The thickness of skin
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
When we were in Ethiopia, we inadvertently got ourselves into an awkward situation. That happens a lot—there is much awkwardness in my life.
We had messaged our hotel to send a car to the airport to pick us up when we landed in Axum, a small town full of ancient ruins, in the rural northwest of the country. While we were waiting for our bags, I went to the toilet. When I came back, Lee was talking to a young man who seemed to want to take us to our hotel. Between the language barrier, the unfamiliar, small-town airport with no discernible systems, and our general laissez-faire attitude, it was hard to know what was actually going on, so we followed him outside and got into the van that our hotel had sent. The young man got into the front passenger seat, beside the driver, so we assumed he was from the hotel. Why they needed to send two people was a mystery, but whatever.
For the record, this happens a lot. Most days, in fact. One of us follows someone, or orders something, or just nods and smiles, and something startling and inexplicable happens. I have given up entirely on the concept of predictability. It usually works out just fine, but every now and again it results in me having a nuclear meltdown.
On this particular occasion, we did indeed wind up at our hotel. The nice young man who had met us in the airport waited for us in the lobby while we got settled in our room, and insisted on sitting down with us to make our touring plans for the next couple of days. This was when the penny dropped, and we realized that he was a bit of a rogue agent. Literally.
Most tourists who go to Ethiopia (the vast majority) do so under the auspices of a tour company, with all their arrangements made ahead of time, from accommodations to transfers to tour guides. This fellow was trying to create a business by guiding the occasional independent travelers like us. He tagged along on airport pickups and simply presented himself as a knowledgeable (and he truly was), competent English speaker. He was great.
The awkwardness came on our last day, when he wanted us to go have coffee at his house. We didn’t want to be rude, but we also very much didn’t want to go—we had driven past the “house” at one point, and . . . let’s just say we were already feeling pretty overwhelmed by the poverty of Ethiopia. Coffee in someone’s house seemed like it might be more than we were ready for.
The problem was that I had heard him on the phone, and I knew for a fact that he had asked his mother to make us shiro, which is the most important special occasion dish in Ethiopia. I just couldn’t make the word no come out of my mouth. I tried desperately, as Lee was heading for the stairs to go back up to our room, but instead I found myself saying, “Sure, let’s go.”
So off I went. I’ll spare you the details—the dirt floor, the corrugated metal door, the lack of windows, or electricity. The kind welcome from the disabled father, who had once led tours as well. The quiet, deliberate posture of the mother as she knelt on the floor and slowly roasted the green coffee beans over a tiny pile of embers. The casual generosity of people who can offer nothing more than one of the world’s oldest, proudest, most devout cultures, which stretches back millennia.
I said thank you, in my language, and in theirs. And then I went back to my hotel to pack up and head off to our next stop.
In the intervening months, the guide has stayed in touch, via WhatsApp. It’s not unusual; I’ve stayed in touch with a whole bunch of people we’ve met in the last few years, some of whom were locals we met in various towns and countries, others who were fellow tourists from all kinds of places. It pleases me to go through my various apps and platforms, thinking about the people I know around the world. It makes me feel like a global citizen, which is what I set out to be.
Anyway, I got a message from him a while ago. A sort of hi, how’s it going message, like I get once every few weeks. I didn’t think twice about a quick back atcha, buddy; how’re things?
And then.
He said the only way he’d ever be able to help his family get out of poverty was to own his own van, and would I please help.
Maybe it hit me at a bad moment, when I was exhausted from battling the dense human traffic in the Marrakech medina. Maybe I was exhausted from saying no, over and over, all day, to the touts and taxi drivers and snake charmers. Maybe I was having a hormonal moment, maybe I was hangry or cold or my left hip was bothering me.
It just hit me wrong. I was gutted. I spent lunch moping over a sad, bland vegetable tagine that tasted like plain boiled carrots with a dash of bitter disappointment. For dessert I moved on to resentment and self-doubt. How had I let myself be sucked in? Was everyone in the world trying to take advantage of me? Mostly, though, how in the world was I going to say no? Or maybe it was mostly: how in the world am I ever going to trust another tour guide? Or anyone else, for that matter? Sometimes I fear that my skin is just too thin for this lifestyle.
I don’t want to be cynical. I don’t want to lose my feeling of wonder, my desire to connect with other people, people whose lives are different from mine. I don’t want to close myself off and keep my distance, but being open means sometimes things get awkward or uncomfortable or embarrassing. I’m not talking about the obvious safety concerns that go hand-in-hand with stupid behavior, of course. I’m talking about the sticky, uncomfortable, potentially growth-provoking emotional fallout of being a person who values human connection.
Sometimes you’re just going to get a little bruised.
Take care,
Lisa
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