Dad to end trip to every country in the world with visit to site of wife's death
A man whose wife was killed by an elephant will return to the place of her death having travelled to every country in the world in her memory.
Barry Hoffner was in Dubai on the way to meet his wife Jackie in Nairobi in 2017 when he got a call that would change his life. A voice on the phone told him that she had been killed by an elephant in Botswana during her work preserving wildlife at the age of 55.
Barry changed route and headed to Spain to meet his youngest son, picking him up and taking him back to the US to grieve with his eldest.
"The shock of how it happened, so tragically.... you find yourself completely lost. When you're with a partner for 25 years and raise kids, you become part of each other. Then that's gone, along with your hopes and dreams," Barry told the Mirror.
For several years after Jackie's death the JP Morgan investment banker mostly stayed near his home in California, retiring from his work and winding down the olive oil vineyard he'd set up with his wife. And then, realising he could no longer sit through another lopsided dinner party with two sympathetic friends, Barry decided to hit the road.
Elephant forced to entertain tourists for 40 years is finally freed
Barry and his late wife Jackie (INSTAGRAM/@barryh99)
Barry has 22 countries left to visit (INSTAGRAM/@barryh99)"After a short period of time I went to Tajikistan and felt a little changed. I thought, 'Let's keep travelling and see what that brings'. Travelling by its nature, you think differently. I needed to think differently and you get to do it in an anonymous way [by travelling on our own]," the 63-year-old said.
Having spent much of his time with Jackie jetting off to various parts of the world with their kids, Barry realised that he'd already visited more than half the 193 UN Member States in the world, and that it might be possible to make it to all of them.
Over the past two and a half years the dad of two has been doing just that, spending most of his time working out how to get to the most remote, inaccessible parts of the world. In ticking off these less often visited nations, Barry has found himself connecting to people in new ways and finding a different means of working through his grief.
"I interview a lot of my guides, people from the travel community that I stay in contact with," Barry explained from an airport on the way to Dominica, the last Caribbean island on his 'to visit' list. "I've got a good Yemini friend, she's Muslim and I'm Jewish. We've been trying to change each other's narrative in a positive way. Such memories are implanted in my learning and way of thinking."
One country that proved particularly surprising and perspective altering was Syria. "You have these impressions of a place, but it was completely unexpected. It was very emotional experience seeing a place that is half destroyed," Barry said. "The people, they've been shut out of the world for 12 years, they've been the forgotten people. Nobody touches on the people left there, who love where they live, if not Assad. When you're there they see that as a sign the country is coming back to the world. I left feeling so much love for the people. I celebrated my 63rd birthday in Damascus with loads of strangers, they made me a cake."
Once Barry returns from Dominica - an island visited by sperm whales and encrusted with waterfall laden mountains - he will have 22 countries left to visit. If he manages to find a way into the currently closed North Korea, next year Barry plans to visit Botswana last - making his way to the Okavango Delta where Jackie was killed.
When he has completed the epic journey, Barry plans to continue pouring his time into the Caravan to Class foundation that he set up with Jackie 15 years ago during a visit to Timbuktu.
"We established a scholarship in her name. We have paid full scholarships for 25 women. We send them to Ghana to learn English in the summer, we give them laptops. Currently there are three people in Mali that work for the foundation," Barry explained. Each year five scholarship recipients are sent to a private university in Timbuktu to pursue their education, often moving hundreds if not thousands of kilometres away from their homes.
He added: "I admire them: their enthusiasm, perseverance, their optimism about their future, their desire to make a change in their country. The most common comment, by far, when I asked about their dreams was that they wanted to achieve independence so that they can control their futures, something rare for a woman in Africa….and a university degree will allow that for them."
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