Transformative Travels and Profound What-Ifs with Joel David Bond

In this heartwarming and enlightening episode, we sit down with Joel David Bond, an extraordinary individual whose life journey has been a testament to the power of cultural exchange and empathy. From his childhood explorations to becoming a dedicated advocate for bridging cultural divides, Joel’s story is both inspiring and thought-provoking.

Key Themes:

1. Cultural Exploration and Education:
   • Joel shares his upbringing in a family that valued diverse experiences.
   • His educational journey spans across the US and UK, including his time at St. John’s College.
   • Teaching at a British international school in Iraq amidst challenging circumstances, such as the presence of ISIS, Joel paints a vivid picture of the warmth and resilience of the local people.
2. Firsthand Accounts of Refugee Crises:
   • Joel’s evacuation from Iraq in 2023 led to a transformative five-month stay on a Greek island.
   • Volunteering to teach English to refugees, Joel gained deep insights into the global migrant crisis.
   • The episode highlights the perilous journeys refugees undertake, from human smuggling to dangerous sea crossings.
3. Advocacy for Change:
   • Joel underscores the dire conditions in refugee camps and the lengthy asylum processes.
   • He passionately advocates for increased investment in foreign aid and development, emphasizing a shift from militaristic approaches to more humanitarian solutions.
4. Empathy and Leadership in Post-Conflict Societies:
   • Joel shares his experience with a service learning initiative in Iraq, designed to educate students about volunteerism.
   • He emphasizes the importance of empathy in rebuilding societies and prioritizing citizen needs over governmental interests.
5. Inspiration and Positivity:
   • Drawing from personal experiences like hiking the Camino in Spain and offering private tours, Joel aims to inspire listeners to seek purpose and positivity.
   • The episode concludes with a powerful message: remain open to change and focus on positive outcomes when making life choices.

Takeaway Message:
Joel David Bond’s journey is a testament to the transformative power of empathy, cultural exchange, and purposeful living. His story encourages us to look beyond the headlines, understand the human stories behind global issues, and remain committed to making a positive impact in the world.

Tune In To Learn:

• How personal experiences can shape a lifelong commitment to cultural understanding.
• The real stories behind the global refugee crisis and what can be done to help.
• The importance of empathy and leadership in healing and rebuilding societies.

Join us for an episode filled with warmth, wisdom, and a call to action to embrace change and foster positivity in our lives and communities.

Joel's Book - As Large as Your Spirit: A Reverse Refugee Memoir

Contact Joel
Instagram: @JoelDavidBond
Facebook: @JoelDavidBond
LinkedIn:

Contact Brad @ Life Changing Challengers
Instagram: @bradaminus
Facebook: @bradaminus
X(Twitter): @bradaminus
YouTube: @lifechangingchallengers
LifeChangingChallengers.com

Chapters

• 0:26 Explorer's Education and International Travel Journey
• 10:58 Global Perspectives on Humanitarian Crisis
• 20:29 Escape and Asylum
• 29:29 Refugee Crisis and Promoting Empathy
• 39:55 Cross-Cultural Connections and Empathy
• 47:58 Positive What-Ifs

Transcript

Brad Minus: 0:26

All right, and welcome back to Life-Changing Challengers. Again, I'm your host, brad Minus, and I am super honored today to probably have one of the most interesting episodes with me I have. You're not going to believe this, ladies and gentlemen, but I have Bond, joel David Bond, and he's with us today. He's a speaker, he's an author, he's a traveler. He's going to talk to us a little about reverse refugees. But first, how are you doing today, joel? I'm doing excellent Brad.

Joel David Bond: 0:57

Thanks so much for having me on today.

Brad Minus: 0:59

Oh no, we appreciate you being here and Joel's in Kansas City right now, but he spends a lot of his time overseas. He's a true explorer and I'm really excited about it. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, your childhood, the complement of your family and the environment you had growing up?

Joel David Bond: 1:17

Yeah, so my whole mission in life really is to help people connect across cross-cultural boundaries, help you navigate those sorts of cultural terrain. Growing up, I remember playing make-believe with your friends out in the schoolyard. You know, police, fireman, nurse, doctor, whatever it is I always played explorer. I wanted to be Indiana Jones growing up, my best friend. She lived sort of catty-quarter behind our house and we lived in this developing neighborhood and there were these big boulders at the end of the road that backed up to this big park and there's a ravine there and it was all sort of under development and I remember growing up and just thinking this was the end of the world right here, it's the end of our neighborhood being developed. And I always wanted to go and explore and like, let's go play. We call them the dinosaur rocks. Let's go play on the dinosaur rocks, let's go jump into the ravine, let's do all you know.

Joel David Bond: 2:05

And I just have such fond memories of like always wanting to see what was around the next corner and I think that's just sort of innate built within me. I'm going to call it genetic. I'll blame my mother for that. I just have these strong memories of always growing up and playing. You know, make believe explorer. You know Indiana Jones let's, you know, fly off to the moon and be an astronaut. Or, you know, go and find some lost civilization someplace, an astronaut. Or go and find some lost civilization someplace. And so that, really, I think, has just been my clarion call. My entire life has just been to see what's around the next corner, and it's stuck with me ever since I was a kid.

Brad Minus: 2:39

What did your mother do for a living?

