Imagine waking up next to your bae on the other side of the world. Your only obligation for the day is to explore new experiences and create memories with your life partner, and no matter how far you are from home, you can always find it in the arms of one you love.
There are some couples that say that love should always feel like an adventure, and have chosen to make their lives a never-ending baecation.
It has always been a dream of mine to travel the world solo, but I realize that I've spent so much time on my own. I would rather embark on that journey with a life partner.
The following couples have made that dream come true. Their only mission is to travel the world together on an explorative journey of love and fun!
Their stories are so inspirational and colorful, that they allow us all to live vicariously through their experiences. Learn more about them below.
Jasmine & Clayton
How They Met
"We met in Chicago, IL, where we currently live. We had a mutual friend that introduced us. After about 1-2 months of getting to know each other, we began dating."
How The Wanderlust Begun
"We both grew up going on vacations with our family, so we both already had a passion for traveling. We started off traveling throughout the country. Our goal was to take at least one 'baecation' each year. We decided to take our first international trip to Cancun, Mexico for Clayton's graduation. We fell in love with everything that came with traveling overseas. You learn about different cultures, you appreciate being in different environments, tasting the different types of food each country has to offer, and you can't forget about some of the beautiful beaches."
Their Favorite World Destination
"We always have a hard time answering this question because we truly love each place for different reasons. Cartagena had some of the freshest food and fruit we ever tasted. Zanzibar had such a beautiful culture that we fell in love with. Dubai was simply amazing because of its luxurious lifestyle. Punta Cana had some of the best jerk chicken we ever had! Cancun had such a fun nightlife. We're grateful that we've been able to travel to all of these amazing places."
How They Manage and Budget For Traveling
"We try to make it a goal to travel to a different country at least 3-4 times a year. After our trip to Cancun, we began to get a lot of reposts from popular Instagram pages such as The Shaderoom, BlackLovePage, and many other popular travel pages. We got featured on Essence Magazine and began to grow our following. With so much positive feedback, we decided to start our very own travel blog. Now that we have a travel blog, we want to travel as much as we can and give reviews on each place we visit. We've learned that budgeting is very important when it comes to traveling. You have to sacrifice certain things if you want to travel often. I personally try not to shop as much or go out to eat as often when I have a trip coming up. Every penny counts! Planning in advance also helps when budgeting for trips."
How Traveling Has Strengthened Their Bond
"Traveling has strengthened our bond in various ways. It also is just a great time to get away, clear your head, and have a great time together. We've learned that some of the best times and memories you will ever have with your significant other is while traveling on vacation."
Advice For Couples Who Want To Travel Together
"Our advice is to make sure you find time to travel. Set goals of places you want to visit. This world is so big and unique in so many ways, you should want to see what all is out there. Come up with a plan and see it through. For those who are looking for recommendations or need help on where to visit, subscribe to our website at livetotravelphotos.com."
Tiara & Vimbisai
@tiara_africanah & @kafeleaura
How They Met
Vimbisai is Zimbabwean and African-American, and Tiara is Puerto Rican and African-American. While they were both born in America, they met on the completely opposite side of the world in Dubai while completing undergrad.
After meeting, they remained best friends and became official last year when she went to visit him for a week in Zimbabwe. That quickly turned into being together 7 months and counting, as well as a beautiful marriage for the Kafeles.
How The Wanderlust Begun
"Before getting together, we had both been expats [which is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than their native country] for some time. We knew there were lots more opportunities to make the money we want throughout Africa so we decided to take the risk and start our own venture!"
Their Favorite World Destination
"Our favorite place is our home in Zimbabwe. Lots of nature and good weather. Vimbisai is half Zimbabwean and it means a lot to us to see sites such as Great Zimbabwe, where kingdoms once existed and step on the same grounds as his ancestors."
How They Manage and Budget For Traveling
"We are based very close to South Africa, which is a major hub. It's cheap to get basically anywhere from there. Very cheap! We lucked up I guess.
How Traveling Has Strengthened Their Bond
"When you travel, you sometimes see different sides of a person. We have gone to very uncomfortable places and that has strengthened us because we got to see each other's vulnerable sides, it's beautiful. We've agreed that we learned a great deal of humility and, again, vulnerability to each other and people around us."
Advice For Couples Who Want To Travel Together
"Pick up a skill that allows you to travel! Be open to exploring new places, and remember to focus on one another. There's honestly nothing more beautiful than exploring with the person you love, so take that time and be present! Take small/short trips together to get to know each other's travel styles and habits. That's important. Be patient because your partner also may not know their travel personality."
What do you think about traveling with bae? What's on your bucket list? Share with us in the comments down below.
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A Goddard College graduate, who earned an MFA from Pratt Institute and was awarded an honorary doctorate from Marymount Manhattan College, Mahogany offers unapologetic realness with a side of grace and empowerment. "I started touring locally. I started creating chat books so that those poems will go in the hands of the people who were sitting in the rooms," she shared.
"And then I started facilitating poetry workshops, so I used my chat books as curriculum. And that, in turn, allowed me to further invest in my art and show the community and people who were hiring me that it wasn't just a one-off, that it's not just, you know, a fly by night—that I am invested in this art as much as I am invested in your community, in your children's learning, in our growth."
