Nothing to Fear
I guess this is growing up.
It's better to be home, but it was good to be away. One of the lovely side effects of business travel to a far away place is ample hours for reading. I absolutely went to town. Two and a half books on marketing (two not deeply satisfying, but many useful bits all around), Marguerite of Navarre's The Heptameron and 1984. I'd been wanting to read both for years. I'll pause here to allow time for all of you to gasp about the fact that I had yet to read 1984. I'd also never read Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos until a month and a half ago, and Cat's Cradle before that, but no Vonnegut before or since. I've decided that my paltry knowledge of literature that is not early American and British through Virginia Wolfe can no longer go unattended, so instead of staying up late on IRC I've been pulling the greats off the shelf. I digress.
1984 was, as most will no doubt agree, an amazing novel. I started reading it at 20:00 and went to sleep at 3:00 the next morning. I'd seen the film when I was younger and just skipped the novel for years, for no good particularly good reasons. Something to do with Aldous Huxley, audio books and being generally freaked out by John Hurt. Long story, I'll tell you over a beer.
I had not counted on the excruciating longness of my layovers in Heathrow and Cape Town. When the travel agent tells you that two seven hour layovers are going to lower your flight costs by over 10,000 USD, you accept that the journey was already going to suck, so how bad can a layover here and there be? There's always the chance to pick up the British edition of The Economist, a Hello Magazine, some crisps for Ben and to eat something that's actually health at giraffe in Terminal 1. I slept on the planes for most of my flights, save five hours on the way home, so my time in airports was spent book in hand. Nights in Durban were largely spent reading to the roar of the Indian Ocean, accompanied by massive lightning storms more than half the time. Spectacular.
So, 1984. You've all already read it. Probably. The "do it to Julia, not to me" that's been blazing somewhere in the back of my brain for the last 20 odd years finally makes sense. Finely crafted work, that. Not a lot of other surprises, though.
Now that I've had some time to mull it over, the same thing comes back to me over and over again. The power of fear. A good friend of mine said it best: you're afraid of what will happen if you say something, so it is easier to say nothing at all. Or to do nothing.
I didn't do much while I was in Durban, and spent 99% of my time in the vicinity of tourist-strip-central-by-the-beach. So many people reminded me not to go anywhere by myself, to be on my guard and all that. I felt ridiculous being herded about the entry sidewalks and into taxis. I resisted clothes shopping since it would prove to be some intense affair where I'd need to have someone from the hotel come with me to make sure that I'd be all right at the shopping mall. (Maybe if I'd thought it through, I'd have seen it as an opportunity to inject some funds into the local economy for provision of excellent service, but I'm just not into being waited on in that way.)
I pride myself on not being the average tourist. When I visited Copenhagen to speak at Danish Linux Forum 2007, I touched down and there were riots in the city proper. I got the story later from my local anthropological expert and will be pleased to tell anyone who cares to listen the tales of woe of Copenhagen's squatting anarchists. Gotta love the Danes. Great shawarma and pubs, too. I left a 5 real note in one of them that I intend to visit again one day.
The riots continued throughout the conference, dying down and then reappearing elsewhere. The students I hung out with wanted to know if I was afraid to walk back downtown from the university given that there were riots and we might run into them. I told them they could no doubt be avoided and started walking. The next day the anthropologist asked if I was afraid to visit Christiana. I wasn't. We went. I got the t-shirt.
Plus, as can likely be deduced from above, I have also successfully navigated the wilds of Brasil and returned unscathed. Everyone told me to be worried about going there, too. My hosts wouldn't let me go downtown when a festival was on, but I wonder if that had more to do with dangerous fleshy bits on display than dangerous people in the crowds. They assured me it was the latter, and it would have offended them to ask about the former, so I didn't.
I still can't believe I got an escort to the convenience store a block and a half from the hotel by a security guard, one who jokingly and freely admitted that "only God could keep [me] safe." I also anticipated everything he said about when to cross the street to get away from parked cars with people in them, when he felt my pace should speed up or slow, when to cross the street. I know how to not behave like a target.
I confirmed with various locals over various breakfasts: you're a tourist, you're a target. How this is different than anywhere else, I remain unsure. Ben's wallet was nearly stolen while we were in Rome.
The only reason I accepted the escort and all the other fuss is my voice, which immediately betrays me away as a foreigner, likely American. And minimum wage is 225 USD per month, assuming you're employed.
When I went to the beach, I went with two friends (which is probably just a sane thing to do anyway for happiness reasons), Ellen Ball and the aforementioned James Arbaugh. Just as we got back to the hotel, he mentioned that people had warned him about how dangerous it was in South Africa. He smiled thinly, but not unkindly, and said, "I live in Haiti, how bad can it really be?"
Indeed.
How bad can it really be? I know people in South Africa are poor, some of them painfully so. 25% of them have HIV. Desperation is the mother of many inventions, not all of them benign or benevolent.