Joel David Bond: 2:42

So my mother was a stay-at-home mom for most of my growing up and then transitioned into being a librarian for a long time. But both of my parents were keen on letting my brothers and I explore and understand the world beyond our own confines. We didn't have a lot of money to travel growing up. We never really went anywhere that I can recall, other than a few camping trips here in the Midwest. They always wanted to bring the world to our doorstep. We'd go on mom's field trips to the art museum or the local cultural festival, or she made connections just through local churches or organizations with refugees.

Joel David Bond: 3:17

Growing up I didn't know they were refugees. They were just these really cool people that showed up at our house who were from Kenya or El Salvador or wherever, and she just wanted to make sure that we knew that the rest of the world was out there. And so by the time I got to college and was able to sort of travel more extensively on my own, the stage was set. Now it's spoiled for life. Mom's field trips had ruined me, wow. So my undergraduate was here in the US, just outside of Chicago, but I finished my master's just a few years ago out of the University of Nottingham in the UK.

Brad Minus: 3:49

Oh nice Okay but I finished my master's just a few years ago out of the University of Nottingham in the UK. Oh, nice, okay, so I'm from Chicago, so you need to tell me where did you go to school?

Joel David Bond: 3:57

I went to Wheaton College, just outside of Chicago.

Brad Minus: 3:59

Yeah, I grew up in Bartlett, oh nice, right down the street. See, small world right, small world right. You went to Nottingham for business school. I went to DC. I went to business school. You got your master's in international. Very sweet, all right. So MSCD, right.

Joel David Bond: 4:15

Yeah, so I started with the PGCE, which is a postgraduate certificate in education and that just masters in education, curriculum design basically.

Brad Minus: 4:24

What did you find in the difference between the education system in Chicago here in the States versus Nottingham?

Joel David Bond: 4:32

You know it's a little bit hard to compare because it's apples for oranges in this regard because my undergrad versus my master's having worked alongside British education for a long time, both in high school and primary school levels all the way up through master's degree it is much more regimented over there in terms of you kind of get channeled into a particular track and so that you're much more focused and a lot of the onus, I feel lies more on the student rather than the teacher. As a student, the responsibility to learn is on you and I feel here in the us we tend to spoon feed our studentsa bit more than what happens over there in the UK.

Brad Minus: 5:15

Well, that's super interesting. I happen to follow a couple of people. The biggest thing with turning point USA right now is they're like hey, you know, college is a scam. You can learn more just by reading books and getting out into the world and doing all this stuff at. Exactly what you're saying is you're getting all this stuff for all this money, and what you're basically stating sounds excellent to me as far as being you know, maybe the rest of the world's got a better idea on how to actually get an education versus basically Disneyland.

Joel David Bond: 5:42

Yeah, I mean British education. The education system in the UK is actually one of their biggest exports in terms of like commodity, you know, in quotes, and so bring, you know, foreign students coming into the UK as well. As you know, programs like Pearson, cambridge International, et cetera, you know, export their curriculum and their system around the world to all these international schools, which is actually how I got into teaching was through Cambridge International and British International School schooling. So yeah, I mean I found in general the system over there is very systematic. The Brits in general, having naturalized as a British citizen myself, like I understand, you know from the inside, you know it's very much of an organizational system where, like there's structures, like the routines, which appeals to my nature. I think the responsibility for education, for learning, really does lie a lot more on the student over there. There's a sort of sense that students need to do their own research in order to come to their own conclusions.

Brad Minus: 6:38

Was it St John's? It's over on the East Coast, where and one of these colleges basically is, every year you're given 100 books. Oh, wow, and I mean that's the curriculum. All four years freshman, sophomore, junior, senior you're given a hundred books. Oh, wow, and I mean that's the curriculum. All four years freshman, sophomore, junior, senior you're given a hundred books and at the end of the year you're given a written test and then you have to defend it. You've got to defend it and you have to go up for orals and they literally the professors, will give you questions, theoretical, not did you read the book? The theoretical side is what you learned, and I always thought that that was fascinating. And I can go up on tension. You and I can talk about education forever. So let's move on. So you graduate from Nottingham, and then what happens?

Joel David Bond: 7:23

My graduation from Nottingham I came in 2022 was when I actually finished the degree. Prior to that, I lived in the UK for 12 years and I worked in outdoor education, working with students and developing them in outdoor settings, doing group dynamics and socialization games, that sort of thing and I left that after about seven years and ended up finding a position in traditional education in British schooling, but at a British international school in Iraq, and so that's in 2016, I moved over to Northern Iraq and the Kurdistan region it was about an hour from the border with Iran and spent seven years working in education over there, helping rebuild in a post-conflict society, basically, and that was a phenomenal experience that lasted all the way up until this last October. Just absolutely loved living in the middle east, loved living in iraq, found that the people were the most incredibly warm, welcoming, hospitable people I'd ever met in the world and, yeah, phenomenal time there.

Brad Minus: 8:23

I was called back to the military in 2003 for an advance party to Iraq and Afghanistan. So over here at Central Command in Florida, so yeah, the people are pretty amazing. If they're you know not extremist.

