Adventure Travel with Phil Paoletta - Scoot West Africa

Area/Topic
West Africa, Business, Culture, Food, Scooter Trips

Phil Paoletta
Co-owner
Scoot West Africa

Formerly a middle school teacher in Washington, DC, Phil Paoletta is now a semi-nomad based in West Africa.

An obsession with highlife music originally drew him to Ghana in 2005. Once he arrived there, he found other things — groundnut stew, the Twi language, mapouka (both the dance and the liqueur), orange-headed lizards — that he also liked. In 2010, he quit his job to travel back to West Africa. He figured he had enough money for a 6-month trip. He didn’t know it at the time, but that trip would never actually end.

Fourteen years later, Phil finds himself based in Senegal, leading scooter trips around the region with Scoot West Africa, and making frequent stops in Bamako, Mali, where he is part owner of the Sleeping Camel hotel and restaurant. Since 2016, he has been collaborating with former tourist guides in Timbuktu on Postcards from Timbuktu, an e-commerce project that supports the guides and their families following the collapse of Mali’s tourism sector.

When he is not moving around, he enjoys relaxing on the beaches of Senegal’s Petite-Cote with his wife and two kids.

https://scootwestafrica.com/

summary
In this episode, Jason Elkins interviews Phil Paoletta, co-owner of Scoot West Africa, who shares his journey from a transformative concert experience to living in West Africa since 2010. Phil discusses the cultural richness of the region, the importance of music and food in social interactions, and the unique travel experiences offered by his company. He emphasizes the need for open-mindedness in travel and encourages listeners to explore West Africa despite common misconceptions. Phil also shares insights on starting a business in a challenging environment and the rewarding connections made through travel.

takeaways

• Phil has been based in West Africa since 2010.
• A concert sparked Phil's interest in Afrobeat music.
• Traveling in West Africa offers immersive experiences.
• Food is a significant part of social interactions in West Africa.
• Phil started Scoot West Africa in 2017.
• Clients should be open to spontaneous experiences.
• West Africa is an under-visited region for tourism.
• Cultural connections are vital in travel.
• Phil emphasizes the importance of community in West African life.
• Traveling is about discovering places on their own terms.

Learn more about the Big World Made Small Podcast and join our private community to get episode updates, special access to our guests, and exclusive adventure travel offers at bigworldmadesmall.com.

Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:02.006)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the adventure traveler. Today we, super excited. We've got a great guest here to share his story with us. We've got Phil Paoletta. Phil is the co-owner of Scoot West Africa. Phil, welcome to the show. Happy to have you here. Did I pronounce your last name right? All right, very cool. Well, we're off to a good start then. Phil.

Phil Paoletta (00:19.95)
Thanks, Jason. Really good to be here.

Perfect.

Jason Elkins (00:28.854)
As I mentioned, just super happy to have you here. Just real quick, where are you calling from? Where are you actually on this call with me from?

Phil Paoletta (00:36.494)
So I'm in Senegal, I'm on what's known as the Petit Cote, the small coast of Senegal. So it's basically between the capital city of Dakar and the Gambia on the ocean. That's where I'm at right now.

Jason Elkins (00:51.443)
Okay, very cool. And do you live there?

Phil Paoletta (00:54.752)
Where I live permanently, that's a hard to answer question at the moment, but I'm spending most of my time here at the moment. Yes.

Jason Elkins (01:01.352)
I get it. I'm kind of doing that as well. People continuously ask me, where do you live? And boy, that's a, that's a hard question. I live kind of wherever I'm at. I I'm as well doing kind of the nomad thing and usually it's some days it's, you know, this place and then it could be some totally different tomorrow. And that's hard for some people to get their head around if they haven't lived that lifestyle, but you and I, think can both relate. So, but let's, I, you know, I want to.

Phil Paoletta (01:07.214)
I know it's tough. Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (01:18.435)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (01:27.594)
take an opportunity to kind of hear your story. Cause I think that a lot of the people that I interview on the show and a lot of people that work in this, in this industry have interesting stories and there's some similarities and a lot of differences. So let's jump into that and we'll go back as far as you think we need to go. But I guess the question is, how did you get from wherever you were to where you are now and how far back do we go to start that story?

Phil Paoletta (01:36.75)
you

Phil Paoletta (01:52.942)
Yeah, it's definitely a long series of one thing led to another led to another. I've been based in West Africa now since 2010. Not always in one place, but in the region since 2010. And before that, I had done a stint studying abroad in 2005, and that was in Ghana.

Jason Elkins (01:56.95)
you

Phil Paoletta (02:13.971)
And the reason all this happened was quite honestly a concert that I went to in high school. It was a band called the Antebalas. And the only reason I went to the concert, it was I had randomly gotten, you know, it was there was that CD burning culture. We were kind of after cassette tapes and we were burning CDs and we were sharing music that way. And I got this CD of music from this band called Antebalas that was playing this West African style of music called

Afrobeat that became popular especially in Nigeria in the 60s and 70s and because I had that CD I was intrigued and I wanted to go to the concert and I went to the concert and it was one of those concerts where

I imagine you've had an experience like this before where you're in a venue of people, a lot of whom have not seen the band before, and they're having the simultaneous discovery of the band. And it's just one these incredible, transcendent moments because the music is also incredible. And the band is then feeding off that energy. so it was one of these shows that was, even kind of music critics in Cleveland and different things were commented about the show as being one of the highlights.

to that particular year.

And that sent me down the rabbit hole of Afrobeat music and then eventually got me to Highlife music from Ghana, which is popular in kind of early 20th century Ghana. And eventually it was like, well, I need to go to one of these places. I went to university in New York and there was a study abroad program that happened to open up in Ghana while I was in university. so I immediately jumped on that, did the study abroad, and got interested in other

Phil Paoletta (04:00.334)
things besides just the music, just the pace of life and you know so many other cultural things and aspects of life in West Africa that once I finished study abroad I knew I was gonna come back again and so after university I was working for a few years, saved up enough money to travel. I thought it was gonna be a three to six month trip depending on how much couchsurfing I did and you know how much I stuck to my budget and that was in 2010 and that trip never ended.

So that trip is still going on basically.

Jason Elkins (04:34.154)
very very cool. So you mentioned the concert was in Cleveland, I believe you said that. Okay is that where you're from?

Phil Paoletta (04:38.232)
Consulate in Cleveland, yeah. Yeah, I'm from a Cleveland suburb and that's where I grew up, yeah.

Jason Elkins (04:45.526)
All right, I'm curious at this concert, because I can imagine a band like you described, I'm not familiar with the band, but kind of as you described.

them maybe showing up in Cleveland, probably a lot of people that didn't have a lot of connection with West Africa. You mentioned you kind of sharing this similar experience. Were there some people at the concert, do you remember interacting with anybody in the concert that maybe was from West Africa? Did you have any interaction like that or was it just experiencing the band with everybody else?

Phil Paoletta (05:17.71)
not in my vicinity at the concert. was there with a group of friends and I mean the venue was absolutely packed. It wouldn't surprise me at all if there were several, you know, there were attendees that were from West Africa. Yeah, was, yeah, was quite an exciting. I would have been, I would have been 17. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (05:31.658)
How old were you at this time, roughly?

Jason Elkins (05:37.588)
Okay, all right, so we're talking high school. And up until that, you had an interest in music already. You imagine you were into burning CDs and doing that type of thing. I'm kind of curious, like when you were growing up as a teenager, was music the primary focus? Were you?

I mean, cause it's kind of big leap to go from Cleveland, you go to a band concert, decide I want to go there and then you create an opportunity to go with the university. So what were you doing before that?

Phil Paoletta (06:05.624)
Yes.

No, music was definitely, it was a side thing. I was passionate about music. I played guitar, I still play guitar, but it wasn't something I was trying to pursue professionally or anything like that. But in high school, was going to concerts all the time and I was kind of trying to really get involved with the local music scene as much as possible. But this was just the case with this band. It kind of just came out of left field. I had no idea that it was gonna be a really transformative experience in that way.

was just going be another good concert to see in Cleveland and have a good time, good night out with friends and stuff like that. It turned out to be much more than that.

