This is How We Do It in the Hood
This is a short anecdote about how foreigners like me are ignorant enough of custom to experience what natives won’t.
One time I rode an overnight Amtrak train from Toledo, Ohio, to Penn Station, New York. Sitting next to me on the train was a guy about my age from Estonia. I’ve been to Estonia, so we had a jumping off point for conversation. He had been touring the U.S. on an Amtrak rail pass, similar to a Eurail Pass – a certain number of rides taken within a certain number of days. Our train left from Toledo after midnight. He told me he had spent the earlier part of the day walking around Midtown Detroit.
Midtown Detroit? Around the train station? Are you serious? I volunteered at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Midtown Detroit. The ten blocks or so of the Cultural District and Wayne State University were passable by Detroit standards, but the train station neighborhood? I didn’t even like driving through there. This is one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods. There are blocks of trash-covered weed fields where all the houses have been torn down. When there are blocks with buildings, they look like they’re remnants from a war. Really, there have been wars here – gang wars. Walking the streets here is the highest concentration of obvious crackheads I’ve ever had the pleasure of passing by. (Detroit is a dangerous town, but it’s trying desperately to come back – maybe if the suburbs would share more of their tax income with the inner city – it’s easy to write Detroit off, but I’m not trying to be one of those writers)
This Estonian guy – William, I think, was his name – didn’t have much to say about the neighborhood. Maybe he was trying to be polite. But he seriously walked through a warzone.
But he escaped unharmed, and the reason why he was able to walk through and stand tall was because he didn’t have the lifetime of preconceived notions that I’ve had about inner-city ghettos. His ignorance allowed him to experience something I’ve only done by car.
I told a lawyer at work, Mritunjay, how I’d walked down the narrow, low alleyway, following a slum kid, and sat with a family in their one-room house. I told him I went to a slum wedding and that I went to Khar East. He said, “Even I wouldn’t go there, but this is cool. You’re experiencing things I would never experience.”
I’m going to go ahead and postulate that an ignorance of a society’s prejudices is more likely a traveler’s friend than a traveler’s enemy. That being said, bad things do happen to the unsuspecting. And that being said, does this mean those workers should not have shown up for work in the Twin Towers on the morning of Sept. 11th? A life lived in fear of all possible catastrophes cannot be a life lived.
And, yes, I kind of know I’ve probably taken my postulate too far by having Rs. 1 chai three days in a row. I asked Mritunjay if he would get sick from Rs. 1 chai. He said, “I don’t know. I’ve never drunk one rupee chai.”
One time I rode an overnight Amtrak train from Toledo, Ohio, to Penn Station, New York. Sitting next to me on the train was a guy about my age from Estonia. I’ve been to Estonia, so we had a jumping off point for conversation. He had been touring the U.S. on an Amtrak rail pass, similar to a Eurail Pass – a certain number of rides taken within a certain number of days. Our train left from Toledo after midnight. He told me he had spent the earlier part of the day walking around Midtown Detroit.
Midtown Detroit? Around the train station? Are you serious? I volunteered at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Midtown Detroit. The ten blocks or so of the Cultural District and Wayne State University were passable by Detroit standards, but the train station neighborhood? I didn’t even like driving through there. This is one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods. There are blocks of trash-covered weed fields where all the houses have been torn down. When there are blocks with buildings, they look like they’re remnants from a war. Really, there have been wars here – gang wars. Walking the streets here is the highest concentration of obvious crackheads I’ve ever had the pleasure of passing by. (Detroit is a dangerous town, but it’s trying desperately to come back – maybe if the suburbs would share more of their tax income with the inner city – it’s easy to write Detroit off, but I’m not trying to be one of those writers)
This Estonian guy – William, I think, was his name – didn’t have much to say about the neighborhood. Maybe he was trying to be polite. But he seriously walked through a warzone.
But he escaped unharmed, and the reason why he was able to walk through and stand tall was because he didn’t have the lifetime of preconceived notions that I’ve had about inner-city ghettos. His ignorance allowed him to experience something I’ve only done by car.
I told a lawyer at work, Mritunjay, how I’d walked down the narrow, low alleyway, following a slum kid, and sat with a family in their one-room house. I told him I went to a slum wedding and that I went to Khar East. He said, “Even I wouldn’t go there, but this is cool. You’re experiencing things I would never experience.”
I’m going to go ahead and postulate that an ignorance of a society’s prejudices is more likely a traveler’s friend than a traveler’s enemy. That being said, bad things do happen to the unsuspecting. And that being said, does this mean those workers should not have shown up for work in the Twin Towers on the morning of Sept. 11th? A life lived in fear of all possible catastrophes cannot be a life lived.
And, yes, I kind of know I’ve probably taken my postulate too far by having Rs. 1 chai three days in a row. I asked Mritunjay if he would get sick from Rs. 1 chai. He said, “I don’t know. I’ve never drunk one rupee chai.”
Comments
At least you have your journalist skills to rely on--a good thing too, since you left your bow staff & nunchucks in Missouri!