httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmM240OcETg

Linton’s essay and book about her gap year in Zambia in the 1990s had properly pissed off Americans and Africans alike, using nearly every trope that exists in the white savior, colonialist narrative.

With a new example of Linton leveraging her wealth and power to shame people, it is apt to re-examine her monumental discrediting of Zambia, Africa, and – by association – the gap year.

I was eighteen, recently graduated from high school, and on a gap year after high school with Global Citizen Year.

Linton describes her gap year in Zambia as a year of “Lost innocence”.

While we both took a gap year in Africa, I know that every experience is different.

My intention – along many other gap year takers and specifically those who do so with Global Citizen Year – was to learn.

I won’t let Linton’s privilege and power write the narrative for the gap year.

They are traveling abroad to confirm what they know instinctively and what was reaffirmed a million times over on my gap year: that t is no “Other,” t is only “We”,.