But here's the thing. I was never actually afraid. Maybe that's just utter naivete on my part. The worst thing that happened to me when I went out for dinner, all alone into the big scary world, was having to overpay for cab fare. I didn't walk, though, even though I'd done it the night before with a group and I certainly had the energy to do it again. So maybe I was afraid. I suppose, in this instance, there's something to be said for the beauty of calling it not fear but pragmatism. Healthy levels of caution. A prudent choice.
I think I felt more rubbed raw by all the warnings than I felt worried that something terrible would happen. Then again, these warning always grate. The well intentioned who mentioned that I might be kidnapped in Brasil. (I wasn't.) I've always wanted to go to Haiti. No one supports this idea. My friend, ex-Army, told me he wouldn't go with me because he'd "been there with a gun and couldn't protect [himself]."
But James said I could visit and all I can think is "this is my chance to finally do this." Even though I have seen signs in US airports for as long as I can remember that state that the Federal Aviation Administration or some such administrative body has determined Port au Prince Airport, Haiti to be unsound in particular technical jargon. But people fly into and out of there and apparently they don't all die. I'm told I should be terrified to go to this place. That's just it, I'm not.
I spent last week with a whole bunch of young, idealistic hackers and informatics professionals. These folks are the real deal: living in Africa (or Haiti), caring for the health needs of the poorest of the poor. Some would call this the lord's work. They're not from Africa and are varying degrees of pale, or deeply sunburned. They seem to do just fine. What am I supposed to be afraid of?
Then again, it seems imprudent to risk my life by going to the poorest country on planet Earth. I'm getting married in six months. Ben doesn't want me to go to Haiti (and most would argue rightfully so). I think that there's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college. (Or just after.) That time for me has passed. Now I'm thinking about being somebody's Mom. In a few years.
Speaking of growing up and the importance of family and all that...
Cousin, you emailed me and I lost your mail. Please resend it. I would really love to talk to you.
I'm going to go read some more Vonnegut. Any author suggestions folks?
It's better to be home, but it was good to be away. One of the lovely side effects of business travel to a far away place is ample hours for reading. I absolutely went to town. Two and a half books on marketing (two not deeply satisfying, but many useful bits all around), Marguerite of Navarre's The Heptameron and 1984. I'd been wanting to read both for years. I'll pause here to allow time for all of you to gasp about the fact that I had yet to read 1984. I'd also never read Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos until a month and a half ago, and Cat's Cradle before that, but no Vonnegut before or since. I've decided that my paltry knowledge of literature that is not early American and British through Virginia Wolfe can no longer go unattended, so instead of staying up late on IRC I've been pulling the greats off the shelf. I digress.
1984 was, as most will no doubt agree, an amazing novel. I started reading it at 20:00 and went to sleep at 3:00 the next morning. I'd seen the film when I was younger and just skipped the novel for years, for no good particularly good reasons. Something to do with Aldous Huxley, audio books and being generally freaked out by John Hurt. Long story, I'll tell you over a beer.
I had not counted on the excruciating longness of my layovers in Heathrow and Cape Town. When the travel agent tells you that two seven hour layovers are going to lower your flight costs by over 10,000 USD, you accept that the journey was already going to suck, so how bad can a layover here and there be? There's always the chance to pick up the British edition of The Economist, a Hello Magazine, some crisps for Ben and to eat something that's actually health at giraffe in Terminal 1. I slept on the planes for most of my flights, save five hours on the way home, so my time in airports was spent book in hand. Nights in Durban were largely spent reading to the roar of the Indian Ocean, accompanied by massive lightning storms more than half the time. Spectacular.
So, 1984. You've all already read it. Probably. The "do it to Julia, not to me" that's been blazing somewhere in the back of my brain for the last 20 odd years finally makes sense. Finely crafted work, that. Not a lot of other surprises, though.
Now that I've had some time to mull it over, the same thing comes back to me over and over again. The power of fear. A good friend of mine said it best: you're afraid of what will happen if you say something, so it is easier to say nothing at all. Or to do nothing.
I didn't do much while I was in Durban, and spent 99% of my time in the vicinity of tourist-strip-central-by-the-beach. So many people reminded me not to go anywhere by myself, to be on my guard and all that. I felt ridiculous being herded about the entry sidewalks and into taxis. I resisted clothes shopping since it would prove to be some intense affair where I'd need to have someone from the hotel come with me to make sure that I'd be all right at the shopping mall. (Maybe if I'd thought it through, I'd have seen it as an opportunity to inject some funds into the local economy for provision of excellent service, but I'm just not into being waited on in that way.)
I pride myself on not being the average tourist. When I visited Copenhagen to speak at Danish Linux Forum 2007, I touched down and there were riots in the city proper. I got the story later from my local anthropological expert and will be pleased to tell anyone who cares to listen the tales of woe of Copenhagen's squatting anarchists. Gotta love the Danes. Great shawarma and pubs, too. I left a 5 real note in one of them that I intend to visit again one day.
