Thursday, April 1, 2010

Back in the U.S. (s.r.) by Harmony Pringle

Deplaning into the Georgia airport gave me a sense of familiarity, but also one of dread. I turned on my cell phone after 4 weeks of disuse and nervously anticipated the calls to come. “How was Mexico? What did you learn?”
During the wrap-up session at the end of the travel seminar, we role-played how to talk with people about our trip. We confronted our teachers in the forms of an apathetic friend, a sympathetic relative, a staunchly capitalist economics professor. After all, what good was our new knowledge, or our deeper analysis, if we couldn’t share it with people back home?
I’ve had varying luck with these encounters this break. When people casually ask, “Hey, how was your trip?” it’s easy to get worked up, to spew out a bitter history of “development” policies – IFI’s, SAP’s, FTA’s. I left various friends looking shell-shocked and overwhelmed by acronyms. I may have brought the stories to Ohio, to California, but I hadn’t brought them home.
After all, communication isn’t about talking at people, but talking with people, opening ourselves up to learn from their experiences, just as we hope they’ll learn from ours. The Zapatistas represent this type of true communication with the caracol, the snail. The words come from your heart, and spiral outward. English draws the same metaphors – “speaking from the heart,” and taking things that others say “to heart.” Imagining the stories we heard in Mexico and Guatemala physically connected to me, helps remind me that they are connected to me, and to all of us. When we share these stories, remembering that connection, we help the other person find their part in it.
At the San Diego airport, waiting to check-in for my flight back to Tucson, the woman in line next to me asked what I was studying. I answered, "border policy, immigration issues," but didn't launch into a seven-minute spiel. I waited for her to ask questions. I wanted to respond to her particular doubts about borders walls and national security. I wanted to talk with her.