Jason Elkins (06:42.688)
That's pretty cool. Yeah, you know, kidding. Did you have, do you remember having aspiration, you know, kind of travel aspirations or were there people in your family? Cause oftentimes, you know, I speak with someone and they've got a, a parent or a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle, you know, the crazy aunt or uncle that travels the world, sends back postcards, that types of things was travel on your radar. At that point, do you remember anything that kind of maybe helped predispose you for that?

Phil Paoletta (07:10.264)
Travel was definitely on my radar and it was on my radar actually because of the fact that our family was...

was not ever traveling very intensely. We were doing a lot of more local trips, staying within the country. Traveling internationally was not something that my family had a history of doing at all. A trip up to Canada. And this was back in the day before you needed a passport to go there. So part of the reason I think I was inclined to travel is just my having a limited exposure to it and wanting to really get out of that bubble and discover things for myself.

Jason Elkins (07:47.296)
Okay. Got it. So I'm imagining I'm not your parents and I don't know your parents, but I'm imagining them. Their 17 year old son goes to a rock concert from with an African band. I don't know if you call it rock or not, but anyway, it goes to a concert, comes back talking about West Africa. Goes to school, goes to West Africa. What was going on with your family? Were they supportive of this? Do you remember any conversations or

Phil Paoletta (07:47.373)
So that was a lot of motivation, yeah.

Jason Elkins (08:15.186)
I just turned to imagine that scenario because a lot of people like even when their kids like really into music like, you need to go do something real with your life. And I'm not I was a music major in college, so I'm not you know, I'm just saying sometimes people are like music. You're not going to make any money in music. How are you going to live on music? And here you are like following the music path all the way to West Africa, which is a whole nother level of. Difficult for people to comprehend, so what was that like?

Phil Paoletta (08:17.294)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (08:43.734)
Yeah, so I didn't, it wasn't something when I was kind of going down the rabbit hole of West African music, it was not something my parents were really aware of. I didn't pursue music as a degree in university. So I actually I was a philosophy major, which we can discuss the merits of that.

Jason Elkins (08:51.549)
Mmm.

Jason Elkins (08:56.926)
Okay, yeah, I'm sure they were excited about that as well. Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (09:00.63)
Yeah, exactly. But music was still kind of something on the side and it was not something I was trying to pursue professionally. And when I did the study abroad in Ghana, I basically had like credits, I had enough credits to burn that I could do a semester that was really kind of just for more or less my enjoyment, not necessarily going towards the major I was studying. And that's when they found out about it, when I was, when I told them I was going to study abroad in Ghana. And

Yeah, there was definitely some initial surprise and there were some conversations about trying to just keep them grounded about

just what their expectations were. When I went back in 2010, that was a more difficult conversation because it was like, what are you doing? What are you doing going back there? You had this fun little thing you did there as a college student, it's over now. OK. Because I had resigned from my job to go travel. And that was a more difficult conversation to have.

Jason Elkins (10:06.363)
Tell me about the job because I think that'll help us put it into perspective what that conversation might have been like.

Phil Paoletta (10:11.66)
Yeah, so the job I was teaching middle school in Washington, DC. It was at a public charter school and it had a lot of challenges, particularly in the third year that I was teaching there. That's where kind of the wheels fell off and you know, there were teachers resigning in the middle of the year and there were a lot of things going on that were just making it a very challenging work environment. So.

Jason Elkins (10:37.098)
Okay, and you thought to yourself, well, I know something I would enjoy doing.

Phil Paoletta (10:41.196)
Yeah, I mean, I just.

I mean, was living very frugally. was living in Washington, D.C., which is an expensive city, but I was living in a group house, renting a room in a group house with four other people. I was living very frugally. I was single. I was able to save a lot of money while I was working despite living in Washington, D.C. And I kind of had this, in the back of my head, okay, I'm gonna do a trip at some point. I'm gonna get back to West Africa at some point. I didn't know when, but that third year, just when things really started unraveling,

Getting into that last kind of you know the last third of the year I was like okay once I get through this I need Yeah, need a break need a break for a bit

Jason Elkins (11:21.002)
Yeah, I get it completely. I want to go back just a little bit before we move forward. I want to go back to because it's there were a few things there. It's like, OK, I'm going to go to school for philosophy and then I'm going to go study abroad. And then it's Ghana. It's not like Spain.

Phil Paoletta (11:42.264)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (11:42.472)
or Italy or France where people kind of can see that, like parents especially can kind of imagine that. was like, I imagine the first question is like, where the F is that? Like, did they even know where it was? that like, what was, just share a little bit of that conversation. I don't wanna go too far into your personal life, but I can imagine that was interesting.

Phil Paoletta (11:49.442)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (11:56.493)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (12:04.963)
Yeah. My, so my parents, my parents are divorced and I grew up mostly with my, mom.

But obviously I had the conversation with both parents. But my mom, she knew Ghana was in Africa. She didn't know exactly where. She didn't know anything beyond the surface level, just the fact that it was in West Africa. And she was mostly supportive once I kind of explained my reasoning and everything. My dad was a bit more skeptical, just on the safety and security side of things. And he knew nothing about Ghana.

Jason Elkins (12:39.008)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Paoletta (12:42.71)
really knew nothing about it. Just in his head, it was by default a dangerous place and not a place that I should be going. So yeah, he was...

Jason Elkins (12:52.288)
think it's interesting sometimes the less we know about a place the more holes get filled in by stories, you know, in the case of Africa.

Phil Paoletta (12:58.947)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (13:01.91)
most people here in the States have some stories about Africa if they've never been and they'd, they're probably not super positive stories and Africa is a huge continent. So if they don't know a particular place in Africa, they fill in the gaps with the stories that they've heard in the past. And I get, I'm in Columbia, you know, and when I came here, I had some of the same, same, same challenges with my family and, and pretty much every day I'm here. think, wow, if people only knew how amazing, you know, the people are here and how amazing

Phil Paoletta (13:05.134)
Good

Phil Paoletta (13:09.154)
Yep. Yep.

Phil Paoletta (13:21.144)
Great country.

Phil Paoletta (13:29.004)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (13:32.166)
the opportunity is to be here and I kind of sense the same with you. And I also suspect though it's one thing when it's like I'm gonna go on a study abroad for X amount of time. You said six months was the plan, right?

Phil Paoletta (13:36.078)
100 % yeah.

Phil Paoletta (13:46.87)
Well, I thought maybe three to six months. The study abroad was a fixed, it was one semester.

Jason Elkins (13:51.924)
Yeah, it's one semester and it's like, think parents can like, okay, well, I wish you would have picked a different place, but it's a study abroad. It's one semester, he'll come back and move on with life. But then like you said, the second time when you went back, when they asked or if they were to ask when are you coming back, how long you gonna be there? Because you said you thought maybe it'd be a short period of time, but it turned into something more.

Phil Paoletta (14:04.31)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (14:19.651)
Was the expectation that you would come back after a amount of time or was it just a complete open it? Like when I came to Columbia the first time it was a one way ticket. People ask when you come back. No plans.

Phil Paoletta (14:30.914)
Yeah, I had a one-way ticket as well. But I did tell people, yeah, I did tell people I was going on a trip. I didn't say I was going to live there. And at the end of it, it ended up being like six months. And at the end of it, I did come back to America. But that was kind of mostly to get some things in order before I went back again.

Yeah, I mean that second departure then, so this would be the third departure I guess, that's where I had some, yeah, a lot of conversations where, especially even close friends and some people in my family, they were like, okay, now, like kind of what's wrong with you sort of, that was the suggestion. They didn't exactly say it that way.