Joel David Bond: 8:40

Yeah, what I found when I first moved over there I mean, isis was still active in 2016. They were on their way out, but they were still active in parts of the country and I remember taking this position almost on a lark, like I hadn't really thought about what was happening in that part of the world. I was just like it's just like a good job, and I had the spirit of adventure. You know, I've got this indiana jones side of me. That's like let's go and do this right. But I also had this, you know, sort of fear and trembling in me as well. That was like, oh my goodness, like where am I going I get himself into? And I had to kind of step back for a moment and tell myself that you know, what's happening on the news is only a fraction of reality. You know it's real, the news is real, that stuff happens, but it's one percent of, you know out of the hundred percent of things that are happening on a daily level.

Joel David Bond: 9:29

And when I first first got this position, it was in a city called Slimani that I'd never heard of, and there's 2 million people that live around the region of Slimani there. And I said to my mother when I, you know, because she of course was, you know, aghast she's like, oh my gosh, where are you moving? And I said, well, mom, have you ever heard of the city? And she's like, well, no. And I'm like that's because nothing happens there. There's 2 million people get up and take their kids to school and go visit grandma, and buy milk from the supermarket and watch the football game and go to work and do all the things that you and I would do.

Joel David Bond: 9:59

It just so happens to be in a part of the world that has bad press most of the time back to america, because of protests and violence and racism and everything else that happens in politics and society, and you know gun control and whatever else. So you know, if you're just looking at the news, you know america is a terrible place, you know. Yeah, so some people might think it is a terrible place either way, but I mean, you know, you have to sort of take it with the good with the bad and recognize that, yes, the news is a part of daily reality, but it's only one small percentage of it, and that there's so much of your daily life that revolves around the good things and that's probably why there's the opinion of a lot of people about America right now which is negative, just because all they're getting is the news, right.

Brad Minus: 10:48

But you went to Wheaton College, right? Nothing happens. Freaking Wheaton and Carroll Stream, glen, ellyn, bartlett, you know, nothing happens over there. You know if something happens, it's huge right. And it's probably the same way in the city that you can pronounce that I can't in Iraq, that I can't in Iraq. So I get it. And you know that's the same as I grew up I think I'm a little bit older than you, but I grew up and there was like there was like five channels two, five, seven, nine, 11, and 32. Those were the only channels we had, and news came on at five, six and 10. And that was it. But now, with CNN and all these different outlets, right, you get bombarded with all this information. So I can you know, and people don't seem to understand that you're getting bombarded with the 1%, yeah, yeah.

Joel David Bond: 11:39

You are just being bombarded left, right and center all the time, and I genuinely feel like the human spirit isn't designed to withstand that kind of weight of the world. We're designed to live in smaller communities Socially, anthropologically speaking, we're designed to live in smaller groups of 150 people plus. That's like your network, right? And here we are bearing the weight of 8 billion people on the nightly news every night. We're not evolutionarily designed to do that.

Joel David Bond: 12:05

A part of me, yes, it's good to keep up with what's happening in the world, but, yeah, you don't have that empathic energy to expend for everybody. That bandwidth just doesn't exist. And so it's learning to balance the that bandwidth within the community where you can serve, where you can actually make a difference, also recognizing that your communities do have impact on other communities around the world. You have no impact on that you can directly influence. And so for me, it's balancing you know, what do you know and what can you bring into your world. But also, how can you focus your energy and your empathy and your resource to actually make a difference in your immediate community?

Brad Minus: 12:44

that's powerful. You had said that you went to Iraq after you finished your undergrad. Well, no, you went to the UK, yes, and you did some teaching. And then when did you end up going to Iraq? In 2016. All right, 2016. Yeah, 2016. And then you just said you just finished in 2022?.

Joel David Bond: 13:03

Yeah, so just last October in 2023, I was asked to evacuate from Iraq by the United States State Department. That ended my life there very quickly. I had 24 hours to leave and had basically seven years of my life. That got packed up and shipped out right away.

Brad Minus: 13:21

Okay, so that was the deals of October 7, 2023. Yeah, actually, and it got you out of there, but you had a break.

Joel David Bond: 13:32

There was a break. That break is that year of the world that we shall not name, 2020, where I decided I was going to take a spring break vacation. Actually, I was just going to be gone for a week. So, march of 2020, I'm in iraq and I'm midway through my master's degree, finishing up my paper there and sort of doing distance learning on that point and doing Skype calls with my supervisor up in the UK, and decided it was time to sort of just downshift a little bit for all the great things that I can say about Iraq and how much I loved living there it is an intense place to live about Iraq and how much I loved living there it is an intense place to live. And so I said let's go someplace, kind of a little bit off grid, downshift for a week and like just regather before I come back and finish off this degree and finish off the academic year and you know, see where we go from there.

Joel David Bond: 14:21

So I flew off to this lesser touristed Greek Island, just off the coast of Turkey actually, and the day I arrived I wouldn't just my carry-on bag, thinking I'd be there for a week, right in a villa by the seaside. It was a little resort with very limited internet access and I'm like this sounds great, perfect retreat, just like downshift, you know, kind of go off grid a little bit, do some outdoor sports and activities mountain climbing, sea kayaking, whatever and the day I arrived on the island, the World Health Organization used the words global pandemic and the dominoes fell immediately. Borders were shut and what was going to be a one-week vacation on this Greek island dragged on into five months.

Brad Minus: 15:01

Wow, of course, at the time.

