How To Travel the Arab World Through Wwoofing
By: Arab America Contributing Writer/ Waverly Nohr
While we read about the wonders, landscapes, and treasures of the Arab world, actually visiting the countries can seem both intimidating as well as expensive. With hotel prices, transportation costs, food expenses, as well as simply not knowing where to go within the country, traveling can also be overwhelming. Many people who are not avid travelers choose not to go the extra mile of doing extensive research to find out where to go and where to get the best prices. Instead, they go on an easier, hassle free, less expensive trip to a more traveled part of the world. Luckily, the innovators of this generation have found ways to avoid the usual obstacles of traveling in the Arab World. This article features wolfing, or traveling organizations, that can help you find unique ways to see the world while making sure your trip is as authentic as possible.
What is it?
Wwoofing? Sounds like some noise an animal makes, right? On the contrary, the name indicates a quirky experience individuals are sure to have while experiencing their wwoofing adventure.
Wwoof is an organization that connects organic farms with everyday people. By providing room and board to travelers, farms receive help from their temporary guests. interested visitors can browse through the wwoofing catalog and choose organic farms based on their preferences. While some people might like the idea of learning how to farm and want to learn about the organic life from their hosts, others might want to work as little as possible and spend more time off the farm. Whatever the accommodation, users of the site can see all the details from the hosts prior to signing up to live there.
While this may seem like a new technology, it appears that this idea has caught fire and many organic farmers are signing up. With an exchange of labor for housing, there is undoubtedly also an exchange of culture and values. Some hosts make you traditional dishes daily, and others might take you to see the sights of their city. Whatever it may be, it’s far from traditional traveling, making it all the more appealing for adventure.
The Places You’ll Go
You have to see the amazing places that wwoof will send you to experience. First on the trip is an organic farm in Oman where sub-tropical fruit trees, high value perennial crops, and seasonal vegetables are grown. According to the host, “We practice zero tillage, soil building, alley and circle planting, mulching, crop rotation, composting and companion planting. We use green manures, groasis plantation for indigenous trees, recycle grey water and make our own organic pesticides.”
Next, there is this farm in Tunisia offering a homestay at an olive grove. According to the host, in the last three years “We have been in transition to permaculture and we are developing with the Ministry of Tourism a pedagogic farm project. Our project is in the start up phase with several works in sight: Settling a kitchen garden, an aromatic and medicinal herbs zone.” Additionally, this host assures viewers of the page that they do not expect the wwoofers to work all day every day, and that they actually will have a lot of free time while staying in Tunisia.
In Jordan, a host offers homestay at his organic farm and earth school. In the mission of the earth school, the host says “it is an experimental initiative to have a peace community, organic farming and an earth school in the same place, near the Dead Sea which is the lowest point on earth and in the middle of a politically hot region.”
Keep Wwoof in Mind!
After seeing how easy it is to sign up and wwoof, everything else falls on the ambition of the traveler. With a two weeks, month, two months off, this dream is attainable for an economical way to travel and experience something entirely unmatched by other travelers.
Check out Arab America’s blog here!
