October 24, 2:00pm, Minneapolis-St. Paul. The Final Chapter (Thank God):
Was still thinking about those Dutch stewardesses. The way they’d announce over the intercom in thick accents:
“Passenger Rothson, flying to Nairobi, you are delaying the flight. Report to gate G6 immediately. We will unload your luggage.” Just like that. So smooth, so coldblooded, so final. It gave me the shivers. Yow.
Enroute to Minneapolis-St.Paul, most all of the passengers on the airplane were white Americans. Geeze, what a shocking difference! Almost everyone has a ‘don’t talk to me’ glare on their face. They all look miserable, almost without exception. Wow, are these my people? I sit next to a particularly sour-looking old woman, who doesn’t make eye contact. I sit thinking for a few minutes about how much friendlier the Africans were, and then decided it just can’t be true. I strike up a conversation, something I usually avoid on a plane in case you’re next to a nutjob in disguise, and discover that the old bag is actually returning from a two-week Kenyan safari. Although not exactly my cup of tea, she does turn out to be nice and fairly agreeable, and I discover that her son was one of the principal researchers who recently discovered those bacteria living in pores in rocks buried hundreds of meters under the earth’s surface. Interesting. So, behind that crabby veneer, perhaps most of these Americans are actually nice people. I think there’s just a general self-consciousness, insecurity, a fear of what other people are thinking about them, or just a fear of everyone else in general, that seems to have appeared over that Ethiopian openness that I’ve become accustomed to. “Please be aware the National Security Administration has raised the Terror Alert to Orange. Be especially vigilant for suspicious looking persons.” Code Orange? What the hell does that mean? I always get pissed off when I hear that announcement. Living in fear, no shit.
Now that I’m back in Anglo-Saxon land, I admit there are some very good looking people here too. But not that many. And those that aren’t good looking are REALLY not good looking. I mean, there’s just a general … physical (and mental?) unhealthiness that was not present on my corner of the Dark Continent. Quickly surveying the facial expressions of all the people sitting around me as I type this, I’m inclined to call this the Dark Continent. Goodness, smile a bit, people. And for the first time in five weeks, I’m seeing people again who are really, and I mean REALLY, into themselves. Didn’t ever see that on this trip. And now, it’s so shocking and stands out so sharply, these people seem wacko to me. Crazier than the raving lunatics who would jog down the middle of Ethio-China Road shouting jibberish with their eyes rolled back in their heads. They may have been completely insane, but at least they still seemed human. Some of these folks wandering around the Minneapolis Airport seem, well… wrong. I mean, what happened to that African humanity they were born with? Now they’re plastic Barbies, spinning themselves tighter and tighter into a stinking web of egotism and insecurity and selfishness and ridiculousness. And it’s scary! I was thinking back to that first night, when I rolled into the airport in Addis, and walked out into a sea of black faces, an unfamiliar city on an unfamiliar continent in an unfamiliar culture, with no idea what Dr. Shimeles looked like or what the hell was going to happen to me. I laughed at myself, looking back on that first step into Africa, at how silly and terrified I was those first days. It had changed SO much in those five weeks there… I had learned so, so very much… including that most of my fears were totally unfounded. But even those first steps into the chaotic Ethiopian night, were nowhere near as frightening as my first steps back in my country. It’s a strange feeling. Maybe there were also demons in Ethiopia, but I just didn’t know how to see them, what to look for. But here, after being away and getting perspective on a few things, I do know what to look for, and it’s like a hard slap in the face. Yes, I’m back amongst my people… and they have some serious issues.
But not everyone here is crazy, you’ll be happy to know. And, in case I was missing my black friends, I discovered that Minneapolis is, strangely, the largest reservoir of immigrated Ethiopians outside of Washington DC… and I think 90% of them work in this airport. Shim told me just to say something to myself in Amharic, and every airport working in the joint will turn and stare at you. And he was absolutely right. Ha! Kind of fun… a bit of a pleasant transition back onto the Planet of the Palefaces.
And other good news: We have a BEAUTIFUL country. Really! We are truly blessed to live on this continent. It could be that it’s spent a lot less time being used and abused by humans, but… I don’t think that’s it. It’s just… well, looking out the window as we dropped down through Ottowa toward the Twin Cities, I couldn’t help thinking that John Adams had been right about this Land of Plenty, this New World Paradise. I was trying not to be sentimental, either, but … this part of the planet is just so amazingly gorgeous. (!!!) And after traveling, and seeing that it’s not like that everywhere else, and understanding that the beautiful continent we’ve inherited is unique, and special, and (I hate to say it, but…) in a lot of ways, environmentally speaking, better than other countries and continents… It just drives it home like a hard cowboy boot up the ass that we cannot fuck this country up the way we seem prepared to. We CAN’T let ourselves come to an equilibrium with the other nations of the world… we can do better because we have something better, we must do better, because… because… if we don’t, it’d be such a bloody global tragedy! I know that my preference for North America is a personal opinion, and plenty biased, but no matter how objective I try to be, looking down on those winding blue rivers and Great Lakes and thick North Woods and golden-scarlet hardwoods and farmers’ fields and ranchers’ pastures and frost-capped hills and the city parks mixed in among beautiful old brick houses and boulevards lined with thick elms and maples, I couldn’t help feeling very, very grateful to have been born in a country that could fit me in and still have room to be wild and clean and scenic and inspirational and… perfect. And a feeling of hope washed over me, looking down out of the smudgy window at all that harmony, city and wilderness, spreading out below me. We still have the chance, we still have the time, we can do it: Americans can preserve what is the best part of their heritage, and live in symphony with it, can for the preservation of our own unique American-ness learn to give up those old ideals of dominance over nature and exchange them for ideals of coexistence… if only we can come to a universal respect for what we have, and for what could become of it if we act shortsightedly and selfishly. Perhaps all of us should travel the world, just a little bit… if not to uncover the mysteries of foreign cultures and distant lands, to reveal the nature of ourselves and our country, to gain perspective on what is right with us and what is wrong… To understand the way that we teeter precariously in the earth’s balance.