Joel David Bond: 15:04

Nobody knew it was going to be that long. It was just another two weeks, we're going to quarantine another two weeks and it just dragged on. I, of course, don't speak Greek. I'd never been to this Greek island before. I didn't know anybody. I'd just gone by myself, totally isolated on this little mini retreat, somewhat off grid, and ended up just alone. And I was the only guest in this villa for four out of the five months that I was there. And the owner may he rest in peace is a great man. He was so friendly.

Joel David Bond: 15:38

It was just like I can't, you know, I can't charge you full price. Act of god, like just pay me monthly rent, here's the keys, the laundry room, take care of yourself, just don't give me covid. I was like okay. So I basically was kind of left my own devices and would walk to and from town every day. It's about a five mile walk one way to the town, to the one little tiny corner mini market where I would load up my backpack with bread and peanut butter and walk five miles back every day. I lost a lot of weight.

Joel David Bond: 16:06

I spent a lot of time just kind of video journaling and sitting by the sea and doing a lot of reading, a lot of introspective time really, and it was about two months into the entire experience as local restrictions started to lift.

Joel David Bond: 16:20

International borders were still closed, but locally on the greek islands, things were starting to lift and so I was able to go across the island. I was going to discover that there's a refugee camp on the far side of the island that was filled with all these refugees from iraq and syria, afghanistan, iran, all these places. Here I am a man from the west, caught in greece trying to get back to my adopted home in the middle east, who ends up volunteering to teach english to these refugees who are caught in greece trying to get to the west, ended up changing each other's lives immensely. I learned so much about the global migrant crisis, about what it is to be a refugee, about the whole underworld of trading people smuggling, as well as some of the root causes what's causing migration on this scale and then, of course, was able to give a voice a literal voice in english to a lot of these refugees who are seeking asylum onward in europe. So it really was a phenomenal experience I wish to never repeat so with all that time in iraq?

Brad Minus: 17:20

I know you were teaching english, but were you, did you also learn some arabic or I Arabic? There's so many dialects I can't remember what they were speaking over there. It wasn't Farsi.

Joel David Bond: 17:30

So the area where I lived, the main dialect of Kurdish was Surabi, yeah, surabi, surabi, kurdish, yeah. So I did pick up, I tell people I know enough to get into trouble, just that out of it. And so I managed to be conversational on a basic level. Most of my daily workings were in english. My students, everything, was taught in english. The school was, um, operated in english, so I really had limited scope to learn and practice, but I made some headway and I'm really, you know, pleased with what I was able to accomplish on that did?

Brad Minus: 18:00

were you able to communicate enough there? Were they speaking sorani too, or did they all have different dialects?

Joel David Bond: 18:06

They had mostly different dialects. So I remember I had two students and this vignette actually appears in my book, but it was one of the most shocking moments of my whole experience I had two students who were from Syria and they spoke Kurmanji, the alternate dialect. Really there's kind of two main dialects of Kurdish and Kurmanji is the more widely spoken one and there's enough similarities that I was able to make connections, you know, in basic vocabulary. But I remember you know these two young boys are living in this refugee camp. They were teenagers, not even 20, and the conditions in this camp on the island were so terrible that one night they were brought back by the Coast Guard because they had been caught trying to swim back to Turkey.

Joel David Bond: 18:58

So they'd paid thousands of dollars to be smuggled across the Aegean Sea into Greece, ended up in this refugee camp of dollars to be smuggled across the Aegean Sea into Greece, ended up in this refugee camp, and the conditions were such that they thought, well, it's better if we just go anywhere, but here and I think the implication was we could swim back to Turkey.

Joel David Bond: 19:20

It's about a mile at its narrowest point to Turkey, which is a mile through open water, deep water. It's not particularly an easy swim to be greeted by mountains on the other side in the wilderness of Turkey, but I think the implication really was it'd be better to sleep at the bottom of the sea than it would be to stay in the refugee camp. Thankfully, both those boys are alive and well and they have gained asylum and have been relocated into Europe. Now they're prospering. I'm connected with them on social media and so I see them now and again doing really well, but some of the stories of those students and their lives and how they got to where they were and what they were escaping from just ripped my heart to shreds.

Brad Minus: 19:56

So can you share some of that I would be very interested to and I'm sure a lot of people would be interested in about. You know, we're kind of privileged here in America, so you know, I don't think anybody really understands what you were talking about. As far as the underground and the migrant issues that are going on, and especially when you say that this camp was dire, I don't know if we can actually picture that. So if you can bring a picture to that, I think it would help a lot.

Joel David Bond: 20:18

So I guess maybe the best way to describe it would be to kind of walk you through what a lot of these refugees went through, because I interviewed quite a few of them for my book and I just also overheard their stories on a day-to-day level. But you have a lot of these places where, politically, the systems are just crumbling and there's no real hope for a lot of, particularly the younger generation. So I'm going to focus on Iraq in particular. There's a really large youth boom, so the younger generation, sort of 30 and below, are just this massive growing population there and the infrastructure of the country just isn't such that it's going to support that kind of a workforce. Basically there isn't enough industry, there's not enough jobs, basically, and so a lot of these young people find themselves without any prospects for a future, without any sense of hope, and so a lot of these young people find themselves without any prospects for a future, without any sense of hope, and so there's this constant yearning to go someplace where they might be able to make a living, where they'd be able to do something worthwhile, find meaning with their lives. And, surprisingly, a lot of the refugees that have come across, the asylum seekers, were very highly trained Doctors, lawyers, politicians, engineers. These are not the untrained, unskilled, uneducated Now. Lawyers, politicians, engineers these are not the untrained, unskilled, uneducated Now that does exist in the refugee population, but a lot of them had been through university, had high-level positions in politics or in society and, for whatever reason, life was untenable. They held opposing ideologies to the party in power, opposing ideologies to the patented of the party in power, or they were in a country where homosexuality wasn't allowed or where a political religious beliefs didn't align with the culture at large. Whatever it is, plenty of people had found themselves where they were unable to say their home country.

