Just a handful of weeks before I left for the Peace Corps, my mom helped me move everything out of my Philadelphia apartment. We made it a two-day trip, the middle of which was a hotel in a random Virginia freeway-town. The girl at the front desk was about my age, with dirty blond hair and bright eyes. Or maybe a little younger, and to be clear, only the eyes themselves were bright. The skin around them looked tired.
When mom asked her where we should park the truck, she walked outside with us to point out the best place. On the way, mom explained that I was moving home because I was about to leave the country to serve in the Peace Corps.
I don't think the girl said anything at first, but I'll never forget what she said a minute later, out of the blue, while my mom was moving the truck:
"You're doing what most people can only dream about doing."
And then she left — back into the hotel, maybe for the rest of her life.
Oh, how I wanted to take her with me just then.
And now I'm here, and ironically, practically everyone I meet would trade practically everything for a life like hers. Don't get me wrong — I appreciate modern civilization. There's fun in all this possibility. But it leaves too much room for aspiration. With all these choices, you assume there must be a better way to live your life. Which can make it impossible to appreciate the good in what you already have … to consider that it might actually be good enough. That a more ignorant version of you would be satisfied.
Sure, some people really do have it bad. Hundreds of millions of them do. And it's okay for them to look upward. But the top few billion of us could stand to have a slightly less infinite set of opportunities. (By the way, I am in no way an exception. In fact, I'm worst-of-breed, because I voluntarily left a good American lifestyle to come over here and work for pennies … I'm so overwhelmed by choice that I can't even tell which ones are improvements! If I had any sense, of course, I would have simply married the girl at the hotel, moved to California, and called it quits.)
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
The art of not paying $200 for tea
Today I once again negotiated the price down to zero.
Well, sort of.
Sometime after waking up, I found myself in the main prasa of Ribeira Brava, where all the vans congregate to pick up pasengers for destinations across the São Nicolau-ian landscape. Not knowing which van was which, I asked the first dirver I saw where I could find something headed for the aiport. He promptly offered to take me there himself for 500 escudos — in other words, he gave me the opportunity to fork over an entire day's food allowance so that me and my backpack could have a 16-passenger space to ourselves. I kindly explained to him that there would be other passengers on the plane with me, and that since Ribeira Brava is the town closest to the aiport, there would surely be a van of them with a spare seat for me. I'm not sure what words he said in response, but his body language seemed to suggest that everyone else would actually be teleporting to the airport and I'd be wise to accept his charity van while I still could.
The next dudes I talked to were also drivers, but they were honest enough to a) acknowledge the existence of airport shuttles, and b) point me to the road where I could find them. On my way there I ran into a teacher I knew who confirmed both the road and the righteousness of my indignation at the 500-escudo price. Unfortunately, I'm still a little timid abotu flagging down vehicles taht may or may not be the right one, so I think I missed a few that I could have used... and the teacher, although still nearby, was not helping.
When the 500-escudo driver passed by in his still-empty van and offered to take me to the airport for the same silly price, I told him I'd keep waiting. He didn't say more, but as he drove off his body language seemed to suggest that he was pretty sure he could milk me for even more money later when I got desperate.
I started to worry that he might actually be right, but just then a father of the church (who was the spitting image of a Californian padre... nearly bald, brown robes, the whole nine yards) stopped by to talk to me and pointed to the right van when he saw it.
So I hopped on and went to the airport. On the way tehre, I asked teh merrily-dressed man next to me how much it would cost. He didn't know. So I waited to see what everyone else paid when they got off... but then nobody did. "Was this pre-arranged?" I asked myself. Was the driver doing them a favor? Was this his family? Before the answers to any of those questions became clear, he drove away. And there I was, at the airport, on time, for free.
If the price-gouging bozo driver had been there just then, my body language might have been something along the lines of, "Awwwwwwwwwww, snap!"
Well, sort of.
Sometime after waking up, I found myself in the main prasa of Ribeira Brava, where all the vans congregate to pick up pasengers for destinations across the São Nicolau-ian landscape. Not knowing which van was which, I asked the first dirver I saw where I could find something headed for the aiport. He promptly offered to take me there himself for 500 escudos — in other words, he gave me the opportunity to fork over an entire day's food allowance so that me and my backpack could have a 16-passenger space to ourselves. I kindly explained to him that there would be other passengers on the plane with me, and that since Ribeira Brava is the town closest to the aiport, there would surely be a van of them with a spare seat for me. I'm not sure what words he said in response, but his body language seemed to suggest that everyone else would actually be teleporting to the airport and I'd be wise to accept his charity van while I still could.
The next dudes I talked to were also drivers, but they were honest enough to a) acknowledge the existence of airport shuttles, and b) point me to the road where I could find them. On my way there I ran into a teacher I knew who confirmed both the road and the righteousness of my indignation at the 500-escudo price. Unfortunately, I'm still a little timid abotu flagging down vehicles taht may or may not be the right one, so I think I missed a few that I could have used... and the teacher, although still nearby, was not helping.
When the 500-escudo driver passed by in his still-empty van and offered to take me to the airport for the same silly price, I told him I'd keep waiting. He didn't say more, but as he drove off his body language seemed to suggest that he was pretty sure he could milk me for even more money later when I got desperate.
I started to worry that he might actually be right, but just then a father of the church (who was the spitting image of a Californian padre... nearly bald, brown robes, the whole nine yards) stopped by to talk to me and pointed to the right van when he saw it.
So I hopped on and went to the airport. On the way tehre, I asked teh merrily-dressed man next to me how much it would cost. He didn't know. So I waited to see what everyone else paid when they got off... but then nobody did. "Was this pre-arranged?" I asked myself. Was the driver doing them a favor? Was this his family? Before the answers to any of those questions became clear, he drove away. And there I was, at the airport, on time, for free.
If the price-gouging bozo driver had been there just then, my body language might have been something along the lines of, "Awwwwwwwwwww, snap!"
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