I had yearned to visit New Zealand since age 11. Thirty years later, I manifested my dream

17.08.2023 - 11:47 / lonelyplanet.com / Samantha Brown

Deesha Dyer is the co-founder and executive director of beGirl.world Global Scholars, an organization that empowers teen girls through education and travel. BeGirl has partnered with Lonely Planet to raise awareness about their passport-equity project and to celebrate and continue its mission. In this first-person essay, Dyer shares how she made her travel dream of a trip to New Zealand a reality, confirming that manifesting your travel destiny sometimes really does work.

Science was always my favorite class, especially in middle school, as my inquisitive and creative mind started to mature enough to understand how the world and everything in it connected.

One day in 1990, we were learning about plants: how sun and water conspire to create everything we see around us. When my fabulous teacher Ms Moser instructed us to open our textbooks, I was immediately struck by a photo of a large, lush field with all types of colorful flowers. It curved up a hill and seemed to go on for miles.

Where was this place?

I glanced down to the corner to read the small italicized writing: New Zealand. I folded the corner of the page so I could look at again it from time to time. 

This started a love affair with this beautiful country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But I was just a kid from Philadelphia; New Zealand was so far away. Traveling to me was going to the Jersey Shore or to visit family in Queens, New York – certainly not boarding a plane or crossing an ocean to leave the country.

In seventh grade, I kept a spinning globe in my room – the cheap kind, with the plastic peel on sections that would slowly creep up after a few years, only to be held down by scotch tape (less expensive than buying a new one). I kept North America pointing toward me, for if I had to turn the globe left or right to see another country, that was a sign that I couldn’t afford to go there. New Zealand seemed like another planet away, one you would need a million dollars and a rocket ship to get to.

I had neither. 

As I grew up, graduated from high school (in 1995) and learned more about travel, I realized that while I didn’t need either of those things to explore, I certainly had to find another path to see the world – because I still couldn’t afford it. I jokingly (and, um, seriously) prayed for a job that would pay me to travel. I spent the early 2000s watching Travel Channel host Samantha Brown, who seemed to have the best job in the world: eating, drinking and galavanting around the globe. Someone please pay me to do this! I thought.

This led me to short stints with American Airlines and the Omni Netherland Plaza hotels, where I flew and stayed in places for a huge discount. Yet I was never able to use the benefits for international