Joel David Bond: 21:58

The first step that a lot of people do is they get a visa to turkey.

Joel David Bond: 22:01

If you're an international migrant, turkey is your gateway because it's relatively they've got relatively lax immigration laws. That's fairly easy to get, a tourist visa at least, and once you're in the country you can disappear in the countryside. A lot of them will find themselves in the tourist visa into Turkey and then disappear in the megapolis of Istanbul. There's actually boarding houses all throughout the city where these migrants and these refugees, asylum seekers who are wanting to go onward to Europe, will stay in these makeshift hostels for months on end, waiting for the right opportunity, the right smuggler, the right price to get out and into Europe. And so you know, you find these houses where they have 30, 40, 50 people crammed into a two bedroom house, just bunk beds everywhere, and you live, unable to work, unable to sort of. You know, you maybe cash in hand if you get a job someplace, but for deal with boat drivers and times and places and beaches and locations and truck drivers and places where you can hop on and be smuggled across, it'll charge upwards of $8,000 per person.

Brad Minus: 23:19

And we're talking USD equivalent to USD, the equivalent of USD $8,000?. Usd equivalent to USD.

Joel David Bond: 23:21

The equivalent $8,000?. What happens then is, once you've paid your money, you deposit half of the funds, usually at a Western Union or some money teller of that variety and anybody who's transferred money internationally through one of those services. You're given a long string of numbers, an alphanumeric code, where you take that number and you rip it in half and you give one half of that code to your smuggler who's brokering this whole deal with you, and you keep the other half and when you arrive safely on the other end, then you communicate the other half of that number so they can collect their money. So this is the whole guarantee kind of insurance policy that's coming out. There is just this alphanumeric string of numbers from the western union.

Joel David Bond: 24:04

So the smuggler will basically give you a time and a date and they'll often, if they're a quote-unquote good smuggler, will pick you up in a minibus and drive you down the coast somewhere to a deserted beach on the coast of Turkey, point you to the beach, say walk one mile that way and you'll find our guy with his boat there and you'll load up in the middle of the night and head out to sea. And the problem is that you know they bring in these boats that are, you know, basically designed for, you know, 10 or 12 passengers, and we'll cram up to 100 people onto these. 100 people men, women, children, no life vests, you know, out to the middle of the night. And the reality is as well that the drivers of these boats are often the ones who aren't able to raise the funds to pay for their passage, and so they pay for their passage by being the boat driver. Well, if you're from the middle of the desert in anbar province, iraq, you've never been in a boat that is going to drive across the open sea. So you're given five minute training on here's how the boat works. And then you're in charge of 100 men, women and children driving across the aegean sea towards the greek islands, praying to god that you don't get, you know, picked up by coast guard or pushed back or hit a reef someplace and drown.

Joel David Bond: 25:24

And I think it was last year or two years ago, just to Italy alone, there were 3,000 deaths of migrants on these boats that were crossing, and it was in the order of 150 plus thousand immigrants to Italy alone, order of 150 plus thousand immigrants to italy alone. You know greece, where I was, the island that I was stuck on. I was working with a refugee hotspot that was designed. The reception center was designed to hold 600 people. There were 6 000 people whoa living in this camp and this and to put this into perspective.

Brad Minus: 26:04

So you had said that back to Turkey, from where your island was, it was like a mile, yeah. So basically you've got people that are paying $8,000 to get down to the beach onto a dinghy. One mile, yeah, Just 1,600 meters Yep To the other side.

Joel David Bond: 26:28

Now the problem is $8,000. $ eight thousand dollars for a one mile boat ride. Now the problem is they have to do it in the middle of the night, it's all secretive, they've got no visas and because they're all inexperienced, they don't know the waters, they don't know the terrain, they don't know where they're going. That one mile boat ride often takes days.

Joel David Bond: 26:46

One of my students they left in the middle of the night and they were going to take this you know boat right across to the island. They thought they could make out the lights of the island on the horizon got turned around, the waves, the currents, whatever it was. They were eight hours, eight hours on the water, circling around through these little tiny islands and normally by daybreak that would have been picked up by the coast guard. But fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which side of the story you would like to fall on the coast guard were busy fighting a forest fire that was building up on the mountain, and so they crash land with their boat on this sort of picnic beach on the island and there's all these families on a Sunday morning out there, greek families having a Sunday morning picnic, and this boat full of refugees all tumble out of the water like bedraggled cats coming up on the shore, burkas and children and crying babies and everything.

Joel David Bond: 27:41

Of course. They called the authorities and the authorities came and rounded them up and then took them in for processing at the reception center. It's a terrible problem. It's a terrible problem no matter which way you cut it. 1% of the world's population is displaced due to conflict. Entire nation's worth of people that are displaced and find themselves in this process, and a lot of my students some of my students had been on the run and through the asylum seeking process and caught in the bureaucracy of it for upwards of seven years.