Jason Elkins (15:11.924)
Yeah, yeah, I won't ask you how you responded to the what's wrong with you question, because I know that's kind of the music, or I guess it's the music beneath the lyrics, right? They might be saying something else, but what you hear is what's wrong with you. I get that. But I'm curious when they would say, well, maybe when you came back to get your stuff in order, or when you're like, yeah, I'm going back.

Phil Paoletta (15:27.822)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (15:35.934)
I know the question was why, or I want to ask why. What was it about your experiences and your time there that drew you back? I mean, we talked about the music kind of initiating it, but you also said that once you kind of got there, you fell in love with other parts. So why? Why West Africa? What was it that drew you back?

Phil Paoletta (15:51.288)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (15:57.198)
Yeah, mean, yeah, it started with the music, but then became so many other things. You know, starting with the fact that, and I'm sure you see this in South America as well, but just the ability to have like warm, casual interactions with people. And it's just an everyday part of life.

where I was living in DC, and I'm sure you're familiar with this as well, you get on the subway, you get on the metro in the morning, everyone's in their phones, everyone's in their own little world, there's minimal interaction, and people don't really want it, be bothered, don't want to interact. Whereas getting in this world in West Africa where interaction is unavoidable, it's vibrant, it's loud, it's...

know, it's in your face and it kind of like you get swept up in it and this kind of really immersive experience that hits all the senses. just I realized that I had not experienced something like that in a while and I just kept saying, well, I just want to spend a bit more time in this and learn about a few more things. And I was also got really interested in local languages, which were fascinating to me. You know, going to I enjoyed the urban areas, but also going to more

rural areas and villages and learning about history and culture and different things and everything was just so accessible and easier than I thought it was and obviously way safer and less dangerous than everyone made everything out to be. know, the biggest danger and that remains to this day is, you know, road safety and stuff like that. But in terms of like, you know, violent crime, know, being in an urban area in West Africa, going out at night until the break of dawn and it's

absolutely, you know, it's no stress at all. And all this was, there were things that I was completely unfamiliar with and the more time I spent there just more things started captivating me and yeah, it just became harder and harder to think about leaving. yeah.

Jason Elkins (18:03.53)
I'm curious, because I have a little bit of similar experiences maybe, and part of it is just because the culture, it's just so different. There's so many new things to learn and see. And I've been to Africa a couple of times, different countries, not West Africa. But just in my travels, it's like there's so much stuff to see.

It's like constant stimulation. I suspect I probably have a little ADHD or something. just, I thrive on the variation and then the new experiences and adventures. But also I recognize that sometimes when I show up in a place, especially if it's a place where they don't see a lot of Americans, yeah, they're interested in me. The conversations are just kind of come out. You know, you walk into a

a little shop or restaurant or wherever you're at and the conversations just come up because I'm different. So they're kind of curious about what are you doing here? Why are you here? Who are you with? And actually it's interesting because the questions they ask, if I maybe in the beginning or if I didn't know better, I would think they're kind of threatening.

Phil Paoletta (18:59.405)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (19:12.97)
You know, especially I'm a guy. I'm a big guy. I pretty much can take care of myself, but I had this conversation with some, women recently that are traveling as well. But my experience is, know, you get in a taxi cab, they ask all the questions that a woman would think are really creepy. Why are you here?

Phil Paoletta (19:31.151)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (19:32.192)
Who are you here with? What are you doing? Do you live here? Do you live alone? Do you have family? They ask you all these questions that most women would be like, ooh, that's really creepy. But they asked me the same questions. And I realized it's not so much about creepy, it's just curiosity. They're like trying to get their head around. Because most of the people here, for example, live with their families. They live with their brothers and sisters and moms and dads. And so trying to explain that.

Phil Paoletta (19:55.952)
yeah, for sure.

Jason Elkins (19:58.302)
I'm in this country. have no family here. I buy myself and I live in Airbnbs or hostels or whatever. It's just so fascinating. I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I suspect you have similar experiences. So there's that part like my experience of Columbia or other places that I visited are different than the people that live there. You mentioned Washington DC sitting on the metro or the subway.

Phil Paoletta (20:19.49)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (20:27.956)
And nobody, you there's really not much interaction going on. When you go to Africa, there's a lot of interaction going on directed at you because you're the different person. You're, you know, you're interesting. They're curious about you. but they're different with each other as well. Right.

Phil Paoletta (20:43.138)
Well, yeah, and I would say there's even more interaction going on amongst them, to be honest.

Jason Elkins (20:47.668)
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do you think that is? Have you come up with a theory like why why do some of these places in the world? Why are there societies so much more? We call it familiar or, you know, just social and so more kind of dependent on each other. Why do you think that is?

Phil Paoletta (21:07.66)
Yeah, well I think that's...

you hit it exactly, there's this codependency that's built into everything. And like you said, know, a lot of families, there's several generations living with each other. A lot of people have roots to rural areas, even when they're in the cities, there's a lot of connection to villages and rural areas. And when you're in the village, it's really like an all hands on deck kind of situation where it's, you have the nuclear family, but then you have the bigger family and then you have the neighborhood, the immediate community, and everyone kind of supports each other.

So there is this really, this codependency that plays a role in all aspects of life. I think that spills over then, when you're in the urban areas and people are just, you can't walk down a street and you can't walk past someone and not acknowledge them. This kind of built in habit of people acknowledging each other, which I find so wonderful. We don't really have that anymore.

some small localities and small towns and different things. Obviously, that still goes on. But this is happening in urban area. Bamako, Mali, where I just was for basically all summer. Someone walks down the street, it ends up taking them like 30 minutes to go a few hundred meters because they end up greeting all these people and having a conversation, making sure everyone's doing well in the family and checking up on everyone's health and all of this stuff. And there's an importance that's attached to that, even though it takes

them longer to get to their destination.

Jason Elkins (22:41.526)
Uh-huh. And if you, if you or I were to do that back home, I grew up in small town, Wyoming, just a little bit of, kind of know all each, I'll know each other, but not, but not like it is in, you know, other places I've traveled. And if you or I went back to, know, if you're in Cleveland or Washington or, know, most places in the U S and you walk down the street and you say good morning to people, you know, here it's good morning. Like, good morning. How are you to total strangers?

Phil Paoletta (22:55.384)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (23:11.117)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (23:11.562)
You know, you get on an elevator and it's like, Buenos Dias. And then you get off the elevator. It's hasta luego. You know, see you later. And like total strangers, but there's still that interaction. And if you were, did that in the States, you know, they just think you're weird. Like what's wrong with that guy? Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (23:25.887)
it's the exact opposite. Yeah, in the States, you're strange for initiating some kind of interaction like that. Here, you're strange if you're not initiating that conversation or you're not acknowledging the other person. So it's exact opposite. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (23:41.524)
Yeah, and it's something I've noticed you probably noticed as well there. It's it's shocking to me in my travels through South America, Latin America, other places. Well, probably. But people are not afraid to ask for things. And this is a you know, Americans look at it as, wow, there's a lot of I'm going to use word beggars because that's the word that they use. There is a lot of beggars. There's a of people asking for handouts.

And they think, well, they see an American and they immediately run up and ask you for something. But I see the culture here is like people are like you, you use the word codependent. They're so dependent on you. They do ask for things and they it's not very hard for them to walk up and ask for things that you and I would be like. That's going to be our last resort and you'll see people perfectly well dressed that look like they're doing just fine. And.

Phil Paoletta (24:28.322)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (24:32.532)
They just don't have any change in their pocket right now and they need to take the Metro. So they have no problem asking you if you'll, you know, give them a couple bucks so they can take the Metro. And, but it's kind of a beautiful thing in a way, really. Cause they'll, and it's not just me, they'll ask each other, you know, I, it's not just, see me and think, well, you look different. Maybe you have more resources. They'll ask each other. And then it falls into every area of life in, and dating relationships, family stuff. just, I just see a lot of that.

Phil Paoletta (24:42.263)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (25:02.466)
I'm curious, is it kind of the same on West Africa?

