So allow me to create a scene for you. You are in a small little subdivision in the
good old lands of America. It’s a quaint
place, everyone knows each other, all the children go to the same schools. You all celebrate the holidays together. There are just a few corner stores that
everyone goes to for their local odds and end items around the house. Its summer time because its pretty darn hot
out and people are outside a lot because its cooler to sit on their porch than
it is to sit inside their house.
Now picture, a foreigner, lets just
say an Asian for the sake of picking a race. You have never seen him before, but you know that this is an Asian
couple that lives in your little subdivision, and you just assume that he is
with them. So you smile and nod your
head as he walks by you. He says “hello,
how are you today” in broken English but it makes you smile because you know he
is trying to be polite, and so you reply back hello and wave him on. Now picture this same Asian man going down
your street with a big yellow pack on that has weed killer in it and he is
spraying along the side of the road to kill all the weeds that have grown up. After you seen this man going up and down
different streets in the community spraying all sorts of weeds to kill them,
you then see him coming out carrying a small propane tank in one hand and a
torch in the other. He is now burning all
the dead weeds in the middle of the morning and the sun has risen and its
pretty hot out. This might seem a bit
odd to most Americans…yes.
Now picture role reversal…instead
of an Asian man, you have a wild haired, thick bearded American in a Thailand
fishing village as opposed to a small town in middle America and then you would
have my first few days here in Thachathai, a small village on the island of
Phuket. Oh its funny when you are on the
other side thinking how weird this must seem but you continue to do it other
ways…the real funny thing is, that I really didn’t get too many weird looks but
actually more people offered me cold drinks for helping out in the community
than anything else.
