Over Time You Realize You Know Less and Less

Our caustic, well-educated guide Nandan told us, “You’ll never understand India from your full-bellied Western haunch.” He made me feel defensive because in fact, I’d made it all the way to India, but he got me thinking all the same.

I challenged myself to reflect on what I’d already seen and to evaluate for the rest of the trip the question, “What do we really know, firmly believe to be true?” I started by thinking it’s what we’re taught by a knowledgeable insider, then by what we see, next by what we experience and finally, what we feel.

TAUGHT. On our 4 day trek on the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, our part-saint, part-devilish guide Sabino taught us all day long. He’d grown up in a nearby town and had been guiding for decades. Some of the fascinating details, such as the design of the water system piped throughout the community over 500 years ago led me to take notes. At Machu Picchu, our guide left us; feeling physically challenged and delighted with our newly-acquired knowledge, we were handed over to Raul, head of the company, for the drive back to Cusco. Raul was a captivating teacher himself and we paid close attention when he explained the plumbing of the ingenious Incan engineers. Well, if he didn’t explain it exactly opposite, and more logically, than what we’d just learned..

SEE. On South Georgia, two baby penguins chased their mother for food. A hilarious battle reminiscent of human childhood tussles. So cute. Such antics. Wrong. One will live. One will die. Whoever gets that food will survive.
EXPERIENCE. There are low and high context cultures; the former, where what you see is what you get. America is a low context culture. Americans tend to say exactly what they mean. Indians and Japanese do not. You have to understand their culture to be able to parse the meaning of what they say (or don’t!) and how they say it. For example, in India they want to please you. If you ask for directions, they will give them to you because that is what you want. This has no bearing on whether or not they have any idea of the answer. Similarly, we stayed in hotels in India, so routinely called the front desk to ask for Internet connectivity. Regularly, the response would be, “So sorry, it will be fixed tomorrow. A repairman is coming tomorrow.” The next day we would call and get the same response. When we pointed out the inconsistency, they would apologize, “Oh you are right. The repair will be made today!” The Internet never worked anywhere we had to inquire.

We had a blast in Israel, seeing the country through the eyes of a friend we’d made in Antarctica, a non-religious Jew with a California surfer attitude. He advised us on an itinerary, even suggested we visit Bethlehem, but we did not attempt to navigate that.

We retold our adventures on this blog to share our experiences with our friends. However, anyone can read it and one attacked our reflections virulently as one-sided and ignorant of the “apartheid regime Israel maintains for the Palestinians.” Indeed, we didn’t know anyone in the West Bank, didn’t even know how to tackle a visit. I regret that now and wish I could better understand the pressures and severe limitations put on that population. Does this negate the amazing experience we had in Jerusalem, Masada, Haifa, the Golan Heights? I think in a small way it does.

FEEL. Surely we can trust what we feel, can’t we? We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where many believe Christ was crucified, taken off the cross and placed in a tomb. Raised a Christian, I went in mindfully to witness the place. People were touching their small things (watches, rings, tokens) to the place Christ’s body was said to have laid in order to transform their objects into a relic of sorts. The mass of humanity there included a chaotic scramble of different sects that shared the same side room sanctuaries. Regularly, one group would have to remove everything in their space- including their altar and cross- while the next group replaced their items there. There was a long, heaving line waiting to see inside the tomb. They pressed forward, some pilgrims weeping, some shifting frantically. People also lined up to buy candles, which when lit momentarily created a pyrotechnic spectacle alongside the side wall of the tomb. The scene felt more akin to a bazaar than a holy site. So unfamiliar and far from my Episcopalian tradition, the power of the place was lost on me. Unattainable.

However, on a recent trip to Krakow, Poland, we needed to stay a few more nights and had to stay in the Jewish ghetto. There was a palpable heaviness there, as if the pain clung to the air and the buildings. There was an unmistakable energy, power to the place.
So, though I wish it weren’t true, our Indian guide was more right than wrong. We didn’t know, we may never know, what it’s like to be anyone except the unreliable narrators that are our ever-evolving selves, but I think it is a noble and worthy pursuit to keep trying…

-carter