Phil Paoletta (25:05.612)
Yeah, no, there's a lot of similarities to what you just described. I mean, yeah, and just in general, just a really low barrier to people interacting with each other. And like you said, that can spill over to transactional things where people need something, but it's not looked at in a negative light. It's kind of just...

Jason Elkins (25:26.666)
Yeah, it's like perfectly acceptable and and I see it sometimes and I think my gosh, you know or I'm with somebody I'm with somebody and I make a comment. I wish I had this or knew this or whatever and the person I'm with will just stop a total stranger on the street and have a 10 minute conversation. I'm like I didn't really want it that bad.

Phil Paoletta (25:31.948)
Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (25:45.548)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (25:45.972)
You know, it's like, I wish I had a piece of X, Y, or Z candy and they'll stop a stranger working. get X, Y, or Z candy, and then we'll talk to 10 people along the way trying to find it. I'm like, it was just a passing thought for me, but they're so comfortable engaging with each other. And it reminds me, I worked before I started traveling full-time. I worked in real estate and

Phil Paoletta (25:59.587)
you

Jason Elkins (26:07.799)
Real estate is one of those things where you really need to engage a lot of people. The typical real estate, you can imagine knocking on doors, hey, would you like to sell your house type of thing? And it was very difficult for most, for me as well, but a lot of my colleagues because in America...

Phil Paoletta (26:10.84)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (26:15.48)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (26:24.298)
We're taught from a young age, don't talk to strangers. That's like the number one thing, right? Don't talk to strangers, don't talk to strangers, don't talk to strangers. And then at some point in life, you think, maybe I should be a real estate agent because I'm to make a lot of money. And the first thing your broker tells you is, OK, you need to go talk to as many strangers as possible. That's really, really tough. And as I've traveled, I've thought, geez, know, a lot of these people that I've met in my travels, if I could just.

Phil Paoletta (26:36.398)
Thank

Jason Elkins (26:49.194)
pick them up and put them into a real estate job, they'd probably do really well at it because they have no fear. You know, I mean, I've seen people knock on doors and ask people if they want to buy an avocado. You know, I've got a cart of avocado, but on those street knocking on doors or just hollering out whatever. And it would be, they've got that advantage that, that, you know, people that grow up in, in, the U S maybe it's a lot more of a barrier. So anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that, but.

Phil Paoletta (26:59.746)
There.

Thank

Phil Paoletta (27:16.162)
No, I agree 100%. Yeah, I mean, we're just, kind of, we've become more inward facing and, you know, some of these other places are more outward facing, more open to interaction and cooperation and all that comes with it. You it's just a different kind of social fabric. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (27:29.599)
Yeah, yeah.

One thing that has come up and maybe I maybe I just touched on a little bit there when I said if you could take them and put them in the US. Well, that's another thing is I do meet a lot of people met met somebody last night that you know immediately is like or you from the US and yes, the conversation was in Spanish, but. I was telling him how much I love it here and he said it's really interesting because you want to come here and we want to go there. You know, and he's like I'm going. He had a plan that you know.

Phil Paoletta (27:35.714)
you

Jason Elkins (27:59.638)
I'm not gonna mention his name because his plan was not the official plan, right? So the plan involved the stop in Mexico along the way. And he had it all worked out of what it was gonna cost him to get the support and assistance that he needed. But based on what we were just discussing, what I've seen also is I've met a lot of Colombians that have been to the US, that were in the US for maybe a couple of years, two, three years, sometimes longer.

and you ask them, why did you come back? And it was things related to what we've been discussing. You take somebody that's so used to being so involved with their families and their communities, and you take them and you put them in a place like Washington, DC or Cleveland or Denver, Colorado.

that feeling of loneliness is what I hear is that sense of, you know, loneliness. It was hard to make friends unless there were, unless there was a Latin community that they were, you know, involved in. And I suspect it's probably the same thing for, for Africans. you remember? you, I'm sure I have a feeling you probably saw the movie, the gods must be crazy. Back, back in the day, you know, or they took this Bush guy, I think he was Namibian. I can't remember the whole story, but,

Phil Paoletta (28:53.123)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (29:03.78)
huh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (29:10.434)
Yeah, yeah, it was a push run, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (29:11.488)
yeah, picked him up and took him to wherever it was to the big city and it was, I can see that. So anyway.

Phil Paoletta (29:19.586)
Yeah, well think what you said about the community is a lot of people that stay and that are able to be successful going to some place like the US.

they have strong communities that surround them. You can go to parts of New York City, parts of Harlem and the Bronx, and you can find West African communities where you walk down the street and you're hearing all, know, tree, like which is spoken in Ghana, or you're hearing Bambara which is spoken in Mali, or Wolof from Senegal. And you're finding restaurants that have the same kind of food from back home, the same kind of interactions and all this stuff. I mean, that does, yeah, it kind of softens the, it kind of makes it a little bit of a softener.

people that end up in those communities like that.

Jason Elkins (29:59.518)
Right. And then I also think of maybe a lot of people that are not, you know, that were born and raised in the States and haven't really traveled much have this attitude when they see those communities like, well, these people need to get out of these communities. They need to go out and learn the language, learn the culture. They need to, you know, kind of integrate. You know, there's a lot of talking about they need to integrate. And I think that we don't understand it when we see them in these little communities. We're like, what are they doing there? They're probably

Phil Paoletta (30:15.416)
Okay.

Phil Paoletta (30:21.742)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (30:28.426)
You know, they're probably all just there doing criminal activities or they're there because they don't like us like Americans or whatever. And so it creates kind of a rift, but it's really because if we as as a United, you know, American culture, I don't want to say I hate saying American because there's a lot of people in America that are not in the U.S. Right. But but it's that thing where if we'd be more welcoming.

and we would try and be more understanding. And if we were more social and outgoing like they're used to, then that would solve a lot. But I'm not saying that anybody should change their culture. I'm just a thought.

Phil Paoletta (31:07.182)
No, couldn't agree more.

Jason Elkins (31:09.716)
Yep, All right, so you mentioned some of the things you fell in love with. I'm a foodie, so was that difficult? you enjoy the food there?

Phil Paoletta (31:20.716)
yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. For the part of West Africa I'm in right now, so I'm in Senegal, I was in Mali over the summer. In French West Africa you have this really nice fusion because you have...

There's the French colonial legacy and one of the, you know, silver linings of that. Obviously there was a lot of bad to come from it, but one of the silver linings is that you had some French culinary traditions that were, have been integrated into local cooking and stuff. And so you can get, you know, really nice baguettes and you'll always find a nice vinaigrette and, you know, different things like that. But then there's also a very rich culinary scene that's very local and has a lot of history that's tied directly

to different countries in the region. yeah, the food is, I think the food is something that's underrated that people don't think about before coming here. And I think now you start to see that in some like Western urban areas that African cooking is becoming, there's a bit more of a spotlight on it because it's just something that's, it's kind of like a new frontier for, in terms of the culinary scene. And I think there's a lot of potential for people to discover.

that there's a lot of depth to the culinary world here.

Jason Elkins (32:40.296)
Is there, I'd like to touch on just kind of the social importance of food because that can be a different thing in different places. Some places it's almost the foundation of social interaction and other places it's, you know, McDonald's in the car driving home. So I'm curious kind of what's the significance as far as the social interaction and culture.

Phil Paoletta (33:04.31)
Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly social. You will always be invited to eat. Anytime there's people gathered around eating, it doesn't matter what quantity of food is sitting in front of them, you will be invited to eat. You'll be expected to come and eat.

You know, obviously, can politely turn it down. It's not the end of the world. But people, when they offer that invitation, it's not like a nicety. It is sincere. And it's very much genuine. And you'll see people here, like, food. You know, just this little beach bar that's right down the street from us here. During Ramadan, you know, this period, this month of fasting that Muslims undertake, he would close, he closed the restaurant and bar down.

night for breaking the fast, he would put all this food on and anyone who came by was just invited to come and eat and this was completely unsurprising and we ourselves even as foreigners we were invited to come and eat so we were having these shared meals with all these different people and yeah incredibly social it's almost

The, and this is, this is widely said here, not just in Senegal, but in other countries in West Africa, the food tastes better and it's enjoyed more in the company of other people. So if you're just sitting on your own eating by yourself, you're actually not even enjoying the food as much as you would if you were not, if you were sharing it with a few other people. So it's very, very social, yeah.