Brad Minus: 28:17

Oh geez yeah, I've heard that. I mean, at least here I know that going the right way to seek asylum, yeah, then goes through the paperwork and the bureaucracy could definitely at 10 years a running coach broke multiple records and basically said it took him and he was from israel and basically it took him 10 years from the time he stepped on to the united states to the point where he got his citizenship. Yeah, that might be actually fast compared to these other countries, just real quick. A question that popped up was so you had mentioned that it could be good or it could be bad. So what would happen if one of these boats got rescued by the Coast Guard? Coast Guard.

Joel David Bond: 29:01

So there's a lot of debate as to what the Frontex, which is the European Coast Guard administration body, there. There's a lot of debate as to whether or not they're doing good or evil. There have been reports. Technically they're supposed to patrol the waters and if there are boats of refugees and migrants, they're meant to basically provide assistance and guide them in towards that asylum hot point there. There've been reports that a lot of them are being pushed back and so they're basically being turned around and head back to Turkey. And it's really a catch 22 because, on one hand, these people are genuinely looking for a better life. They're coming from situations that their lives are maybe in peril back at home and they're willing to put their lives in further peril to escape the situation they're living in. And so there's a level of empathy where it's like well, you'd love to be able to provide these people a decent life, right, the opportunity that you feel that they should have, that you feel that they should have, but at the same time, you also need to be mindful of your own citizenry and your own political systems and structures that are in place and the amount of resources that you have to provide for immigrants. And so there's this kind of you know, do you push back, do you bring in, how do you process? And when the floodgates just keep coming, because Turkey more or less just basically says there's the shore, go. You know they're trying to figure out a way to ease the pressure valve on their own country. One of the policies would be change your visa policy. That might help. But all of these issues are so interrelated and so interconnected that one little change right here might have a knock-on effect in other ways that you can't foresee or you don't know. It really is just sort of this really complex and terrible situation. But you have so much empathy at least I do now having seen the conditions inside these camps, having worked with a lot of these students, having heard a lot of their stories and then having lived for seven years in a part of the world that has generated more migrants than any other places in the world, and just seeing what I can do to not just help on the the resettlement end of things, because I think we need to do that more.

Joel David Bond: 31:16

The us only takes I think the statistic is we take one percent of that, one percent. So if one percent of the world's population is classed as refugees. The us will admit their quota one percent of that. So, you know, we're taking a very small percentage of those refugees into our country and I think we need to provide services. You know, I think there's a duty of care that we need to provide to those that do come in, and there's avenues and ways to do that, obviously. But I also think we need to be taking a look at the origin point, like where are these refugees coming from and what kind of foreign aid and assistance can we provide that will help stem that flow, that will actually empower local populations to make those sorts of choices of self-governance, in a way that they feel they have a future and they have a hope.

Joel David Bond: 32:06

Because, right, what we're doing militarily is we're coming in and we're creating chaos, trying to impose democracy on cultures that don't particularly want it, because we think it's the right way. We're imposing our viewpoint, basically, on the rest of the world. And while democracy has its pros and its cons, it doesn't necessarily, is not a fit all for everybody, it's not a one size fits all. And I think what's happening is, you know, we go in with our military, but we're not going in with our soft power, as much as we could, and I think it's the former Secretary of State, anthony Blinken, I think under Trump. He said something along the lines of if you are not going to fully fund the State Department, then I'm going to need more ammunition, the implication being, if you're not willing to invest in foreign aid and foreign development, then we need to beef up national security. And if we could just tip those balance in favor of adding more towards foreign aid and foreign development, we'd have to worry so much less about national security, because we're actually doing good rather than building walls.

Brad Minus: 33:08

And I like that idea a lot better. I'd rather not displace people and having them have to migrate away from, you know, regimes that are not necessarily for their citizens. I would rather. That sounds to me like a much better investment for us than for us to open up our floodgates and, you know, end up taking care of migrants more than we take care of our own citizens. I think there's got to be a spot, there's got to be a time when we have to take care of our own. I think you're right. I think it'd be cheap, yeah.

Joel David Bond: 33:40

I mean, I mean it's, it's a slow burn investment, like the immediate investment is more guns, more walls, more whatever. Like that gives you an immediate picture result. Right, like you can build a wall, you can build more guns. You're like, okay, problem solved, quote, unquote. All you're doing is you're creating more resentment, you're creating more difficulty. You're not solving the problem, you're just curing the symptom. And so the long solution, the long haul, the slow burn option really is to invest more in foreign aid for development and understanding how these cultures and these other places can develop those systems of self-governance, so that there's not this constant outpouring of refugees.

Brad Minus: 34:37

So how do you think that we would be able to help these other governments that are not necessarily a democratic republic Like I mean, you've got a monarchy and that king is good, you know, let's say, saddam Hussein was actually a good person and actually literally wanted good for his people we wouldn't think twice. Right, there's no reason for us to topple a regime that actually works. Yeah, right, there's no reason for us to topple a regime that actually works. Yeah, how do you think that we could go about that, as far as you know, us helping out a different type of government that we're not necessarily educated on I mean, that's the million dollar question, right, and if we had answers to that, then you know, yeah, you and I both would be millionaires.

