Turning 50 is not any small factor. Maybe that’s why we make such a fuss of it—throwing larger-than-life events, making purchases we’ve dreamed of for our entire lives and, after all, occurring once-in-a-lifetime journeys. Gabrielle Union understands this. A brand new BET+ sequence, Gabrielle Union: My Journey to 50 follows Union, her husband Dwyane Wade, and a bunch of shut family and friends as they embark on what Union calls a “bucket checklist journey” to 4 African international locations.

Union’s love of journey and journey is palpable throughout the two-episode sequence. From receiving Ghanian names (Akosua Safo for Union and Kwesi Safo for Wade) and seeing the horrific remnants of the transatlantic slave commerce alongside Ghana’s coast to driving by means of swaths of wavy Namibian desert, sipping wine at a Black-owned vineyard in Franschhoek, South Africa, and dancing the evening away in Zanzibar, Tanzania, she is tirelessly inquisitive and recreation. She sat down with Condé Nast Traveler to speak about planning the journey, how connections constructed whereas touring might help heal trauma, and discovering methods to “pour into” the locations we go to past simply writing a examine.

Gabrielle Union: My Journey to 50 follows the actor to 4 African international locations: Ghana, Tanzania, South Africa, and Namibia.

Courtesy Eddward

You talked about within the sequence that you just used the Black Girls Travel Too group and had seen these locations there. Why is it necessary for us to have on-line communities to plan and share journey solutions with one another?

We solely know what we all know and there is a lot I do not know. If any person else, particularly any person who seems like me, has been someplace and so they have superb issues to report again and so they felt protected and all that then I wish to attempt. I want I had checked in earlier than I went to Croatia. When Black women take pleasure in a spot, I really feel like there’s a strong, strong likelihood that I, too, will take pleasure in it. It is a useful resource that I want extra folks would use and there’d in all probability be rather less shock once we go to sure locations and the way we is likely to be obtained.

Why did you need this to be a household journey shared together with your daughter versus, say, a solo journey or girlfriends’ journey?