California-born Woni Spotts is the first Black woman to have travelled to every continent, every country, and 22 territories in the world – we spoke to her about her momentous achievement
As children, many of us express dreams that, though big, exciting, and endearing, fizzle out before long, due to the difficulties that come with really achieving them.
However, Woni Spotts can now claim to have achieved what is a mere childhood dream for countless numbers of people throughout the ages – as she has reached the goal of visiting every country and continent in the world, becoming the first Black woman to do so! Thinking of a country as an exception? You won’t find one – Spotts has literally visited every one, including Antarctica, and including territories such as Greenland.
Spotts, the founder of a successful eCommerce company, has been a traveller for most of her life, having started as child when her entertainer parents took her on tour. However, her journey towards this impressive achievement really began in an unusual way: at the age of 15, she was the participant in a travel documentary, aiming to share the experiences of a teenager from the States seeing the world and the things she learns along the way.
‘At the time, I didn’t think about it as completing anything – I was basically just going along for the ride,’ she tells me via phonecall. ‘I didn’t have it in my mind that I wanted to accomplish anything. What happened was that my father’s friend was a producer who wanted to make a film about different world locations; he’d already travelled extensively, and was looking to portray a lot of different perspectives interacting out in the world.’
So from 1979 until 1982, Spotts, her family and a small crew travelled to 165 different countries, gathering footage for the limited series Passing Through, in which she’d come into contact with plenty of different cultures. Being a young person at the time, a large part of the appeal of the programme was the fact that she’d be coming into contact with a lot of the places she’d been with limited prior knowledge, or prejudice – she was something of a clean slate, and unsurprisingly, the experience planted the seeds of exploration in her.
However, as life often does, other things got in the way – after filming for the documentary ended, she returned to her normal, stationary life, and travelling took a back seat.
‘I went back to school and really got immersed in normal life,’ she explains. ‘I didn’t really travel that much internationally and it wasn’t until around 2001-2005 when I started to consider moving overseas. I was feeling like, “Why should I be restricted living in the United States? Maybe there’s another country for me that I would like better.”’
So, now in her mid-30s, Spotts had her sights set on Europe – having not been there in her previous trips. Though she had the idea of living in France, and Spain, it didn’t work out. However, it took another decade for her travel bug to get fully reactivated, and for her to complete the task she’d set out with years ago: fully exploring the world.
With the help of guided tours and travel groups, from 2014 to 2018, Spotts’ travel took her to the following countries: Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Spain, Italy, Vatican City, Turkey, the UK, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Canada, Belize, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Samoa, Australia, India, Cambodia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, Tanzania, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan.
To have travelled as far and as widely from California as she has is an impressive feat in itself, and one to be proud of forever. However, the additional achievement of being the first Black woman to ever do it is the cherry on top – and while she was on her travels, she didn’t even have it in mind as something she could conquer.
‘I didn’t know that it existed – I knew that travelling to all the countries had already been done, so I wasn’t trying to break any records; I saw this as a personal thing. I only started realising that when I saw another Black woman travelling to all the countries and emphasising that it was a big deal. I said in the back of my mind: ‘Oh wow, I’m doing this but I didn’t think it was going to be acknowledged as something of importance!’
Once she reached her final destination in November 2018, she’d come to the end of a journey that had started nearly 40 years ago, and had inadvertently broken ground that no other black woman had before. She received an official travel certificate from the Traveler’s Century Club on April 19th 2019, marking the achievement, and marking a milestone that very few will get the opportunity to reach.
Interestingly, much of Spotts’ journey was done offline, in comparison to the wealth of exciting travel bloggers there are on social media today. Though Instagram allows us to see women all over the world, exploring and enjoying themselves, for someone who’s been travelling for most of her life, this is not one of Spotts’ priorities.
‘Black women have been travelling – this isn’t some new craze,’ she tells me. ‘My parents were entertainers and some of their Black American friends set up dance studios and art-focused things in Europe, and they travelled extensively… and even outside of entertainment, black people have ben travelling this whole time. There was no social media though, when those ladies were travelling in the Fifties and Sixties – and I have friends today who travel, and they don’t post on social media. Just because you can’t see every step, doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.’
Instead, Spotts made sure to keep meticulous track of where she’d been to the classic way – a pen, some paper, and her passport.
‘When I was doing the documentary, I had to keep very detailed notes because the whole point was that I was going to tell him what my impressions were like: whether the country had visible levels of poverty; whether people were happy – so I always kept very detailed notes and diaries. It’s also easy to keep track of because I have the passport stamps, and the itineraries, so I started assembling all of the information: like 400 pieces of paper!
‘I personally like to see the things that a country is defined for; getting off the plane and see two things or something that defines a region to make me feel like, “Yeah I’m there.” But technically if you’ve landed and you’ve gone on the land you’ve been there.’
Now that she’s literally seen the world, now there’s an element of pressure that’s been taken off; Spotts can revisit the places she likes best, rather than push herself to go to somewhere merely for the fact that it’s new – she tells me that her preferred region of late is the Mediterranean. Her journey is a real testament to the idea that you can take your time to achieve your goals, no matter how big – because once it’s done, there’s no telling just how many people you can inspire.
