Creepy, Sketchy, Slimy, Cute: Thoughts on a Visit to America

• Would you spend money on nothing? It is normal in America for people to spend money onnothing, or less than nothing. I think most of the world’s other 6.7 billion inhabitants would think it’s crazy to pay someone to help them lose something. But we spend money on diets, personal trainers, diet pills, liposuction and magic foods that trick your body into thinking its ingesting more than it actually is. My friends in Tanzania would beg me to tell them how they could get fat. They don’t see any point in expending energy on something that’s not purely entertaining or doesn’t benefit their survival. Forcing yourself to do an activity that will land you in the same place you started without having acquired something seems an act of insanity. On my daily runs, people would ask me “what are you running from?” I might point to some cows or goats in the distance, and they’d laugh, still confused. Maybe, in order to fit in with the rest of the world, we’d be better off paying someone to convince us that it’s okay not to be skinny.
  
• Creepy, sketchy, slimy, menace, hilarious, holy cow, freak and cute are wonderful words in English that just don’t quite translate into Swahili or Spanish. I’m really enjoying using them.
  
• Americans tend to think they should be able to eat whatever they want whenever they want (but I think this is changing), and it should be seedless and boneless. There’s not much thought put into what is in season (at least in Alaska, but right now in Alaska it’s snow season, so maybe we’re excused). If a recipe calls for leeks, we don’t try and figure out if it’s leek season (in fact, we don’t even really need to know what a leek is), we just go to the store. Expiration dates seem like distant threats due to refrigeration. Grapes naturally have seeds, chickens have bones, but we don’t have time to pick those things out, so we buy previously de-boned poultry and fruits bred not to produce seeds. We don’t expect that there are plants that naturally produce non-fertile ovaries or boneless chickens flopping around somewhere, but we don’t associate our food much with the real world. In contrast, most people of developing countries eat fresh corn when it’s ready or avocados when they’re in season, and they acquire it in small amounts or preserve it so that refrigeration is unnecessary. They’d look skeptically at any food that was too blue or too perfectly round, wondering how it was made and if it was truly edible.
  
• Hot showers are pure rapture. In both Tanzania and Honduras, only senior citizens indulge in hot water, and youth are expected to chatter through freezing baths.
  
• Some Americans do Tai Chi, some play the jaw harp, some practice Voodoo, some collect antique spittoons, some run ultra-marathons, some hate road salt, some knit, some read Kafka, some break-dance… in short there is so much diversity of tastes, and it seems most Americans are relatively open to new experiences. My family here loves ugali from Tanzania, Honduras-style tortillas, and Canadian music (I’m still working on broadening their musical tastes).
  
• Americans tend to rely on a cocoon of complicated things they have no hope of understanding or controlling. In Tanzania there wasn’t a thing in my house that I didn’t understand, and most things could be fixed with some cement or bricks. Village households are their own simple self-sufficient entities, built from the ground up by their owners. In my parents’ house in Alaska, the number of objects I couldn’t fix if they broke is probably a 3 digit number. In the winter in Alaska, power-outages are a matter of survival for many people. People don’t understand their plumbing, televisions, electrical wiring, cars and sewage tanks and must freak out when they break. If the experts or companies in these areas all disappeared or decided they hated you, you would be in deep yoghurt (as my Dad would say). If I am ever one of the few survivors from a monster-virus that wipes out 90% of the world, I’m headed to rural Tanzania, where life won’t be that different.
  
• Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing. I’ve been enjoying SNL and Capitol Steps skits which shamelessly mock even our most mavericky political leaders. Sure this freedom is relative, but comedians in other countries must sit on their hands even when someone with the misunderestimated speech-making skills of G W Bush rises to power. Imagine that.