eudaimonia & anagnorisis

I think my travelogue starts here, more than 10,000 miles away from my ultimate destination and two weeks prior to departure*, in Quepos, Costa Rica.

Because it this trip that i have convinced myself, perhaps incorrectly, that I will be more comfortable in the Arab world than anywhere Westward. I can't exactly explain why yet, but I reached this conclusion somewhere between my parents advising me "not to wear a scarf in the airport" and a conversation with a Rastafarian guy selling braclets on the beach.

Buenos.
Hola, como esta?
Bien, gracias, y tu?
Pura vida...followed something indecipherable in spanish.
oh, lo siento, yo habla poquito, poquito espanol...
oh, engles?
si
you're the smartest white person i've seen.
hah, maashAllah, porque?
Because you won't be red. (he points to my long sleve dress and cotton pants)
I guess not, hah.
Where are you from?
America.
Me too. Central America.
Ah, I mean, the United States. Are you CostaRican?
No, I come from Nicaragua, but my family is African.
Yea? Where in Africa?
Central Africa.
A bit more specifically?
Nigeria.
Are you Yoruban?
wow.
que?
no, I mean, it’s just most white people don’t even know where Nigeria, never the tribes within it.
Do you mean most white people or most Americans?
I guess most Americans, mi amiga.
Si. (smiles) I'll take that one.
6 dollars.
Collones?
Can't you be a tourist and give me dollars?
3000 collones. Gracias senior.
Con mucho gusto, gringa.
Pura vida.

Perhaps I'm wrong to expect comfort from North Africa, a habitat characterized by its harsh and unforgiving climate, but even misconceptions are not bad travelling companions. I am willing to bid them farewell at a moment's warning and I await their dispersal with pleasure; ultimately their initial presence makes retrospect sweeter.

I'm 20. It's easy to think the world is falling apart. It seems to me that there is less love in the world than there once was. That something is happening to the human condition, simultaneously on an interpersonal micro-level and a global macro-level that justifies hatred, rationalizes intolerance, and undermines hope. What I'm realizing, though, is that the world doesn't fall apart. It slowly crumbles, like clumps of sand between careless hands. It fades where it has been blinded. It shrivels were it has been abandoned. It cracks where it has been attacked. But it only falls apart when the souls that hold it together have nothing left to grasp.


* written August 11th