
By Patrizia D'Adamo
No matter what our walk of life, we plan for the future, making choices we believe will lead to the life we envision. Though our choices do influence our lives, in reality, many of the life experiences that shape us are a culmination of chance encounters with people and places that end up defining us, making us who we are at any given moment in time. The combination of Jordan Salama's personal drive, choices and chance encounters paved the way for him to have a life changing experience that, through his passion and undeniable talent, he would ultimately be able to share in a way that would impact hundreds at Princeton and beyond.
While Jordan's journey is unique to his particular interests, it is ultimately his passion and drive for creative journalism, languages, and travel that drove him to build connections at Princeton while drawing on his lifetime experiences with people and places to ultimately create the perfect scenario for "Every Day the River Changes". Through the development and support of his senior thesis, the inspiration for the book, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese is deeply honored and proud to have been a part of that journey.
As you make your way through Princeton, we challenge you not only to utilize the multitude of resources available to you, but also to pay attention to the chance encounters that occur throughout your time here. Make those connections and visualize a path for yourself as flexible and adaptable as the Magdalena River... changing and mutating even when obstacles and challenges sometimes appear unsurmountable...she continues to flow.
By mapping the path of Jordan's journey along the Magdalena River, we hope to make a valuable contribution to Princeton's conversation around Jordan's book. Follow along by accessing the interactive map which includes amazing photos taken by Jordan himself along the way. You can also read Jordan's thoughts on his time with SPO, language learning, study abroad and what he wished he had included in the final print of "Every Day the River Changes". We hope you will find some inspiration as you map the way for your own journeys here at Princeton and beyond.
Jordan's thoughts on...
-
-
"I think that what I remember the best about my time with SPO was that it is a very warm place. It's a very warm wing of East Pyne, a department where people care about you, where you create long lasting relationships with the professors who you work with. Everybody's friendly, there's parties, there's dinners, there's get togethers, you feel like you're a part of something bigger than just you, you know? You have a support network around you. And you also have another kind of support, which is the resources to travel and do amazing things, not just in Princeton, but around the world. And that was the main reason why I wanted to go to SPO."
Jordan continued by saying that he chose SPO for the academic freedom he was given when it came to his research. He said, "one of the things that I really was looking for when I was trying to pick a department was which one would allow me to do a creative thesis that wasn't necessarily rigidly academic in scope, but more like creative writing. So that whittles it down already to just a few departments. But the reason I picked Spanish and Portuguese was because I realized that I could use it to to do what was more like a Regional Studies program and that was great!"
He went on to talk about how his advisors in SPO and other departments helped shape his thesis. "Both [my advisors] encouraged me to to have a narrative arc to the story to make sure that it wasn't just a random collection of encounters and interactions with people that were all really separated, but that I had a voice that was connecting all the pieces of the narrative together. And that was something that I struggled with throughout the entire thesis process. And I don't think it was necessarily even complete when I finished my thesis, but they planted the seeds for what ended up becoming the book, which is seeing the snapshot of a place through my eyes."
-
-
"What I would say to people who aren't considering going abroad ...You don't have to necessarily travel far to have the kinds of experiences that are worth traveling for. I think with the pandemic, we all stopped moving around as much. And one of the things that I had to do as a travel writer or a writer who writes about the world, was find pockets of the world close to where I live. Luckily, I live in a city like New York, where you can find these amazing pockets of culture wherever you go. And so I gravitated towards "adventures" that I could have just a couple miles from my house that brought the world to my doorstep. So I don't necessarily think you have to leave the country to have an international experience because we live in a country that is made up of immigrants."
He continues... "I can also say something, which is one of the things that I knew after my freshman year, was that I didn't want to do a two month marathon and study abroad type thing, which a lot of the formal programs at Princeton are eight weeks. I was homesick. It was hard. When you go to college for the first time, your first year, it's really hard. And I don't even live that far from Princeton. My family lives about an hour and a half from Princeton driving. But that doesn't mean that you don't miss being with your family and spending time at home. It's important to recharge. At Princeton, you don't have to go away for the eight weeks of the formal programs. There are opportunities, as we know, through departments like SPO, that allow you to build your own international experiences for however much time you want. If you want it to be a week, great! If you want it to be four weeks, great! If you want it to be more than eight weeks, [that's] great, too! So if what's holding you back is that you feel like the study abroad programs that are offered through formal channels at Princeton are prescribed lengths or [specific] things that you have to do, my answer would be you can always create your own adventure here."
-
-
Jordan offered some advice on learning another language. He states, "[imagine] how much richer an encounter or an interaction or conversation can be, even if you don't have the slightest idea of how to speak the language, you don't have to be fluent. I think that even if you can make that introductory 'small talk' and have a conversation that is a human, normal conversation, to the slightest degree, even without fluency, it means that the barrier of language is broken between you. Even if you have a translator sitting right there, making sure that everything is correct, you can at least follow along a little bit. It makes all the difference."
He continues, "I think that one of the main reasons why the book worked was because I've chose a place where I could speak the language of the people. I didn't need to translate. I speak Spanish. But let's say I [start doing] more work in the Middle East and I don't really speak Arabic. I've been learning over the past couple of years, and I'm totally far from fluent. There's no way I'd be able to do a complicated story without a translator. But what I could do is sit down and have a conversation with somebody about where I'm from, where they're from, what we do for work, what we like to eat, what music we like to listen to. That's a really important aspect of it, too. So it doesn't matter [if you are in a 100 level course]. [Language] is really important no matter what you want to do [because] there are very few lines of work that don't involve being a people person. And so I think that taking language classes is one of the most valuable things you can do."
-
-
"I regret not going into more of the musical traditions of the river. Because I didn't have that much time. I had four weeks, as the subtitle suggests, because I was in school and I had other things going on. So there were things that inevitably would have to be left out. What I'm really happy about is now, at National Geographic, I'm able to dig deeper into some of those areas of the book that I didn't get to include in the physical book itself. I'm working on the story now. That took me back to the Magdalena River, writing about music. It's really amazing. It's kind of like, I feel like I'm supplementing the reporting for the book in a new and exciting way."
-
-
"I can't imagine doing anything else than writing stories. I have a feeling that I would be doing it in a different capacity. Maybe if I wasn't pursuing journalism, I might be a teacher. I think it's about sharing information. I like learning."
On choosing journalism as a career path, he says, "this is not different from teaching in so many ways. What I do now, it's just a different way of getting people educated about the world. The kind of writing that I do, because I don't really do news, I do features that are meant to expand, not only my view of the world, but to expand readers' views of the world. A place like National Geographic, [where you're writing] about history, about nature, about people. So it is, in a way, kind of like teaching a really big class."
-
-
"This book is largely meant for a general audience, readers in the United States, that might not know a lot about Colombia or about Latin America more broadly. But that said, a lot of Colombian Americans have read it and been grateful for an in depth treatment of the country that is not negative, which is kind of what people have become used to, but also because, just like it would be hard to say what would the American people think of a book about the Mississippi River, the truth is that the United States is a big country, Colombia is a big country. Everybody has different experiences, depending on where they live, what city they live in, if they live in a small town, big city, not every Colombian lives along the Magdalena river. So just like those stories are meaningful for somebody who lives in another country entirely, I hope that Colombian people can take away some of the same core values of this book as anybody else would."
Legend

Places Jordan visited

Places referenced

Biblioburro

The Magdalena River

Biblioburro Route

Click on "view map" for a list of locations as referenced in Part I, II and III of the book and for better viewing on mobile phones.
Note: All photos provided by Jordan Salama. Click on map markers to reveal photos. Click on first photo to view additional photos for each location.