Joel David Bond: 35:19

One thing that I have found that has really inspired me has been through education, and so as part of my master's dissertation, while I was in Iraq, is I actually developed a service learning initiative for my senior year students private international school. I've got the nieces and nephews of the prime minister basically in my class. These are the wealthy business owners, the politicians, this is the top 1% of the city that are attending my school, and for their senior year capstone project, I required all my students to engage in 12 hours of volunteer service over the course of the year and they had to read a number of articles written by former philanthropists, peace Corps volunteers, et cetera, and then engage in 12 hours of volunteer service over the course of the year and then write their own journal reflections that sort of mirrored what they were learning and what they were reading, and the final sort of capstone of that was I would take the students into one of the local IDP camps internally displaced persons, which are basically refugees within their own country and there was a camp that was just about 45 minutes outside of the town where we lived and I would take my students there and we'd take deliveries of clothing and toys and, and you know, go into the tents with the families and, you know, drink tea with them and have conversations and find out what it's like to live as the other 1%, the marginalized 1%. And so here I am, bringing in this potential leadership for the next generation to meet with the marginalized 1% that are hoping they can find anything of value in the future. The hope was one that I was able to provide some assistance to the refugees in the camp through the donations that we brought, but more so that I would be able to influence these young people who were going to be the next leaders of the country, the next business owners, the next politicians, that when they find themselves creating a new business policy or writing a law into existence, that they might have a reflex and think how might this affect those who are less fortunate than me?

Joel David Bond: 37:30

And what I found in the long run after doing the study over the course of three to four years I ran the program, is that number one. All of the students remember that experience immensely. It was just an incredible memory for them very formative and most of them came out of it either doing more volunteer service on their own or desiring to do more, and found themselves in a far more reflective state. Most of them had taken up journaling, had better time management skills, better self vision of leadership is the scenes that they reported that, having learned from that experience, was really phenomenal.

Joel David Bond: 38:08

And I think that kind of scenario, that kind of space within education, I think really is a promising way to help rebuild in a post-conflict society in a way that would be more in line with the cultures you're working in, because you can bring people together and people want to connect. We're naturally empathic people. It's a muscle that you have to exercise, but we are naturally empathic. We have this desire to connect with other people. And if you can bring people across those boundary lines, across those socio-ethnic, religious lines, to at least see that these people are not that different from me, they still are going to go visit grandma, they're still going to take their kids to school, they're still going to wake up and buy milk from the supermarket, right, same as in Iraq as they are in Chicago. Once you can recognize that and see those universal fundamentals, now you have a conversation where you can work with and help build systems that work with those people, rather than from your imposed ideas on them.

Brad Minus: 39:14

See that right, there is probably the most, that is the most powerful thing that I've heard in any one of my episodes so far. It's probably the most specific and a real winner when it comes to what people can actually accomplish and move our way up into the government, where we're trying to work with the government and filter down to the people. And it seems like you know, a lot of the governments just don't have their citizens and as priorities and that's pretty much what needs to change. So, with all of this that you've learned, you have a um, you have a business yourself, business yourself, um. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Joel David Bond: 40:07

uh, yeah, so I do public speaking and I'm a writer and a teacher as well, and so I do talks uh locally here around kansas city. My most recent uh talk has been actually about my experience hiking the Camino in Spain this last year and pairing the lessons that I learned from that with my evacuation from Iraq. Um, so it's a kind of a a kick in the gut, kind of has an emotional climax on that talk there. It's an inspiration on being able to view your life with purpose and meaning and how to draw those lessons out from life. But I do talks like that and I have a book out in the world. My book is as large as your spirit, a reverse refugee memoir by Joel David Bond that is available on Amazon and its own Kindle hardback and paperback. Also, my website, joel David Bond, has more of my work, some of my writings, as well as my public speaking.

Brad Minus: 41:00

So yeah, so I will definitely be linking your book in the show notes along with your website, which is joeldavidbondcom. So here's my question. This is kind of where I thought about it, because as I was going through your website and I just found where I found it before, this is where my question came from. I'm Joel David Bond and I specialize in creating experiences for both cross-cultural understanding and empathic connection. That right there, I guess. That's my question, because you've got it there. Then you've got contact me. So how do you do? Is there actually something that you do where that's specific, like? Do you create, like trips or retreats or something that create that cross-cultural understanding? Is that something that you do or is something that you're looking at doing?

Joel David Bond: 41:43

So I have done in the past private tours for people internationally. So I've taken people through the UK, norway, germany, denmark, poland, czech Republic, kurdistan, iraq, turkey. So I've taken people around through Europe and the Middle East and helped connect them with locals in those places. So, having've taken people around through Europe and the Middle East and helped connect them with locals in those places, so having meals with families, staying with local families and then also doing all the tourist things and seeing the sites as kind of immersive experience to help people engage with those cultures and learn more about what it's like to live in these places, so that is one side of what I have done. That is still something that I'm willing to do, that I'm able to do. It's just very kind of, on a very small scale. So if there are any listeners that are interested, please do reach out.

