 Ohh a day at the library. Some quick research for a road trip I’m planning through beautiful British Columbia in Canada’s west. Keeping with my theme of understanding culture and what brings us all together yet keeps us all different landed me next to what I thought must be a sign. Yapping away in the isle I hear two ladies, roughly in there late twenties discussing all of the wonderful places of the world they would like to go. It started off with Germany, and then drifted to Bermuda. “I hear Bermuda
it beautiful, thou way to expensive, so that’s never going happen”. The yakking continued into probably some of the most obscene travel conversation I’ve ever heard… “Columbiasounded neat, thou ALL of the boarder crossings are way to dangerous.” “Maybe Peru?”the one girl says “Oh no…” streams in the other, “ I heard that if you wear NIKE shoes there, people will rob them right off your feet”. I’m pretty much about to through my book across at the two of them hoping to knock any kind of intelligence into what is some of the most un-found information I’ve ever encountered. This conversation makes it’s way back North to Mexico where they must really know some concrete information as they did hear that it was amazing, yet …”the government and army was so corrupt that outside of the resort you couldn’t go anywhere, it was way extremely unsafe” Pause for a moment of safety… “ohh my god, look a travel guide for Disney Land, my parents have been there so many times that people practically recruit them to go along. Let’s get this.” Are you for real? Are people actually this sheltered in there own little world? By this point I have reaffirmed that my pursuit for cultural understanding within a nation is well worth exploring and conveying to the world, if even I can save just one confused sole! I’ve been pulled over by the Mexican army probably more then thirty times in my life. From my understanding every Mexican male aged 18, must registrar for military service for a period of 12months. And from my experience of being pulled over by groups of eighteen year olds whom are about as interested in making your life more difficult as they are in serving up a year of there youth in the military. All rather polite and friendly, searching vehicles for plants crossing state boarders to ensure there eco systems are not disrupt. Nope, not robbing, raping, savages needing to be paid out in order to pass. Just kids putting in there time, looking to protect there eco-systems from damage. Sounds dangerous doesn’t it! I highly encourage learning why that East Indian family bargains till then end for every cent they have or how come your Muslim neighbours are on there knees five times a day. A little cross boarder understanding or even acknowledging the naivety of where your from. Muhammad Ali forever changed a nation when he exposed the naivety of his government and stood up for an obvious lack of understanding as to why America was fighting in the Vietnam war. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” Perhaps look at your own life and picture yourself explaining to the Yanomami tribe of the Amazon why your culture chooses to live separate from a family that loves them, or why we trade an average of more then 2000 hours, over 1/3 of a consecutive year for jobs we probably don’t like, to buy things that we don’t need and drive machines that are killing an eco system we depend on. I personally live in jacked up, kitted out, black smoke, dually country, where car pooling and smart cars roll off the tongue like profanity. Maybe in my search for cultural understanding for the rest of the world, it will lead me to understand this as well…
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