The riots continued throughout the conference, dying down and then reappearing elsewhere. The students I hung out with wanted to know if I was afraid to walk back downtown from the university given that there were riots and we might run into them. I told them they could no doubt be avoided and started walking. The next day the anthropologist asked if I was afraid to visit Christiana. I wasn't. We went. I got the t-shirt.
Plus, as can likely be deduced from above, I have also successfully navigated the wilds of Brasil and returned unscathed. Everyone told me to be worried about going there, too. My hosts wouldn't let me go downtown when a festival was on, but I wonder if that had more to do with dangerous fleshy bits on display than dangerous people in the crowds. They assured me it was the latter, and it would have offended them to ask about the former, so I didn't.
I still can't believe I got an escort to the convenience store a block and a half from the hotel by a security guard, one who jokingly and freely admitted that "only God could keep [me] safe." I also anticipated everything he said about when to cross the street to get away from parked cars with people in them, when he felt my pace should speed up or slow, when to cross the street. I know how to not behave like a target.
I confirmed with various locals over various breakfasts: you're a tourist, you're a target. How this is different than anywhere else, I remain unsure. Ben's wallet was nearly stolen while we were in Rome.
The only reason I accepted the escort and all the other fuss is my voice, which immediately betrays me away as a foreigner, likely American. And minimum wage is 225 USD per month, assuming you're employed.
When I went to the beach, I went with two friends (which is probably just a sane thing to do anyway for happiness reasons), Ellen Ball and the aforementioned James Arbaugh. Just as we got back to the hotel, he mentioned that people had warned him about how dangerous it was in South Africa. He smiled thinly, but not unkindly, and said, "I live in Haiti, how bad can it really be?"
Indeed.
How bad can it really be? I know people in South Africa are poor, some of them painfully so. 25% of them have HIV. Desperation is the mother of many inventions, not all of them benign or benevolent.
But here's the thing. I was never actually afraid. Maybe that's just utter naivete on my part. The worst thing that happened to me when I went out for dinner, all alone into the big scary world, was having to overpay for cab fare. I didn't walk, though, even though I'd done it the night before with a group and I certainly had the energy to do it again. So maybe I was afraid. I suppose, in this instance, there's something to be said for the beauty of calling it not fear but pragmatism. Healthy levels of caution. A prudent choice.
I think I felt more rubbed raw by all the warnings than I felt worried that something terrible would happen. Then again, these warning always grate. The well intentioned who mentioned that I might be kidnapped in Brasil. (I wasn't.) I've always wanted to go to Haiti. No one supports this idea. My friend, ex-Army, told me he wouldn't go with me because he'd "been there with a gun and couldn't protect [himself]."
But James said I could visit and all I can think is "this is my chance to finally do this." Even though I have seen signs in US airports for as long as I can remember that state that the Federal Aviation Administration or some such administrative body has determined Port au Prince Airport, Haiti to be unsound in particular technical jargon. But people fly into and out of there and apparently they don't all die. I'm told I should be terrified to go to this place. That's just it, I'm not.
I spent last week with a whole bunch of young, idealistic hackers and informatics professionals. These folks are the real deal: living in Africa (or Haiti), caring for the health needs of the poorest of the poor. Some would call this the lord's work. They're not from Africa and are varying degrees of pale, or deeply sunburned. They seem to do just fine. What am I supposed to be afraid of?
Then again, it seems imprudent to risk my life by going to the poorest country on planet Earth. I'm getting married in six months. Ben doesn't want me to go to Haiti (and most would argue rightfully so). I think that there's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college. (Or just after.) That time for me has passed. Now I'm thinking about being somebody's Mom. In a few years.
Speaking of growing up and the importance of family and all that...
Cousin, you emailed me and I lost your mail. Please resend it. I would really love to talk to you.
I'm going to go read some more Vonnegut. Any author suggestions folks?
posted by Leslie Hawthorn at 7:39 PM
3 Comments:
Brave New World, by Huxley is actually pretty great if you want to give it a second chance.
Lists of books. One of my favourite things in the world. Somewhere I have a list that my librarian friend wrote up for me. It has titles and stories and books like Welcome to Hard Times (Doctorow), the Monkey Wrench Gang, and Look Homeward Angel. It's old and yellowed now (and currently misplaced) but it is also the beginnings of my love affair with annotated lists of books.
I had the world's best English teacher in high school. She had students paint a dragon on her classroom door because she was the dragon lady and damned. proud. of it. Ms. Elford. I didn't take a regular English class from her though--I took a course she'd developed. We had to read 1984, Brave New World, The Crucible, Waiting for Godot, and review a movie. My team picked Clockwork Orange (I still haven't managed to finish reading the book). There may have been a few others on the list of required reading but those are the ones that have stuck with me over the years.
Momo and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende should both be on your list as well.
@ chris dibona: Thanks - that's actually the book in the alluded to audio books. I'm about half way through and can't get into it, so I will re-return to it later.
@ emma: Ah, such an awesome list. Shall we pick some of these up at Powell's whilst at OSCON next week?
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