Don't Do This at Home

I surprised myself when I plopped down on a cushy leather couch in the cramped lounge of the Oxford hostel.  Usually I retire to the semi-privacy of my bunk bed and hold a book in front of my face to avoid eye contact with my fellow hostellers.  A pretty blond woman with glasses and soft, unintimidating features was already seated on the couch.  Due to her gentle appearance, I sat next to her devoid of any self-consciousness. 

On the television, there was a singing competition between all the European nations.  The singer who represented Austria was wearing a dress but sported a thick beard as well.  I turned to the woman next to me.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing to the man on the screen.

“It is a singing competition between all the countries in Europe,” she answered.

“No, I mean that guy singing. Is he a man or a woman?”

“I don’t know.”

With the ice successfully broken, I began to systematically turn this stranger into an acquaintance.  Her name is Annika, and she is from Finland.  She interns at a travel agency in London and decided to visit Oxford during the weekend. 

“Can’t people make their own travel arrangements?” I asked.  “It’s not difficult to book a hotel.”

“Yeah, I don’t know why people can’t,” she said.  “Most old people call me because they don’t know how to use the computer.”

We talked about where we have been.  She worked as an au pair in Boston and met her boyfriend’s family in Chile.  Finland and Chile are on opposite sides of the globe.  I don’t think you could pick two countries that are farther apart, yet the two managed to meet in Boston.  After hearing this, I recalled my Chilean friend Benjamin’s words, which I heard in Liverpool:  “These days the borders are becoming invisible.”

When Annika asked me where I’ve been, I proceeded to talk endlessly about my volunteer trip to Ghana.  Since I hadn’t done much talking in the past few days while I was marooned inside an empty hostel in rainy Cardiff, a flood of words gushed out of my mouth.  I was binge-socializing.  I can’t say that I had full control of my thoughts because I was intoxicated with words, but I knew that after this brief flood, a drought was due.

I told her about Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux, the book I was reading at the time.  Theroux travels by land from Egypt to South Africa and educates the reader about each country he visits along the way.  I explained how the book made me rethink my volunteering efforts.  For one month, I taught English and French to young Ghanaians living about an hour’s drive from the capital city of Accra. 

I wouldn’t say I was so naïve and idealistic as to believe I was changing the world.  My main motivation was to add some excitement to my credentials and even to boost my resume.  My upbringing was relatively normal.  I lived a safe, somewhat sheltered life that translates to dry reading material.  A trip to the third-world was just what I needed to spruce up my existence and save me from the perils of mediocrity. 

My endeavors were not entirely heartless.  I was also motivated by my Togolese friends whom I met at the restaurant where I worked.  My friends were dishwashers at the restaurant and janitors at the airport.  They worked menial and unfulfilling jobs for ninety hours a week to send money home to their families.  Compared to these guys, I was privileged to live in a trailer park and still own thirty pairs of shoes as an adolescent.  These guys were working the crappy jobs that white Americans wouldn’t take, so I wanted to put myself in their position and see where they came from.  What were they escaping?  I wanted to find out, so I went to West Africa.

While I was engaged in a battle to improve the English of a few small-town kids, I believed I was making a slight difference, but Theroux made me think otherwise.  Theroux is not a fan of donor aid because African nations often grow dependent upon outside help.  Volunteers take jobs away from the natives.  As long as there is unemployment in Africa, there will be poverty.  The greedy and seedy governments need their citizens to remain poor so that the affluent politicians can stay in power.  If all the volunteers had stayed at home and contented themselves with their comparatively pristine childhoods, then local Africans would be forced to fill in those jobs. 

I began to wonder if charitable efforts may do more harm than good on a grand scale.  Volunteers can help a few individuals, but they can’t change an entire society.  When is the last time a foreign population peacefully invaded a country and improved social welfare?  Exploitation is a more likely outcome.  The citizens of a nation need to fix their own countries. 

 
“When you have a cold,” I said to Annika, “your body fights off the sickness by raising your body temperature until your fever breaks.  If you take medicine, the pills will reduce your temperature.  Your symptoms won’t be as severe, but you’ll be sick for a longer period of time.”

 

Volunteers, I was learning, only alleviated the pain, but they did not eliminate the disease.  We are a very caring and cooperative species, so we offer help to our fellow humans.  We are too kind and too humane to stand idle while others suffer.  Reading Theroux’s work has nearly persuaded me to let nature run its course.  Our sentimentality is indirectly destructive. 

If volunteers were to stop working all over the developing world, educational opportunities may be lost.  If we stopped sending food, water purifiers, and other supplies, the death rate would most likely increase in the beginning.  Sacrifices would be made, but eventually the locals would have no option but to change for the better or else perish.

Or certain nations could thrive without the help of outsiders.  Donor companies could be trying to force a square peg into a circular hole.  Maybe African countries need to adapt into a different kind of society devoid of Western influence.  When I was in Ghana, all the kids wanted to go to America.  Even though none of my students had been there, they wished their country was more like the United States.  Why should we impose our standards onto them?

 

We may assume that certain African countries are undeveloped because their societies do not resemble ours.  Compared to countries like England or Germany, African nations have catching up to do.  But maybe they shouldn’t plunge forward into the modern world of capitalism, cars, and overpopulation.  Maybe they should move backwards to the simpler lifestyles embraced before Europeans invaded. 

After I concluded my unprompted lecture, I asked Annika about Finland and the Finnish language.  A former roommate of mine knew how to speak Russian.  When we were discussing useful languages to learn, he mentioned that it was impractical for an outsider to learn Finnish.  The only people who speak Finnish are people from Finland.  Since Finland does not have any former colonies, its language resides largely within its borders.  In order to be qualified for more job opportunities, many people in Finland learn English, the language of international business. 

“Does your grandma speak English?” I asked Annika.

“No.  Only Finnish.  My parents were the first generation to learn English,” she said.

“So you speak English, and when you have kids they’ll learn even more English.  By the time they have kids, Finnish may take the back-seat.” 

“The Finns are too proud to let their language go,” Annika said. 

As an American sitting on an imported couch in England conversing with a Finnish woman while watching an international singing competition, I realized how important it is to retain and celebrate cultural differences before we all bleed into a Spanglish-speaking mulatto species.  But, realistically, this will never happen. 

I remembered an exhibit I saw that day in an Oxford museum about Darwin’s discovery of evolution and adaptation.  Biodiversity enabled creatures on Earth to survive.  Some animals developed fins to swim through water while others learned to walk upright, and the rest grew wings and took to the skies.  The species diverged and became different so that we could more effectively share the planet’s resources.  If we all walked on land and left the sea empty, we’d run out of food.  Even the human race needs to be diverse to ensure the survival of our species and our separate cultures.

As the English language creates its own sunset-less empire, I wonder how this will affect the make-up of the world.  Will our separate nationalities flourish symbiotically, or soon will there be languages that follow the panda as endangered species?  Will Facebook homogenize a cultural blend?  I suspect these questions may only be answered by great-grandchildren who haven’t been born yet, but I am consoled by the number of close-minded, stubborn people I’ve met.  These are the kind of Americans who are outraged when schools encourage students to learn Spanish due to the rising Latino population.  “In America we don’t speak Mexican,” a proud American will say.  At least we can rely on these people to never abandon their language and culture.