London, Local Time: 10.03pm
For those of you who don’t know me (most of you) I have been in Europe for the past five weeks, hence a lack of posting.
My time in Greece has been, perhaps, the most influential on my political mindset and my knowledge of foreign affairs; but there was a story that our guide told us which really struck a chord with me.
Before I tell you this, you need to understand my impressions of the greek people. On the whole I have experienced them to be passionate, well-educated and hospitable people who are proud of their culture and their country. They seem reasonable and are willing to negotiate in all forms of business dealings with a smile and logical mind. Their working hours and reliance on tourism causes them to work long days for extensive periods of time without breaks and on a whole, leads many to be very hard workers.
There was a man, a few years ago, who sold peanuts at a stall on the island of Santorini near Fira, the main town. His peanuts were very reasonably priced and of a very good quality. Our guide, L, was taking a tour group around the town when she saw a tourist from another european country (which I am not going to name) attempting to barter with the man in the tourist’s native language.
The greek vendor, of course, did not speak the language and so L went over to see if she could help as she spoke the language. With a few words, the tourist told L that he wanted to buy a kilo of peanuts for 20 cents (the vendor sold 200g for the equivalent of 1 Euro nowadays). L replied to the tourist:
‘I have seen this man many times before this, his prices are very reasonable, the most reasonable around here.’
The tourist replied ‘I will not pay him more than twenty cents’
L replied ