Social media is showing us the nature gap is closing. People of color are taking up space outdoors in tremendous ways, whether it’s a solo hiker trekking land to sea along the coast or a family of four finding the most sustainable way to travel the world. Black people are outside, and we love that.
Social media influencer and content creator Karen Akpan shows how Black families can be outside too. Akpan documents the most economical ways a family can see the world through her social media account, The Mom Trotter. Some of her content revolves around how she and her husband paid off $200,000 in debt.
The Akpan Family consists of her husband and her 10-year-old son. In addition, she often includes her extended family, comprised of her teenage sister, two nieces and a nephew. While a house of people seems chaotic enough, she and her family make it all work in a recreational vehicle.
The latest content on Akpan’s page revolves around her family selling their house and transitioning into their renovated RV.
The RV has several bedrooms, a full kitchen and a living room — just enough space to get around the country comfortably.
The Mom Trotter spoke with Blavity about the RV life and how travel is not one size fits all.
The Mom Trotter told Blavity some of her favorite things about the RV life.
“One of the things I love about the RV we have right now is our son has his own room,” she said. “We have a 10-year-old, and being able for him to have his own room and for my husband and I to have our own space makes it amazing because we’re around each other 24/7. So it’s kind of nice for us to be able to retreat into our own little spaces as we need to. So I love that we have that in our RV.”
She also loves her kitchen space.
“One of the things I also really wanted in our RV is to have, like, an island,” she added. “A lot of times, people see our RV, and they can’t believe we have a little island in our kitchen, so I like having that extra space; it makes it really nice.”
The full-time content creator loves that her lifestyle allows her to create generational wealth for her family.
“I love that I can say we can work for ourselves; we can run our own business because that’s what it is, we have our own business,” she explained. “You know, we’re all employees of our business; we all make an income, my 10-year-old as well, so I love that we’re building this and able to build generational wealth.”
Along with creating generational wealth while seeing the world, Akpan mentioned her goal of being a “global citizen” and what that looked like for her and her son.
She explained, “I’ve come across people who will just see people doing things differently and say, ‘You know what, that’s not how we do things here; that’s not how things should go.’ So, for me, being a global citizen is being able to go to another country or even be in your own country and see people doing things differently and say, ‘Hey, I may not understand what they’re doing, but I’m gonna respect it because that’s part of their culture.'”
She added how important that is to model for her son.
“One of the biggest reasons for traveling with my family, and especially my son, is I wanted to expose them to every culture,” she said. “I wanted him to be respectful of people and be respectful of their cultures regardless of if what they do made sense to him or not. I feel like that plays a huge part in being a global citizen, being open, being accepting, being friendly and just being empathetic toward people around the world.”
You can follow The Mom Trotter and her family on all social media platforms, @TheMomTrotter, or follow her blog, TheMomTrotter.com.