Jason Elkins (34:29.216)
Yeah, I get that. I'm curious if when you first started traveling or when you first went there, and I still get it sometimes, people offer food a lot. I think there's some similarities in the Latin culture. Maybe.

not quite at the level that it is in Africa, just in my experience. But it's, it was kind of hard, think, as growing up in the States, when someone says, do you want something? I almost feel guilty. Like I, there's so many times I'd be hungry and somebody had offered me food and I'm like, no, I don't want to put them out, you know, especially if they have to go get a plate out of the cupboards and, you know, go warm something up for me. It just seems like too much work to ask for. So I have this habit.

Phil Paoletta (35:05.326)
I

Jason Elkins (35:14.516)
or this pattern of just kind of, no, it's okay. No, thank you. No, thank you. And then I'll be like, man, I'd really like to try it, but it was, it was hard for me. I'm still kind of working on when somebody offers me something to say yes, because I believe they, are offering it from a place of, they really want to share. And if you say no, it's not that it's necessarily an insult, but it could be, you know, it could, especially if the food is something a little different and you're like, no, they could, you don't think our food is good enough. I don't know.

Phil Paoletta (35:42.626)
Yeah, yeah, no, when I first, when I studied abroad in Ghana, I had that same kind of inclination to say no, no thank you, more often than not. When I went back the second time, I really made it a point to kind of, to say yes to more things, not just food, but just in general, just to be more open to different experiences and everything. yeah, so that led to me trying a lot, many more things. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (36:09.216)
Which is cool because if you say yes, then there's the conversation that comes from it. There's so many things that come from a simple, sure, yeah, because then it pauses whatever was happening. So I guess my example would be walking down the street. The street vendors will do it as well. And I had this story that if a vendor gives you something, that means you have to buy whatever it is they're selling.

Phil Paoletta (36:12.11)
Okay.

Phil Paoletta (36:30.03)
Thank

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (36:33.986)
And and I don't know that that's the case. I mean, I think it makes sense. There's a law of reciprocity. If I give you something, you'll give me something, whatever. But I but based on my experiences of now saying yes more often to trying new things. Whether I buy something or not, they seem genuinely happy to share it with me, especially if it's something I've never had before. You know, so if I see a particular type of fruit on a fruit stand.

Phil Paoletta (36:55.928)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (37:00.596)
And I'm like, what is that? And it starts the conversation. And they immediately start unpeeling it, unwrapping it with their dirty hands, and handing it to me. And if I eat it, they just light up. They don't care if I buy it or not. just legit, honestly, I think, want to share it. And it's created some interesting conversations.

Phil Paoletta (37:08.344)
Thank

Jason Elkins (37:22.134)
definitely tried some new foods that, and I've learned sometimes it's better not to ask what it is. Just try it first and then, but anyway, that's a fun part.

Phil Paoletta (37:28.096)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (37:33.604)
You know if it's being sold that it's edible.

Jason Elkins (37:37.834)
Yeah, and actually even I think and I think it was I think Anthony Bourdain said, you know, when you're traveling, don't eat at the hotel buffet. That's where you're going to get sick because because the only people that eat at the hotel buffet are hotel guests and they're going to leave the next day. So if they're sick, the word of mouth doesn't get around whatever. But if you eat like a street vendors food, especially if there is a line of people.

Phil Paoletta (37:48.802)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (37:55.793)
Transient,

Phil Paoletta (38:02.584)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (38:03.342)
You know, you know, it's gonna be good because those people come there every day and if they were if it was bad They wouldn't you know, they wouldn't survive So it's yeah, so I've had so many great things on the street I've also run into quite a few people that will not eat on the streets and I feel like they kind of are missing out on stuff and I mean Yeah, so Anyway, so let's let's kind of discuss

Phil Paoletta (38:07.66)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (38:29.99)
Kind of discuss how you got there, you know, cultural things and what you like, you know, what you love probably about West Africa. But I also want to get into how did you turn that into a business and what are you what are you doing now to help kind of share your part of the world with other people?

Phil Paoletta (38:41.294)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Paoletta (38:48.62)
Yeah, so the path to having an income here and a livelihood in West Africa, it was really convoluted in the beginning, but it really started with...

some money, basically an investment I made in a guy, it was a couple actually, that I was couch surfing with in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast. And he was already kind of doing this little food delivery business, and I just gave him some money that he turned into a, well he basically built his, he grew his business a bit with the money.

and he paid me back, was like a loan. And then I did this basically two other times and he was having a lot of success with the business and then I sat down with him and I said, how would you feel about us partnering together and I'll give you a bigger chunk of money.

and we'll try to grow this business together. And he was really interested. And so we started a restaurant. It was a food delivery business, but we started a restaurant. I had no background in this. He did. I had no background in service, hospitality in the restaurant world, none of that. So I was very much like baptism by fire, learning on the fly in another country, no less. we, yeah, we built this into

Yeah, a full service restaurant and it did quite well. Unfortunately, we had a falling out. There was basically some things that happened behind the scenes that shouldn't have happened. it led to our, destroyed the relationship between us and eventually the business. This is a reality that some people face when they're partnered with other people.

Jason Elkins (40:42.782)
Mm-hmm. That happens when you partner with people that come from the same cultural background, the same, you know, the same set of kind of rules and mannerisms. And so when you take two people that are from such different parts of the world and culturally, it just magnifies it, I'm sure.

Phil Paoletta (40:43.279)
And when that happened.

Phil Paoletta (41:00.386)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was unfortunate it didn't work out, but I learned a lot of lessons in the process. And when it was going well, obviously, there was a lot to celebrate. But as it happened, the moment that that kind of unraveled was the same moment a friend of mine who...

At that point I was just, I originally was a customer at his place in Bamako, so he had a hotel, a hostel really, and a restaurant in Bamako. And I was a regular there every time I was in Bamako. And I became friends with him, we became quite close. Anyway, as this project was unraveling in Abidjan, he was kind of looking for someone to run this business in Bamako, or least to partner with him or somehow contribute because he had left Mali and was

working elsewhere and the timing just worked out that yeah I went into business with him.

And at that time, Mali had just had a, there was a war. mean, the war still is not technically finished, but the French had intervened, French military had intervened in Mali in 2013, and things had started to calm down. And there was some demand for the hostel. was people starting to come back, but things were just, there was no management and things were kind of in disarray. And so I kind of jumped in.

And Matt, yeah, we became business partners. And that was in 2014 when we made that official. And that business, which he started in 2009, is still in business today. The circumstances are very challenging in Mali at the moment, but it's still in business. And we had some really good years.

Phil Paoletta (42:52.727)
And in 2017, with the same business partner with Matt, he's Australian. So his history in Africa is he started driving. He applied to a wanted ad in a newspaper in Australia to drive a truck, one of these big overlanding trucks. And you see this in South America as well. They're not quite as common in Africa anymore, especially post-COVID.

you know, it's a truck where you'd have like 20 some people on board and you'd have a driver and maybe a tour leader and you're doing like a, you know, a Cairo to Cape Town or a London to Cape Town type trip where you're covering basically, you're doing a trans Africa covering the whole continent. And so Matt was doing this, he had been doing this for 15 some years before he started the hostel. And then in 2017, we started School West Africa, which is a

travel-based company, but instead of a big truck with 20 people packed into it, drive, everyone rides their own little low-powered scooter around, and we do itineraries of different lengths and go into, we do multi-country trips, and we do also some trips that are just within one country, and yeah, that's kind of been our main focus at the moment, because things in Mali, while that business is still in business, it still continues.

the situation in Mali is very dire at the moment, to be honest about it.

