The Traveler's Dilemma

Last night I ventured into an Indian restaurant with the intention of learning to eat something new. I stumbled through the menu, looking for a word I could pronounce, having not the slightest clue what any of the items consisted of. Squeezed between the grimy doorframe and the huge right shoulder of a man who must have been a sort of bouncer, being blasted by a startling array of scents and Indian music, and trying to simultaneously plan my next move, I found it difficult to focus on the dog-eared bi-fold menu in my hands. "Dosa" was what I landed on. For Rs. 140 (about $1.25), and given that I couldn't go wrong in speaking those four letters, I took the leap. What I learned: Dosa is a simple masala with a beautiful array of tastes, some subtle and others, well, not-so-subtle (read: this is the first time in my life I’ve had heartburn). I further learned that it’s probably impossible for a first-timer (in an authentic setting like that) to eat the food correctly. [Remember, most South Asian cultures eat with their right hand (and only their right hand), and masalas have so many…crumbly or liquid ingredients.] The last thing I learned is that even if you look like a child and end up destroying your food before it gets to your mouth, most locals will appreciate that you’re trying, laugh at your strangeness, and will, in the end, send you off with a gracious smile.
I would never have thought to write about so humble of an experience if my next pit-stop hadn’t happened: I walked about a block to the least-authentic place in Colombo, in cultural terms, a place called Odel’s. I’ve mentioned it in past posts because it has served as a bastion of normalcy for me on a couple of occasions: shopping mall, Euro-American setting, air conditioning, decent coffee (!). But my time there last night was different. In order to boost their WIFI for a little while, I needed to purchase a coffee at the lofty price of about $2.25 (that money would otherwise buy me two full rice packs here), and standing in line in front of me was a middle-aged man I later learned was from northern Europe. Odel’s is the only place in Sri Lanka I’ve found that charges “tax” (it must be some kind of racket), so prices inevitably end up falling on strange amounts. It’s the only place I’ve ever received half a rupee in change, for example, (which turns out to be this adorable little plastic-sounding Monopoly-money piece), and the European man needed Rs. 5 to avoid having to carry around a bunch of change. I freely offered the nickel, with a smile, and in short order was invited to drink my B- coffee with him and his partner, a female European who seemed to be a few years older than he. I found that they were expatriates to varying degrees, she retired and he still working through phased-retirement for the Red Cross. They live together here in Colombo, and I thought it would be interesting to get a feel for their situations as foreigners who have lived here for four+ years.
But my talk with them was predicated upon some important events of the past weekend, so my mindset bears explanation. It’s been long enough between my posts (sorry, dear readers) that I can’t possibly recount all the details of what’s happened between now and the last, but in short: I traveled to Kandy (it gets an A+ in my book) two weekends ago and Anuradhapura (too flat for my tastes, though still fantastic) this past weekend. The week in-between was a whirlwind of excitement-and-craziness that I will have to write about another time, because what interests me now is a group of four young European women I met in Anuradhapura. I had met three of them two weeks before, in Unawatuna, and serendipitously (and almost creepily, overall) ran into them again on Sunday. In general, they seem like fun, well-meaning people, two of them in particular. The two I related to the most were only-a-little-bit-afraid to stand in the doorway of a CTB train as it barreled along at 65 kmph, laughing with the other standing-people and soaking in the beautiful paddy-fields and plantations as they whizzed past. The other two were all-too-content to be securely seated in second-class. All four, however, set my mind rolling as to the situation I find myself in: like most expatriates the world-over, they’ve stuck to themselves and they’ve carved out a space in their adopted country where they can practice life as they normally would, venturing out into the real world only on weekends, smoking only imported cigarettes, and refusing to ride CTB buses, etc.
As difficult as it’s been for me, I’ve purposely been avoiding those kinds of communities. The Red-Cross couple represents a striking example: when pressed for specifics about adapting to life here, they admitted that they’ve avoided much of Sri Lankan culture in favor of “keeping to themselves in their retirement” and could not tell me too much about living as Sri Lankans do, even in metropolitan Colombo. I was struck that two of the Europeans I spent the better part of a day with in Anuradhapura remained as aloof as they did. They continually reverted to their native tongue, which the other three of us do not speak, and tried, as best as they could, to steer all conversations back to stories of their worldly experiences, especially their travels. However, it was plain to see that no matter how widely they’ve traveled, and no matter how many stamps their passports contain, they’ve never once stopped for a moment to consider living any way other than their own. I sensed an overriding tendency (a strength, no doubt, in some contexts, but otherwise a failure) to cling to what they know and to perpetuate it as much as they can. They represent a microcosm of their homeland in a strange land, and I doubt they will ever step out of it.
All that being said, it’s really, really hard to step out of one’s cultural context, especially when bombarded on all sides by different lifeways. I’ve refrained from mentioning specific European nations because overall, the global West represents a basic homogenous foundation that is relatively navigable for all its residents. Transplant a Westerner to South Asia, however, and it becomes a different story. The small differences that one consciously dismisses as immaterial and unimportant react synergistically to one another: suddenly the fact that no businesses post their operating hours on their front doors drives you crazy, walking on the left side of the sidewalk becomes a constant burden, and you want to shout obscenities at every earnest tuk tuk driver who solicits you for your business. Being alone in this experience has shown me that foreigners everywhere are stuck between a rock and a hard place: they can either retreat into themselves like bulbous drops of oil in a dish of water, or they can cast off what they know and submit to being tumbled around like a forlorn sock in the dryer. I’m tempted to say that it makes very little difference in the long run which route once chooses, but I can’t honestly submit that as my opinion. The four young Europeans, plus the two older ones, have shown me that the only way to live fully anywhere is to submit to a process of mutual adjustment between oneself and one’s environment. This has been easy for me in a place like Boone, North Carolina, United States of America. It has been much more difficult in Nugegoda, Colombo, Sri Lanka. And yet, I am able to stupidly walk into an India restaurant and try something entirely new, something that scares me, something wholly different from the pork tenderloin I was craving. I can do this because I have nothing else to lean on, but in the end I find that the differences really are immaterial. People everywhere eat food, period. Now I know that, at least in some ways, it’s possible to circumvent the xenophobia that characterizes my culture. And now I really know that Americans are capable of so much more goodness on this planet than we’re currently exhibiting. I think we need to stop being so selfish and start eating with our hands. I also think we need to recognize that Dosa masala is really, really good, and worth craving in itself.