Long Walk Home
This past week we booked an estancia tour to ride horses, have asado and see a gaucho show. The tour company called it a Fiesta Gaucho. Sounds like a fun day, eh?
Yet when it was over, I felt a sadness that was difficult for me to shake. Here’s what happened.
We boarded a full tour bus and drove 50 miles north of Buenos Aires to Don Silvano’s Estancia. When we arrived we went for trail ride, played bocce and walked around the grounds.
Shortly after 1 pm lunch was served, a typical Argentine asado with about five different types of grilled meat.
Then the music started. Several entertainers took the stage and began singing Argentine folk songs and performing traditional dances.
As the program began to wind down, the emcee noted that there were visitors from thirteen nations, and he began calling people to the stage to sing a folk song that represented their country.
“South Africa! Where is our guest from South Africa?”
The burly man who had been sitting next to me on the bus took the stage, and after some minor arm-twisting, he sang a song in a language I did not recognize.
The audience got into the spirit, and began calling for countries to take the stage. Columbia. Venezuela. Peru. Japan. Each performance and country were warmly applauded.
Surely they’d be calling for the United States soon. What if we were the only Americans? What would we sing?
After several more performances, including a group of twenty Australian senior citizens warbling their way through “Waltzing Matilda,” it dawned on me: There would be no calls to hear from the United States.
It’s not that we weren’t welcome; we surely were. But there was no rush to celebrate us either.
At that moment I felt the full force of the last eight years.
And it became very clear to me that, in the eyes of the world, we had squandered the idea, the spirit, the goodness of America.
Later that afternoon, as the party moved outside for the gaucho show, we found ourselves sitting next to a woman from Malaysia. She began telling us about her travels, then about her country.
When we told her we might visit Malaysia as part of our trip, she said very straightforwardly, “You in the West are very privileged. In Malaysia, we could never take that much time off. There is always work, school. Things we must do.”
On the bus ride back to Buenos Aires, I couldn’t shake my melancholy. I thought about what the Malaysian woman had said. We are privileged. Privileged to live in a country that for most of its history has been a symbol of hope and opportunity.
Soon America will turn the page. I hope we return to our better selves. But it’s going to be a long walk home.
9 comments
I think you and your family ARE a symbol of hope and opportunity ..at least you are to me.
You and your family are our American ambassadors to the world.
Great post.
I think that people from the USA would enjoy much more if let go the auto-imposition of being an example to the rest of the world, a symbol of hope and opportunity as you say. A man can’t simply take responsability for what others think. Many countries are equally or more developed than the USA (let’s say for example, scandinavian countries), yet they don’t really worry about giving an image to the rest of the world. I think that this need of being an example was built through history mostly from the Government, somehow it was very effective and was accepted by the citizens. My question has always been: why assuming that responsability?
And you are certainly welcome here 🙂
I was nervous when I started reading this. First you mentioned the horses, then the sadness, then five different kinds of grilled meat. Well, you see where my mind was going.
I would have went with “This Land is Your Land”.
So true. I think that would make me think too.
Mother Nature planted the seed of hope in our children. It is a long walk home; from the grain fields of Kansas to Wash.D. C.We are almost there. keep walking.
I’m going to send this to everyone I know—I remember when Bush was re-elected someone put up a web site with people holding pictures and objects saying to the world “we’re sorry” it grew a very long tail —
I think we do have a responsibility to live and behave consitent with the values and ideals we believe shape and define our nation. Those qualities that have made America unique and have given most of us the priviledges we enjoy. I don’t think this is about projecting an image it’s about treating people and institutions here and around the world with decency, respect and compassion.
This was a beautiful post –it brought me back to the time when the Obama campaign caught fire, when hope was born.
I went to the same estancia tour, and they did not call Americans up to sing on our day either. I also posted my thoughts on Estancia D. S.