Jason Elkins (44:20.906)
Help me picture, I wanna jump on the scooter part, kind of no pun intended, or pun intended, help me visualize that because I think anybody that's listening to this is like, ooh, that's different, that's unique. So what does that actually look like from like...

Phil Paoletta (44:26.668)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (44:36.557)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (44:41.556)
You get a guest, they show up at the airport. How, know, what type of group sizes, what are the people like and what is like, how do you get them from showing up at the airport to riding a scooter through a busy market square in West Africa?

Phil Paoletta (44:58.636)
Yeah, so we spent a lot of time...

setting it up and trying to be really intentional about how the customer, the client experience and everything. So when people arrive, they don't start in an urban area, they don't start in an area with traffic. We kind of start out of town and we start on kind of like some rural roads where we can really get comfortable with the bikes and everything. we do have maybe some points on every trip where there'll be a bit of traffic and stuff like that, but generally we're trying to avoid main roads and really congested areas. That's part

of our approach. But yeah, mean, we thought it was a viable idea because we were doing these trips ourselves and we were just getting so much enjoyment out of it. it's it's such, because you're not going very fast, it's a really immersive experience. So it's easy to stop everywhere and see everything. It's not on, you know, like one of these 1000 CC bikes where you're

blowing through every village and just cruising around not really seeing much. It's really immersive and it gives us so much flexibility. We can arrive at a place where there's maybe...

Jason Elkins (46:00.832)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Paoletta (46:13.314)
you know, three or four cool different things to check out in the area. And maybe not everyone wants to do the same thing. So instead of hurting everyone around saying, okay, at this time we're gonna do this and at this time we're gonna do this, you know, there's some flexibility and people can kind of go off and do different things. They can stay with us obviously, but there's options. And the other thing with scooters is that they let us go places where cars actually can't go. You know, sometimes we take these little jungle paths to a village that's by the beach somewhere

and you couldn't get a car in there. So it gives us a lot more options. We've had very good client testimony and experiences and that's kind of encouraged us to do more with it. yeah.

Jason Elkins (46:47.542)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (46:52.438)
All right, so are these.

Jason Elkins (46:58.549)
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly the type of thing I'd love. mean, I've rented, you know, rented scooter here and there and it's such a cool way to see things. And I know I saw things on a scooter and that was without a guide. That was just me thinking around. So I can imagine with somebody that actually knew like, hey, let's go look at this. I mean, you know, I've been in some places that I probably shouldn't have been, which was part of the adventure for me, but.

Phil Paoletta (47:10.19)
Thank

Phil Paoletta (47:13.73)
Yeah, exactly.

Phil Paoletta (47:18.21)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:27.476)
So is it, is this like group departures with set dates? Is this mostly customized for small groups? mean, families, what are your trips look like?

Phil Paoletta (47:37.848)
So we do open group trips that we'll set a date for. And we do small groups, so we're typically five to seven people, sometimes a bit bigger than that. But we're not trying to do massive groups of 20 people, something like that. We do have private trips. We've had some solo people arrange trips with us. We've had some groups of friends that have come to us and they say, hey, we've got

Jason Elkins (47:50.614)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Paoletta (48:04.588)
We really want to explore Senegal or Gambia or one of these countries in West Africa. And we've got five days. We're interested in mainly beaches with maybe bit of live music and culture and stuff. And can you put something together? And so we'll make an itinerary. We'll give them a quote, and we'll propose something to them. So yeah, we do.

Jason Elkins (48:24.03)
Is this usually one person per scooter?

Phil Paoletta (48:26.956)
Yeah, yes, we have had a few couples where the husband or the wife is driving and the other person rides a pillion, rides on the back. We have had that before. But generally it's one person per bike, yeah.

Jason Elkins (48:30.56)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (48:38.049)
Okay. And then you have regular vehicles transfer bags from hotel to hotel or what does that look like?

Phil Paoletta (48:46.626)
Yeah, we work with, yeah. So, on a lot of the trips, so sometimes we have a vehicle that's with us, but on a lot of our trips we actually have, we've built these custom, like, saddlebags that go on the bikes. anything that, you know, people who show up with suitcases, anything they don't need to bring on the trip, they can store that at start of the trip, that meets them at the end of the trip.

Jason Elkins (48:57.652)
Okay.

Phil Paoletta (49:08.178)
And then they have everything in the saddlebags. And sometimes we will have like a small backpack on the back as well. But we found it's enough space. It's enough space for the trips we do.

Jason Elkins (49:08.404)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (49:18.474)
Sounds really cool. Really cool, actually. You know, you and I spoke before. We didn't get this far into the conversation, honestly. I wasn't completely clear on what you're doing. I just liked your story and I thought we needed to get on the show. So I'm kind of sitting here all lit up because I can see that that would be a lot of fun. How do you?

Phil Paoletta (49:37.392)
it's a black.

Jason Elkins (49:38.622)
If you were to describe your typical client, tell us your typical client, who you think your ideal client is, who's most likely to enjoy it as best you can realizing that there's always outliers.

Phil Paoletta (49:51.756)
Yeah, we've had a very diverse client base, I will say. So first of all, we've had people that are like scooter enthusiasts that are coming for that aspect of the trip. We've had some other people that are coming because they are like West African enthusiasts or they're very interested in just traveling West Africa. They don't really care much about the scooter part. A lot of them get really interested in the scooter part as a byproduct of the trip.

And then we've got other people that are just kind of like, you know, everything from, you know, people are trying to travel to every country in the world and they see this as an opportunity to cover several countries in one go to, you know, like I said, sometimes private groups or a group of friends that are looking for something just really quite random. For us, our ideal clients, you know, we don't have age or any of this, that doesn't matter.

We've had, I think the oldest climate we've had is 75, and we've had people quite young as well, just around university age. But for us, it's really people that are, we've got a very kind of strict sort of travel philosophy in terms of.

really wanting to discover a place on its own terms and just really being open. mean, part of the idea with the scooter trips is that it's immersive and it gives you an opportunity to really get in touch with things and places and people that you might not normally have contact with. And just, we want our clients to be open to all those experiences. We have had a few bad experiences with clients that, people that have shown up and sometimes,

they sort of have it in their head what the trip is gonna be like instead of being open to what it could be like. And sometimes these people end up just sitting in their hotel room and at the end of the trip they haven't really gotten much out of it. I'll say those people for us, we've been very fortunate with our clients, have been very few and far between clients we've had like that. Yeah, for us just really people that are open to discovery. that's the thing.

Jason Elkins (51:40.917)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (52:00.896)
How do you, so any other tour operators out there listening to this, because that can be a challenge is matching the right client with the right experience. So how do you guys do that? Or any tips that you would give to somebody else? Like how do you make sure that you don't end up with the person that is just wants to sit in the hotel room the whole time because they signed up for something different than what they actually got.

Phil Paoletta (52:09.612)
Yep.

Phil Paoletta (52:26.08)
Yeah, I mean there's no foolproof way to do it, but obviously we'll have conversations with clients before the trip starts. partner. Yeah, it depends on the nature of the trip. If it's a one week trip, there won't be that, I would say, a serious level of vetting that happens. My partner, Matt.

Jason Elkins (52:34.292)
How do you have those conversations? I'm just curious.

Jason Elkins (52:48.032)
Okay.

Phil Paoletta (52:49.878)
he's just wrapping up a trip in the coming days he's arriving in Nairobi so this is a trip a one a once a year trip that we've been doing the past couple years that's been starting in Senegal and going all the way down to last year was to Cape Town this year was to Zanzibar and he's now done an extension of that trip they're going to Kenya via Nairobi going to Nairobi via Uganda he's just finishing a trip that trip

We had a series of interviews basically, and we were more or less on that trip. I don't want to say actively trying to persuade people to not join it, but it was along those lines. It was kind of similar to what Peace Corps would do to prospective volunteers where you're really trying to challenge them and make sure it's what they really want to do because that particular trip was very difficult.

