hats, braids and skirts

I was going to bed. Seriously, I was (has anyone else noticed the number of things I say I was going to do here on this blog?... Or are they only in my head and it’s guilt that’s making me feel as if I’d written about them? Anyway). I’m not feeling very well, physically speaking, I mean, today so I was going to bed without having studied any Welsh or done any writing about Wales. I was, until I saw a post from a summer Welsh course classmate (yes, it’s your fault I’m not getting any sleep for the several hours it’ll take me to finish this, Craig, whether you’re there reading this yourself or not) and decided to finally read an article about a topic which has appeared a couple of times on my Facebook timeline recently - and, to make matters worse, decided to comment on it.

I’m not going to link it here. I refuse to give the person who ‘inspired’ it - and what I imagine to be an avalanche of tweets - any more free publicity. I’m not even mentioning their name - or their gender, BTW, ‘their’, yes. Let’s call them a ‘they’, shall we? So this person claims to have been met only with rudeness in their visits from England to Wales. They agree that it’s a beautiful country, but complain about people being ‘actively hostile’ to them, even when they went to the country as a child, about people (oh, those rude Welsh people!...) switching from English to Welsh to exclude them. They go so far as to establish a connection between poverty in Wales as a nation and Welsh-speaking in Wales. Isn’t that sad? ‘Pitiful’ was the first word that came to mind after I’d read said article and while I was trying to organise a reply to my classmate’s post in my mind.

Well, this blog’s address is ofloveforwales, so one would expect me to be biased, obviously. Let’s get out of Wales, then (and here - hooray! Or, as I read the other day in the book I’m using to revise what I learnt on the course, hwrê! lol - is the opportunity I mentioned on Facebook as well a few days ago: finding a way to link my recent trip to Wales and my nine-year-old trip across part of South America, Cymru and De America, without having to write about Patagonia, which I’ve never been to, unfortunately, yn anffodus). Please follow me, and my boyfriend at the time, to a typically South American place in either Peru or Bolivia (yes! Shame on me, huge shame, I can’t even remember whether it was in one country or the other, and I don’t think they’re ‘just the same’, believe me, please believe me, lol). There we are, on a typically South American summer afternoon, feeling thirsty, and without anything to drink, or anything cool to drink, I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter, I know, sorry. We get into a typically South American little store, a small restaurant, maybe?, and my then-boyfriend, who spoke perfect Spanish (and once even forbade me - well, yes, you can imagine I wasn’t very happy about that - to open my mouth, even to talk to him in our mother tongue, Portuguese, in an area full of second-hand bookshops, our favourite type of shop, yes, so we wouldn’t get ripped off), South American Spanish (whatever that’s intended to mean, they’re so many!... Well, he’d lived in both Argentina and Chile, was born on the border with Uruguay, and was amazingly able to switch from accent to accent, or dialect to dialect, or whatever they should be called, as per the situation - he was even mistaken for a Chilean by a Chilean family after hours of conversation once, oh, how proud, and envious, lol, no, just joking, I was of him then!...), asks for cold drinks, water, probably, as I’d already stopped drinking fizzy drinks (other than campagne! LOL Sorry, couldn’t resist it) at the time. I bet you know what comes next - Quechua, of course. I don’t think the two women, who could’ve been mother and daughter, as far as I can remember, even bothered to reply to him, in any language. They just went looking for the cold drinks he’d ordered and brought them to us, told him how much we owed them and took our money. That was all - oh, no, wait, there was more, of course: from the moment they went searching for our bottles of water or whatever, still very much and very obviously within hearing and seeing distance from us, to the moment they gave them to us, they were speaking (so said my then-boyfriend - I assume it could've been another local language) Quechua. And, so we both felt, had that universal hint of disdain in their eyes and in their smiles, which they didn’t try to hide, on the contrary. Did they laugh, even? I believe so, though I can’t say for sure right now, after all these years.

And did we, did I get upset? What do you think? I was 25 years old and travelling abroad for the first time (yes, I’m a late starter). More importantly: nobody (or should I say ‘virtually nobody’? To account for all sorts of people? lol), at whatever age and with whatever amount and types of experience, likes being ‘mistreated’, or feeling as if they’ve been mistreated (in the end, everything comes down to perception, so I’ve learnt from teachers’ meetings). I did mention to my then-boyfriend ‘how rude’ they’d been and, although we weren’t outraged or anything like that, lol, although we tried our best to remain open-minded and not make a fuss over that little incident, I do think we did speak about it for a few minutes while walking in the street then. Two ‘native’ South American women in their traditional dress, with their hats and braids and skirts, had chosen not to go beyond the necessary minimum interaction with two ‘caucasian’ (believe me: I’m considered ‘caucasian’, whatever that means, actually, in my country, even though I’m of mixed, very mixed, lol, ethnicity - dad’s genetically Japanese and mum’s ‘pure-bred’ Brazilian, lol, which means I’ve got Asian, European, African and American blood in my veins, I’m a walking DNA melting pot!) South American tourists in their globalised garments, with their trainers and jeans and T-shirts. They, the women, might even have been a tiny bit mean to them, the tourists, by apparently making nasty comments about them in a language they knew they wouldn’t be able to understand. They, the tourists, hadn’t been the slightest bit mean to them, the women, I can assure you, even after all these years, yes - we’ve both been taught to smile and say our good-afternoons and pleases and thank-yous and, above all, to ‘treat others as we’d like to be treated’, especially when there’s apparently no reason for any animosity around.

So what went (supposedly) wrong on that scorching, desert-like day? What made two local shop assistants for all we knew deliberately make two tourist customers feel awkward while shopping from them? It might’ve been misguided pride, a way to pay back on those damned Europeans who took their ancestors’ land by spilling their ancestors’ blood (I know how they feel, trust me, lol - they just didn’t know I did, lol) - and, let’s not forget, nearly wiping their language, together with the people who spoke it, off the globe in the process. It might also have been misguided anger, a way to pay back on those damned tourists who come to their land to exploit their people - and stare at them, take photos of them, talk down to them, look down on them? Perhaps they, with their hats and braids and skirts, were just having a bad day, as we could’ve been having ourselves, with our trainers and jeans and T-shirts (for, as much as we may even try to dress a bad day away, so to speak, by dressing up or down or in whatever way, some just won’t go away!), and decided to take it out on us. Or maybe they, with their hats and braids and skirts, were simply normally mostly rude, just like some of us, with our trainers and jeans and T-shirts, are. Should we all hate one another because of any of that? Go around spreading inconsiderate, unconsidered remarks about each other - the way we look, the way we cover our bodies or... the way we speak? Well, unless we are on the ‘simply normally mostly rude’ spectrum of human beings, I don’t think any of us would think that’s the way to go about being around other human beings?...

I’m going to bed. Seriously, I am. I’m still not feeling very well, physically speaking, yes, so I’m going to bed without having studied any Welsh or done much writing about Wales, lol (but I did mean to write about Wales, has anyone noticed? Seriously, I did!). I am going to bed, but not before listening to a song a couple of times, one that popped into my tired head after all this ‘peace and love’ (heartfelt) talk - please don’t laugh at me (laugh with me! LOL):

One love
One blood
One life
You’ve got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

Gently, preferably, eh? Nos da! Good night! Boa noite! Can’t say it in Quechua, shame. :(