Brad Minus: 42:29

I'd love to go make something for you I might be joining you myself, because I would definitely like to know more and I think that, if you're up for it, hopefully that we can actually put you on here and have a couple episodes throughout the next couple of years, or whatever, and talk about different areas that you've been to, just basically getting that you've been through all these other places too Definitely want to talk to you about the Camino trip as well. I have one client that actually did finish it and I have another client that's supposed to be on her way in the next months. That would be definitely an interesting. Hopefully that we'll be able to speak again. We seem to have a good connection, so I would love that, but I really needed to get more into this one. We needed to talk about the reverse refugees, because I think that really opens up a lot of people's minds. Yeah, first of all, if you're in America, I don't think the privilege for granted. You might use it as a dirty word, but it's not when you think about this.

Brad Minus: 43:22

I mean when you talk about doctors and lawyers and these people that are like paying eight thousand dollars to go a mile so they can get out of a regime that is not necessarily in their best interest I mean, these are highly educated people.

Joel David Bond: 43:38

Yeah, this is who end up living, who end up living in slums, essentially, and migrating to countries where they don't speak the language and the best work they can find is janitorial yes, see, yeah, something's got to be done about that.

Brad Minus: 43:53

Yeah, so, but yeah, I almost can't even fathom it. I mean, I've been out in the boonies and I've been out, you know, on bivouac and I've been through where you've been through, well, not as north, more south, but still I can't, you know, I mean as a regular basis. I was there two, three weeks, three months at a time. That was it, and I'm back, right, but anybody could do that for a couple months, but when you're talking about the rest of your life, finding yourself just completely uprooted.

Joel David Bond: 44:20

And I think that's part of why I have such an empathic understanding of what the refugee experience is, because, you know, I found myself kind of in the circus mirror reflection of being a refugee myself. Now, here I am, caught on this Greek island for five months, albeit in this very privileged, you know sort of villa by the seaside. You know where I've got this, got this, you know, struck a bargain with the owner, basically. But I'm isolated, I'm alone, I've lost everything that I know. I can't get back to my loved ones. I think I may have accidentally moved to greece at this point because everything's closed and I can't, you know, I'm gonna lose money.

Joel David Bond: 44:53

I can't make my way back in the absence of being gone. I actually lost my house in iraq. It was sold out from underneath me and I had a friend move my stuff out for me in my absence. I mean, there's all this dramatic chaos around it, and so I totally get on an emotional level what these refugees are going through, because it's the same. It's that human connection, that's a universal connection, and while I may not be in that same situation, I'm not living in a tent on a hillside outside of a Greek village all the time. I know what it's like to lose everything, to not be able to go back to where I once was and to wonder you know how I'm going to connect, how I'm going to make a future for myself, and I can't communicate with anybody here?

Brad Minus: 45:38

Last question I have and this just came up randomly is I wanted to ask you about it earlier, but those IDPs that you were talking about, that you've been to, were most of them like the one in Greece, or were there some of them that were decent, at least for people, or did they all seem to be the same?

Joel David Bond: 45:52

The IDP camp that I would take my students to in Iraq made the refugee camp in Greece. I mean, that was the IDP camp in Iraq. It looks like the hilton by comparison. Oh man, yeah, I mean, it's still basic. Yeah, yeah, you're living under canvas, you're on a concrete pad with a shared toilet block around the corner, down these dirt paths, but by comparison, that is the height of luxury to what I saw in greece. I can't even imagine.

Brad Minus: 46:19

Just horrible. If that does not hit your heartstrings and make your mind just kind of like blow. I mean, I'm blown away just by the thought of this is what goes on the other side of the world. Just a picture of it is it's mind blowing, it's just absolutely mind blowing. I can't imagine. I can't imagine that people actually live this way, and they're living this way on purpose. Yeah, so, because there's no more or less. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So well, listen, thank you, Thank you for opening up our minds. Thank you, Thank you for showing us and giving us a picture of of what else is out there and helping us to learn not to take what we have right now for granted. Right, but I want everybody to go into the show notes and find Joel's website. Contact him If you want to talk to him. Are you active on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn, linkedin.

Joel David Bond: 47:15

Okay, and I have all at Joel.

Brad Minus: 47:16

David Bond everywhere. Great, and I will go ahead and link those as well. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much If you have any words of wisdom that you'd like to exit out with.

Joel David Bond: 47:28

I think the thing that I've been learning recently is we often hear about these really dramatic things and we're faced with these life choices. Right, you're faced with a choice and we often approach those choices with the negative. What if it goes wrong? What if it's terrible? What if I lose my life? What if I lose my money? What if I lose my family? What if? I think in those moments of fear, we often forget to look at the positive what ifs. What if it's amazing? What if you love it? What if you meet the people that will change your life for the better? For here on out, it's that concept of trying to bring in more of the positive what-ifs. And so if you, as a listener out there, are being faced with a challenge and you're at a crossroads and you're sat there asking yourself the what-if questions for the negatives, flip the tables and ask yourself a couple of positive what-ifs, because you might just find yourself heading down a path that's incredibly life-changing for the better.

Brad Minus: 48:26

That's fantastic. A positive what-ifs people. Hey, you can write another book. That's a good title.

Joel David Bond: 48:34

A positive what-ifs, that is a good one. I am working on my second book.

Brad Minus: 48:38

Yeah, no, that's a great, freaking title. I love it. So, anyway, thank you. Thank you so much, joel, and for the rest of you out there, you know, those positives, what ifs? That's what we need, right? So, anyway, for Joel and myself, thank you very much and we'll see you in the next one.