Jason Elkins (53:46.196)
Yeah, and it's not just that one person that maybe doesn't have a great experience and goes back and writes a negative review. They impact the whole group, especially when you're traveling like that. Yeah, I get that.

Phil Paoletta (53:48.142)
you

Phil Paoletta (53:53.73)
Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And with the trip, you know, we, the first edition of it, we ran, we did have some bad luck with one particular client and...

In that case, it made us change how we went about all the pre-trip kind of screening and stuff like that. Shorter trips, if we're doing a three or four day trip, we'll have a conversation with people. A lot of times, like I said, it's been very infrequent that we've had a client that's been kind of not in line with our travel philosophy. A lot of the people that come on our trips, either they

already travel extensively, or they have some connection to West Africa, or there's some kind of experience they can point us to that they've already done that tells us, if they've done that and they appreciated this, there's a very good chance they're gonna really enjoy what we're doing as well.

Jason Elkins (54:56.852)
Yeah, got it. So I think there was a bit of who is it for, because that was the question I asked. And sometimes I'm sure the question is, who is it not for? So who is this trip not for? How would you describe that in three or four bullet points?

Phil Paoletta (55:01.87)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (55:05.58)
Yes.

Phil Paoletta (55:12.812)
Yeah, so I would say the trip is not for someone, know, someone that goes on a trip and they basically need to know, okay, from eight to 8.15 we're doing this, okay, 8.30 is breakfast, it finishes then, then we're going on this walk to go see this thing that is da-da-da-da-da.

Jason Elkins (55:23.294)
you

Phil Paoletta (55:30.454)
and then, you know, et cetera. This kind of, you know, very, yeah, it's, you know, it's not like we're going into it every day without a plan or anything. We have an itinerary and we have, you know, we have our lodging where we're going to be staying for the night. And we have an idea of the things we want to see along the way. But we're very open to all sorts of different possibilities. And...

Jason Elkins (55:31.572)
Okay, that's helpful. Yeah, I get it.

Jason Elkins (55:39.786)
Mm-hmm.

Phil Paoletta (55:56.418)
You know, a lot of times we have an idea of what's going to be happening, but you could turn up into a village and there could be a wedding going on. And believe me, in a lot of these villages we visit, a wedding is not something where it's like you're seen as wedding crashers by turning up. They'll be inviting you in on the action. So we see stuff like that as an opportunity. an opportunity to learn something, to discover something, to have a really interesting exchange with people in a culture that you're not familiar with.

not be on the itinerary. Spontaneous discoveries, we're big on all of that.

Jason Elkins (56:28.522)
Okay, yeah, I gotcha.

Jason Elkins (56:34.55)
All right, cool. So do you almost in your marketing and in your sales process, do you almost intentionally avoid any sort of overabundance of detail? I don't know the word I'm looking for, but it's like.

Phil Paoletta (56:49.731)
Yeah, no, do. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (56:50.55)
Because I write itineraries. I do this with some partners and we write itineraries and some of them need to be very detail oriented. You're going to meet your guide after breakfast at 7.30. You're going to go do this. And especially for birdwatchers, birdwatchers tend to be a little bit kind of like that. I'm not going to say anything more about that. But.

Phil Paoletta (56:58.252)
Yeah, and I understand that.

Phil Paoletta (57:08.556)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (57:13.0)
Yeah, so can imagine in your stuff. It's like you want to kind of almost leave it loose intentionally because that helps self select the people that look at your loosey goosey itinerary might be like maybe there and think wow these guys are totally disorganized. They might not be the right person anyway. Now.

Phil Paoletta (57:28.398)
Yeah, exactly. mean, we do have at the, all of our trip pages, we have a link to our philosophy on itineraries. And we basically explain, you know, what our, or views on hard and fast itineraries are and how we.

Jason Elkins (57:34.646)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (57:41.28)
Do they have to check a little block saying, yes, I read this. I understand it before they can continue onto the booking page. Yeah, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (57:45.454)
We should make that next. We should add that. That's a good suggestion. Like I said, we've had really good, touch wood, but we've had really good success with the clients. We've had so many clients that have now become repeat clients and have become friends. They've become good friends of ours, and I'm so grateful for that.

If I try to break it down to percentage, would be astronomical. It would be weighted in the right direction. Just the number of people that fit kind of sort of what we're looking for in terms of our clients. We've been very, very lucky.

Jason Elkins (58:24.214)
Yeah. Sometimes in the business, we throw around, we kind of throw around labels, which I don't necessarily like, but there's kind of the backpacker type of trip. And I suspect somebody listening to this might think, that sounds like a great trip for the backpacker type, whatever that is. How do you respond to that? What do you think?

Phil Paoletta (58:34.402)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (58:49.614)
I don't think that's necessarily the case. have, you know, a lot of times we have...

the place we're staying at the night. We do have trips where we have bush camps and we have trips that are a bit more rugged, let's say. We've got a lot of different offerings. Me and Matt are very much open to camping and more kind of rural and experiences out in nature and everything. But a lot of our trips, we're staying in hotels every night. There's a lot of times where we're ending the day of riding with like a three-course meal and like a bottle of wine if people are interested in that.

It's not so kind of like shoestring, backpackery. We are riding on a scooter with saddlebags and everything, and often in these rural, off the beaten track areas, but we've done enough of a reconnaissance of the area to know some nice places to stay at and different things that make the experience a bit different than a backpacking trip, let's say.

Jason Elkins (59:52.042)
Well, and I think also there's two parts to the backpacker. There's kind of the one connotation is just cheap. You know, honestly, I'm just gonna use the word cheap. It's like I have $40 and I want to go to Africa for a month type of thing. And it's like, they'll do the hostels. They'll just do whatever they got to do to spread out the budget.

Phil Paoletta (59:59.383)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:00:14.196)
And then there's the part of the backpacker or the side of the backpacker that is open to surprises, that is open to spontaneity, that doesn't have to have a plan figured out for every minute. So there's kind of that, maybe that backpacker sense of adventure.

Phil Paoletta (01:00:20.909)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (01:00:34.344)
And then there's the backpacker, like, don't have any money and I want to go. So I got to figure out how to do it as cheaply as possible. So it's like, what I hear is yours is more like, yeah, the backpacker type of mentality, the openness to exploring and the openness to meeting new people along the way. Cause that's to me, that's what that's all about.

Phil Paoletta (01:00:55.286)
In that sense, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:00:55.406)
Then in that sense yes, but not necessarily that you know, I don't have any money so I gotta eat ramen noodles and at the hostel and and Sleep with 14 other people in Okay, all right very cool Boy it's really cool. This sounds like so much fun. I'm already like man I need to go that's I just want to hang out with you guys and see how that what that looks like One thing on the scooters

Phil Paoletta (01:01:03.372)
You know.

Phil Paoletta (01:01:07.809)
Exactly, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (01:01:21.774)
You're welcome to have a...

Jason Elkins (01:01:24.366)
is so if it's a scooter that's, you it doesn't not super powerful, there's probably no licensing issues. I understand like I've rented scooters. didn't need a motorcycle license per se. Is that kind of the deal where you avoid some of those issues?

Phil Paoletta (01:01:38.988)
Yeah, exactly. of their capacity, because of the size of the engine, you don't need a motorcycle license.

Jason Elkins (01:01:45.524)
Okay. And, is there anything like, like somebody getting ready? mean, cause I suspect there might be somebody that's like, trip sounds great, but I've never ridden a motorcycle. I've never done that. Like, what do you tell somebody like that? Is that, do you think that's important or do you think it's something that they, if they've ridden a bicycle, they pick it up quickly? Or how would you, how do you counsel someone?

