HegeMoney- One thing I learned traveling around the world.
In the last four months, my international travel itch has
returned. My first trip outside the
United States consisted of a month long trip to study Spanish in Guatemala.
Friends questioned me regarding the safety of the endeavor. Online touts and ex-alumni of Guatemalan
language schools emphasized the clarity and quality of Spanish spoke as well as
individual attention and affordability.
What I experienced there affected me more deeply than the
language which I loved. The teachers in the school not only spoke Spanish but
most of them spoke an indigenous language as well. I encountered and came to know real human
beings from another country. I encountered a country with a history, present,
and future. For the first time, I smelled the dignity and soul of another land.
I have taken to watching a couple travel shows to scratch
this resurgent travel itch. I enjoy them, but they continually beg the
question: What is it about travel that draws me? I have come up with four answers that cover
most of what I enjoy. Some of it positive and some of it not so much, but like
many things the human experience is never totally pure or clear. First, I value
the encounter of authentic people and cultures …what I will call “soul” or “roots”.
Second, I believe travel offers the opportunity
for the traveler to enter a liminal space which allows one to see things from a
new and unique perspective. Third, my
travels often allow me to encounter life with a level of technology and
insulation stripped away. This could be described as quaint by some, primitive
by others, or even like the good old days. Finally, travel offers in a heightened
and compressed space the opportunity to appreciate the unique and special
aspect of my life and the lives of those I meet.
This all brings me to a fundamental question of dignity and
intention that Anthony Bourdain summed up so well in the episode where he
visited Laos. “What if by doing our job well we hasten the destruction of that
which we love?” Ah, that struck me. It
has always been something I feared. You can never go home again and you can
never return to a place you visited and expect that it has remain unchanged.
There are many reasons for this. The first and most
positive being the transformation that
can occur within the visitor and the host. There are other more insidious changes
that can arise. One deals with money and the tensions it brings. “Ah, would you
want to rob someone in a developing or third world country of the chance to
have a better job or a tv?” questioned one economics professor. Unfortunately I
fear that the choices offered each day can be more harmful and long lived than
a tv or job might indicate. Possibly more so for citizens of “undeveloped” countries than they are for those in developed
countries.
I fear this because what I have discovered that I treasure
and value most in my travels is the “soul” and rootedness that I find still
present in certain places. As I look back on the more than 60,000 miles I have
traveled this is the surest indicator of my impression of a country. This is probably because I continue to feel challenged by the sense of rootlessness and soullessness I find in my own
life. I don’t think it is coincidental
that “world happiness rankings” are filled with “less developed” countries who
are happier. In my travels I would say this is true on the individual level as
well. Many “less developed countries” are filled with happier people. Not all
countries of course and not all people. This is also not to glorify the “death
dealing” poverty that many face every day. These I believe are separate issues.
The money itself carries power and many of the implicit
assumptions of a “modern developed”
economy. Even if students and travelers arrive without an agenda their presence
and money subtly shift and change the opportunities and choices that everyone
else encounters. In economics this is called a “market distortion” and is
usually when used in terms of the government buying or subsidizing a service.
It could be applied in this situation as well since these “foreign” demands are
not indigenous to or arising from within the local market. The assumption of
our current system is that an “indigenous market” only has value to the extent
that it delivers a greater amount of utility or return to someone, but how can
you measure the value or even the presence of “roots” or “soul”.
I would
not want to take away any person’s right to choose that job or that tv, but as
a rootless, cultureless denizen of the developed
market I would like to share with them what I see in their lives and ask them
what they see in mine. Then they could choose, and I would remind them that
they will choose again tomorrow and the next day because the future arrives
everyday as the sun rises.
