Yell Fire!, Michael Franti and Spearhead

Periodically, I read other people’s blogs, both for educational and entertainment value.  As a writer, I enjoy reading other styles, other perspectives and I am usually able to pick up little techniques to employ later on in an article with a similar perspective or theme.  As a thinker, I enjoy reading other ideas and learning from the ideas shared, completely separate from the writing style.  I grew up reading Hemingway, Twain, Fitzgerald, Lorca and Lee.  Whether it’s the hyperbolic stories of Twain or the crisp, curt tones of Hemingway, I fancy that sometimes the reader can see these traits in my writing.  And as I read other’s work, I wonder who were their inspiring factors.  Or it if was purely the loud, screaming words dancing in their heads, clawing to get out, that served as inspiration to write their document.  In the same way excellent writing can make a mundane subject readable, poor writing can destroy an interesting perspective.

It’s been a very long time since the last time I wrote fiction.  I still have half finished stories and finished short pieces, around only five pages long, sitting on my computer, staring me in the face as I go to open a new document and type a blog entry or an email to a friend back home.  I fancied that while I was in Panama, stories and writing would come pouring from my fingers, as inspiration came from the fairy tale I was living.  But my first week at site brought a desire to read, talk on the phone and spend the hours I wasn’t pasearing speaking or reading in English.  I feared that if I sat down to write, it would be too painful.

Yesterday, staying in a posh hotel in Panama City close to the airport, I had time to do what I haven’t done since coming down to Panama.  I began reading friends, strangers and public writing on the internet.  I was pained to discover something.

I write from Panama about my experiences, my feelings and my fears of living in a new country and attempting to both integrate into and subtly change a culture.  I have spent the past week and a half walking around my community, talking with my new people, asking what are the things that they wish to learn about American culture and environmental conservation – and most importantly, what do they see wanting a change in their own culture.  The great response is always English classes at the school or at night for the adults.  As I painstakingly explain each time that this is not my training, my sector or my background, I have given up and come to an easier, but more awkward solution.  I tell them that I do not speak English.

Sarcasm doesn’t translate very well.

To my 80 year old best friend, I made a joke that often times, foreigners speak better English than those like myself, who grew up speaking it.  The only step up I have is that I can pronounce the words better, some of the time.  Senora Chindi laughed and then asked how go English classes in the United States.  I asked her for a duro.

As I read these blogs, my sarcastic comments to my community and to Sra. Chindi are reinforced.  Americans speak terrible English.  Our writing skills, even those of so called “professional bloggers”, leave a lot to be desired.  Our sentence structure, our idea flow, our tone and everything else needs work.  And somehow, we duped the rest of the world into thinking that to speak English makes you educated, so all of us appear educated to the rest of the world, especially the developing world.  But are we more educated, or just more lazy?  These people know how to work the earth.  These people know the seasons, of the turtles, of planting, of mangroves, of everything.  These people know how to eek together a living through their own natural resources.  And they look to Americans for answers.  What do we give them?  Almost nothing.  We use their natural resources, we eat their food, we ship them our trash.  We tell them what they do wrong, but not how to fix it.

But what did I read that offended me most?  In the US, we complain about our job market.  It’s worse here.  They rely, in many communities, on people coming in to help them get on their feet.  Job satisfaction is low in the United States, but we feel entitled to get the high paying, high demand, high satisfaction jobs.  We want the money, we want the title, we want the happiness.  And it seems that we will lie to ourselves.  We compare working in the service industry to non-profit, humanitarian work, while in the same breath complaining about the job, without seeing how the rest of the world lives.

I entered this experience a jaded idealist.  I’m starting to realize I might leave it a militant version of the same thing.