Phil Paoletta (01:02:07.192)
Yeah, so we do advise people to have some kind of motorized two-wheel experience. It doesn't have to be this particular style of bike. It obviously doesn't have to be a motorcycle, but it could have been, you know, riding a scooter for a day on holiday, you know, in Croatia or, you know, in Thailand or somewhere. It doesn't have to be extensive experience, but we do, we don't want people to be completely surprised by this thing that they're getting on. You know, we had...

We had one woman show up to a trip and granted she was part of a group and she didn't really know what she was getting into. That was kind of not our fault entirely because the way the person repackaged the trip to these people and she had a phobia of two-wheel transport in general. So not just motorized two-wheels, bicycles as well. So that.

Jason Elkins (01:02:52.572)
jeez.

Jason Elkins (01:02:58.427)
She didn't get that part of the part of the memo,

Phil Paoletta (01:03:01.524)
No, no, yeah, that was a little bit complicated.

Jason Elkins (01:03:04.17)
That's actually, this is an interesting, just real quick, I wanna touch on that because I believe that a lot of the listeners to the show, we've got a mix of, you know.

Phil Paoletta (01:03:09.036)
Thank

Jason Elkins (01:03:13.92)
people that want to travel, people that are traveling, also travel agents, tour operators, inbound, outbound. And that's something that comes up a lot of times when, you know, maybe a travel agent or an outbound tour operator, let's say in the U.S. has a client and they're trying to book them on one of your trips. And sometimes there can be a little bit of tension between the inbound and outbound and like, well, we'd really like to have a conversation with your client before we confirm the trip or we'd like to, or at least before they arrive. And sometimes the outbound operator

So the outbound would be the person that sold the trip. You know that, for our listeners, but they sometimes are reluctant. Well, no, I want to show my value. I want to look like I'm doing everything for them and I don't really want them to even know that I'm working with somebody else. And so what's your advice to an outbound tour operator? Somebody selling your trips or a travel agent as far as letting their clients connect directly with the inbound tour operator or the taro operator on the ground like yourself.

Phil Paoletta (01:03:46.211)
Yeah.

Phil Paoletta (01:03:58.381)
Yep.

Phil Paoletta (01:04:14.85)
Yeah, I mean, we've done this a couple times now with different operators, and I totally respect.

operator that wants to preserve their relationship with the client that doesn't want us kind of interfering with things. We've just become a lot clearer with our communication and our expectations and our documentation has become a lot more extensive now. And yeah, that's worked out since we started kind of changing things and making them a little bit more involved, adding more detail. yes.

Jason Elkins (01:04:46.57)
Okay, because you can't rely on them to say the things that you would say. Because if you're maybe you're on a video call with one of your direct clients, you can have that whole conversation, vet the whole thing, discuss it, da da da da da. But you can't expect, you know, a travel agent in Milwaukee, or, you know, tour operator that has never been on a scooter to really explain that to discuss that with them. But don't you? Isn't it interesting? I've always kind of found it a little interesting. I've been on both sides of it. I get it.

Phil Paoletta (01:04:58.893)
Yes.

Phil Paoletta (01:05:14.702)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:05:15.178)
And it's like, they want to preserve the relationship with the client. They don't want the client to interact directly with, I'm just going to say it that way because that's what's coming out. But then they're going to be with you for two weeks in Africa on a motor scooter, you know.

Phil Paoletta (01:05:29.56)
Good.

Jason Elkins (01:05:33.022)
sitting around campfires, they're gonna interact with you on a super deep level, you or your clients, your team, whatever, on a much deeper level than they would on a 30 minute Zoom call, you know, during the booking process. So sometimes, you know, it's an interesting thing. It's like, why is the tour up, the outbound tour over? You're so worried about you creating a connection with the client. When hopefully if the trip goes well, you do create a connection with the client.

Phil Paoletta (01:05:56.294)
Yeah, when you're gonna be having... Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can see it from their... Well, I can see it from their side as well. You know, we try to be respectful of those relationships and everything. You know, we have become friends and close to some people that we've led trips with where we were doing the trip for someone else. But we're never, you know, we're not...

Jason Elkins (01:06:01.93)
I don't expect you to comment on that. know you. But yeah.

Phil Paoletta (01:06:20.8)
ever going out of our way to like, you know, kind of steer the client in one direction or anything. We do try to, you know, respect that relationship. You know, I mean, for us, I understand it from their perspective as well. And, you know, we're obviously grateful if we get clients that are sent our way, especially when we have a mutual understanding about the expectations around everything. And we have had, you know, successful, you know, we've had, we've had success in that sense as well. So, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:06:25.722)
yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:06:41.984)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:06:48.662)
All right, very, cool. So maybe there's an outbound tour operator, travel agent, or somebody listening to this that is really intrigued by what you're doing. So I want to kind of bring that up and I would encourage them. Sounds like you would encourage them to reach out to you, to you as well. So it's definitely something that's unique. That's not going to show up in the, I don't know.

Phil Paoletta (01:06:59.234)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Jason Elkins (01:07:08.554)
drawn a blank for which platform they might be using, but what you're doing is not something you're likely gonna book on some of the bigger platforms maybe that they have easy access to. So, which is very cool. Phil, we've discussed a lot of stuff. I suspect we could discuss a lot more. I'm super intrigued by just you, your story, but also what you guys are doing. And I look forward to kind of continuing to follow that, but I'm curious.

Phil Paoletta (01:07:15.584)
No, yes that's true. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:07:32.17)
What did I forget to ask? What should I have asked? Or what do you want to make sure our listeners know about either you or Scoot West Africa or anything in general before we wrap up?

Phil Paoletta (01:07:42.646)
Yeah, I mean, would just say something. You we've touched on this a bit in the conversation, but just about Africa in general and travel here, well, specifically West Africa.

You know, you mentioned this before, lot of people kind of look at Africa as this monolithic thing, and there's a lot of bad press, and a lot of people have kind of like preformed opinions about, you know, what life is like here. And I just really suggest to people to take a chance, even if it's not with us, our company. There's all sorts of different possibilities for trips.

to really take a chance to come here and do a short trip in West Africa and see what it's like. Because this, I mean, in some respects, it's kind of like, I mean, it's basically the most under-visited region in terms of this size and travel and tourism.

on the planet right now compared to the population of people that are living here. It's really kind of a neglected part of the world in terms of travel and tourism. And I think there's a lot of potential with that and there's a lot of tourism infrastructure that needs to be developed here. But I think a lot of people are also kind of sleeping on Africa and not necessarily making an effort to consider this as a possible travel destination. And I think they should. I think they should give it more consideration.

Jason Elkins (01:09:00.97)
great endorsement and I want to point out something that I think is very cool and I respect you greatly for it is you have an operation you have financial interests in Mali right now and during this conversation you you use the words dire situation there you discuss the realities of it even though you've got a place there you probably would love to have more clients I don't know if you'd love to have more clients I don't even know if you could but you were honest about it

Phil Paoletta (01:09:15.992)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:26.6)
and you weren't whitewashing it. You brought it up. You didn't have to it up. I didn't ask you, well, what about the situation in Mali? You brought it up. So to hear you say, I'd encourage people to come visit West Africa and do something, but at the same time, be able to say, well, probably maybe Mali is not the right choice right now, even though you've got financial interests there. So I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.

Phil Paoletta (01:09:42.838)
not Mali at the moment, but it's a big region. Not Mali at the moment, but yeah, it's a big region, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:50.43)
Yeah, yeah exactly. So I just I appreciate that so anybody listen to this if you want to you know get a straight shooter it sounds you know, my my impression of you is that your straight shooter and

So I'd encourage them to reach out to you. We're to have to link to your website and the show notes and encourage anybody and everybody that's interested, reach out and have a conversation. And I look forward to seeing you in West Africa myself. And I think that would just, it just sounds so much fun. really does. So Phil, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate you sharing your time with us and your expertise and history and, all that good stuff. Come back and join us soon.

Phil Paoletta (01:10:18.651)
it's a blast.

Phil Paoletta (01:10:26.606)
Cheers, Jason, thank you. Thank you so much.