Mac Candee: The World Nomac’s global trotting led him to Lebanon

Mac Candee, the World Nomac as the world has come to know him through his extensive travels, has made a name for himself on social media and YouTube in particular, with four channels and a dedicated team helping him. His main channel has 808K subscribers, making quitting the corporate world worth his while.

He has been to Lebanon twenty-four times, once living for nearly a year in Aquagate Tabarja. Born in Chicago, he grew up in Wisconsin and now lives in Florida. He spoke with The Beiruter during a five-day stay in Florida between travels.  What solidified his love for the country is that he’s engaged to be married soon to Mabelle Chedid in a big Lebanese wedding.

Bit by the travel bug

In 2011, he studied abroad for a semester during his bachelor's degree in Seville, Spain.

His dad had given him a small silver digital camera and told him: “Hey, capture some memories while you’re out there”. That’s when the travel bug bit him and Mac started making videos.

After university, he worked off his student loans for a few years in Washington DC. From 2015 to 2019, he was the senior project manager for Lidl and couldn’t shake the urge to travel. He wanted to start a YouTube channel and left his job in 2019. Four months later, the pandemic hit. He reconsidered whether he wanted to go down this route.

His videos were not receiving any traction, so he decided to give them one more year around the time TikTok became popular. The turning point was when he took an overnight bus from Cairo to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. “They have beautiful salt lakes where you can float with perfect blue water”.

He had made some videos there, one of which got 15 million views on TikTok and was shared across other platforms, by different accounts including Pubity and Ladbible. The video got 100 million views across the board. “Wow, it’s just about telling a great story, finding a beautiful destination, and sharing these moments in the best possible way”, realized Mac.

While in Egypt, he went to a gold shop to make a copy of his 50$ silver globe necklace in gold, which he had worn every day since he quit his job, as a reminder that he wants to see the world. Once he hit 100,000 followers, he would wear the gold version.

At a friend’s bachelor party in Las Vegas, and as they were sitting by the pool having drinks, he checked his account and it had reached 100K. He has worn the gold necklace ever since.

A deep cultural immersion

Mac often goes beyond surface tourism with true cultural immersion. He used to travel to experience the top destinations around the world. After deeply connecting with locals in his favorite region, the Middle East, in places he was once afraid to visit, he travels where he can have the most in-depth moments, unique to a subculture inside a country. “The hospitality, meeting someone and after only 24 hours feeling like you’ve known them your entire life because the culture is so welcoming”, shares Mac.

Across all the borders Mac’s crossed, the most universal human gesture he’s encountered is a smile. It will give the first impression to a stranger that: “I come in peace”. “Marhaba chou el akhbar?”, with a smile, signals that he’s looking to connect, everywhere except in Libya where they say he seems suspicious. Speaking with a little Lebanese in his Arabic, they mistook him for Lebanese with his overflowing compliments and smiles, like he’s up to something.

A fortunate encounter

On the 21st of July 2021, he arrived in Lebanon with the Australian YouTuber Luke Damant who suggested the trip. Someone played a Lebanese joke on them and told them they need to go to Sabra market. They explored Beirut in five days then went up to Jounieh. On their first day there they were asking people where they can find some traditional Lebanese food and came across Fouad, who became a main character in both of their lives. From his car, he saw them struggling as they spoke to the valet parking guys.

“Hey guys, I speak English. I know tons of Lebanese food places. I’m from Jounieh, hop in my car”. Despite growing up with their parents telling them not to get into strangers’ cars, when you’re a vlogger that’s exactly what you want to do. And thus, the story began. He showed them all of Lebanon, from Batroun to Baalbek, and they fell in love.

The first meal they had together was dinner in Palm’s Jounieh. It gave him a taste of the customary nightlife, and the diverse and generous culinary experience in Lebanon: the cold and hot mezza, batata harra, hummus, waraa eenab, baba ghanouj and masheweh. “Mac went crazy over raqaqat, Lebanese cheese rolls”, says Fouad. “He loved the mix of music, Bazaar of Arabic and English, he wasn’t used to that, and the lounge style of partying with argileh, music and alcohol. The first song he liked was: Ya Habibi”. He was very surprised as he wasn’t expecting the social life, and the nightlife he witnessed in Lebanon.

Mac was supposed to visit Lebanon for two weeks and ended up staying for six. “Sunsets, nature, the social life and the after-party food like shawarma. The simple things we take for granted turned out to be so unique and lacking abroad that they hooked Mac to the country”, shares Fouad affectionately.

It was one year after the Beirut port explosion: no gas, no electricity, 2 kilometers long lines, an intense time to be here. Regardless of the lack of power in average people’s homes throughout the day, they were still willing to invite him for tea or coffee or pay for his Manousheh. “All these small moments of kindness while spirits were down just grasped my heart”.

Cultural clashes

Within the first two to three weeks, he had just learned how to say cheers in Arabic. The setting was his third family dinner in the home of his good friend Joe Daou, a famous DJ in the Middle East. He raises his glass first to the dad saying Kesak, then to the mom and said: “Kisik!”, the equivalent of female genitals. Everyone laughed hard and he turned crimson red. His friend Joe explained to him what he had said instead of cheers, which was highly inappropriate in Arabic, making this incident one of his most embarrassing moments in cultural clashes.

As a foreigner in Lebanon, he had a cultural learning in picking up the check. “When you want to pay the bill at a restaurant and people are nearly fist-fighting to get it”. In America, they don’t cause a scene like that. “I literally ran around pool day clubs to chase my friends to snag the receipt and pay the bill”.

The cherry on top of his visit was receiving a DM from his better half Mabelle. He had just gotten a haircut and she said: “You look Lebanese with that haircut”. “And I was like Oh is she hitting on me?”, wondered Mac. He liked her immediately.

“I loved Lebanon before I met her. But once you become part of a Lebanese family, you go from just being an “ajnabeh” to all of a sudden being part of the family”. At thirty-three, he spent five years of his life in and out of the country. The American ideology is if you live for some time in the states and learn the American values, you become American. By that same logic, Mac Candee is now officially Lebanese.