Playing tour guide

 

A quiet Monday at the market

Funny as it felt, with my mere two weeks on the ground in a city that still confuses me, I got to help show around some visitors from New York today. With the necessary help of a driver, I took them to visit the En Toto market and the shop where the former women fuel wood carriers sell their baskets and fabrics. It was great to get out of the car, and I was much more comfortable wandering the street market having seen it before. I also decided to just ask when I saw a picture I wanted to take. People got a kick out of seeing themselves on the camera's little screen, and it made me wish that I had brought an old instant Polaroid camera or one of the new instant digital ones. When it was lunch time, I was also able to take the visitors to a restaurant that I had already tested.

The boy on the right, an outgoing 3rd grader with good English, helped me negotiate a reasonable price for two pineapples - one for our group, and one for him and his friends.

These fruit and vegetable stalls are everywhere.

Plastic sandals. Economical footwear, if they lasted.

Overall, after two weeks, I feel like I'm moving into a more reflective state of mind and beyond the reaction phase of culture shock (and, if there is such a thing, setting or location shock). The again, I may just be in the "Surface adjustment" phase of the classic model (see graphic) and headed for "Confronting deeper cultural/personal issues." Uh oh.

Life in a developed country, especially a place like Seattle, offers so many comforts and amenities - parks, garbage and recycling service, paved streets with sidewalks, well-stocked grocery stores, vacuum cleaners, home postal service, street signs, etc., and I certainly appreciate and miss all those material luxuries. At the same time, I am impressed that people here persevere and make life work, despite all the challenges and deprivations. Providing basic services to the people here is the government's biggest challenge, and I can't help thinking that the wealthier outside world could be doing quite a bit more to ease that burden.