Mahogany has a special way of moving audiences, and her superpower sparks shifts in perspective, post-performance introspection, and strengthening of community bonds, especially among Black women. (One can undeniably recognize her gift for arousal of the spirit and mind merely from her listening to her insights from the other side of a Google Hangout call. I can only imagine the soul-stirring, top-tier sensory encounter when watching her perform in person.)
In this chat with xoNecole, Mahogany reflects on sustaining a creative career, the aftermath of writing a banned book, and using poetry for both healing, community-building, and activism.
Anthony Artis
xoNecole: What are three key things that have laid the foundation for a sustainable creative career for you?
Mahogany L Browne: What has helped me is that I'm willing to go in being an expert at knowing poetry and knowing the way in which art can change the landscape of our lives, not just as a poet, but also as a poetry facilitator. How you move through classes, those things are mastered, right? So when I go into another space that's maybe tech-heavy, I don't mind learning and being, you know, a student of the wonder of how we can make this magic, work together.
Two, you’ve got to know how to pivot. Sometimes we say, ‘Alright, this is what my life is going to be. I'm going to be a New York Times best-selling author. I'm going to, you know, have an album that's Grammy-nominated. And then, say you get dropped from your record label. That doesn't mean you can't make an album anymore. You can also still create an album that can be submitted to the Grammys. So, what does a pivot look like as an artist who doesn't have an institution behind them? Pivot being a student of the wonder.
Relationships also really help. How do I serve the community? And in turn, that tells me how the community can show up. For me, I have long-standing ties with a community that will outlast my one life. So, what does it mean to create space where these relationships can develop, can be nurtured, can be rooted, can be cultivated? Creating space—it happens through relationships.
xoN: With today’s economic challenges, what does your current creative process look like, and what are you working on?
MB: I’m always thinking five years ahead. I just reviewed the pages for two children’s books and recently released a YA novel. I’m drafting an adult fiction manuscript now.
Anything I create is founded with the root of poetry, but it can exist in captions. It can exist in commercials. It can exist as a musical. So that's where I’m at now.
xoN: You started performing "Black Girl Magic" in 2013, had an acclaimed performance of it via PBS and the work went on to viral success shortly after. Talk more about the inspiration. And what do you think about the continued relevance more than a decade later?
MB: I wrote it as a rally cry for the mothers who had been keeping themselves truly in harm's way by, you know, being a part of the community right after the death of their child or their loved one. They are usually mothers of victims of police brutality—and just seeing how they showed up in these community spaces, they are devout to the cause but obviously still grieving.
"I wanted this poem to be just a space of reclamation, of joy and of you, of your light, of your shine, of your brilliance, in any which way in which you fashion. Every room you enter is the room you deserve to be in. What does it mean to have a poem like that that exists?"
And the first time I did the poem, the Weeping that occurred, right? It was like this blood-letting of sorts. The next time I performed it, I'm moved to tears because I'm seeing how it's affecting other women who have just been waiting to hear, ‘You belong. You deserve. You are good. We see you. Thank you, despite everything that they said to make you regret being born in this beautiful brown, dark-skinned, light-skinned, but Black body.’
Black women are the backbone—period. Point blank. And so, that that poem became a necessity, not just to the fortitude of Black women in the community, but like you know, in service of healing the Black women.
xoN: One of your books was banned at a school in Boston, and it was later reinstated due to parental and activist support. What was that experience like?
MB: Well, I think it happened because they were racist. That's it. Point blank. The reversal of it was empowering, right? I realized, oh, I thought we just had to sit here and be on a banned book list. But no, parents are actually the leaders of this charge.
So to see that, the parents said, ‘Nah, we're not gonna let you take this book out of my baby’s school just because it's a Black kid on the front saying, ‘Woke’ and they're talking about being a global citizen. They're talking about accountability. They're talking about accessibility. They're talking about allyship, and you don't want them to have compassion or empathy or have even an understanding, right? So no, we rebuke that, and we want this book here anyway.’ To see that happen in that way. I was, like, reaffirmed. Absolutely.
xoN: You recently organized the Black Girl Magic Ball at the Lincoln Center in New York. Honorees included author and entrepreneur Rachel Cargle and National Black Theater CEO Sade Lythcott. What impact did it have and what expanded legacy do you hope to leave with your creative works?
MB: I was really interested in not celebrating just the book, but celebrating the community that made the book possible. And so I gave out five awards to women doing that thing, like, what does it mean to be a Black girl in this world?
I just thought it was gonna be an amazing time. Everybody's gonna dress up—we're gonna celebrate each other. And boom, I then realized that it responded to like a gaping hole. There was a missing thing for Black girls of all walks of life, all ages, right?
"It's very intergenerational. That was intentional to come together and celebrate just being us."
You have all these instances where just being you is either the butt of a joke or it's diminished and not worthy of a specific title in these larger institutions. So what does it mean to just to be loved up on and celebrated?
It felt like a self-care project at first. You know, for the first couple of years, folks were coming and they were getting that sisterhood. They were getting that tribe work that they were missing in their everyday lives.
I love the Black Girl Magic Ball because we got us. If I go out with a bang, they'll remember that Mahogany worked her a** off to make sure all the Black girls everywhere knew that she was the light. We are the blueprint.
For more information on Mahogany L. Browne, her work, and her future projects, visit her website or follow her on IG @mobrowne.
Featured image by Anthony Artis
