the underemployment, which demands more and pays less, but allows them to survive relatively well while they are learning English. It is rare to find a Brazilian here that escaped from this scenario; among those who obtained success, most work for technology or design companies — and Brazilians must be really good, because when they are searching for jobs they have Irish people and Europeans to beat.
When I decided to write about the South African couple, my goal was not to explain how the underemployment works, but to express disappointment with the kind of coverage the case had. On Adweek, the title was: “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing Toilets”; BuzzFeed: “This Couple Quit Their Jobs To Travel And Now Scrub Toilets To Get By”. In Brazil, it was not different. RedeTV, one of our main TV channels, said: “Casal larga tudo para viajar o mundo e acaba lavando banheiros para se sustentar”, which follows the same others’ line.
Strong expressions such as “broken”, “ended up”, “scrubbing toilets” give a false idea about what the text really says. Chanel was keen to stress that even with all the adversity faced they now had time to explore different places and their own ideas. “It’s like heaven for us”, she wrote.
“You work under your own schedule, using (a lot of) spare time to jog around mirrored lakes, craft inspired creations and breathe the Arctic air.”
In other words: yes, we scrub toilets, but later we can take some time to rest in a place that is unthinkable for those who spend eight hours a day in front of a computer.
Chanel also added that, in her opinion, “there’s nothing quite like swapping million rand advertising budgets for toilet scrubbing to teach you about humility, life and the importance of living each day as if it were your last”. This is the point. That was their idea, the same for most of the exchange students: you travel to a completely different place, to live with strangers in probably worst conditions in relation to the ones you had at your parents’ house. On the other hand, you do a bunch of other things that help you to discover that there is much more in you than it was imaginable.
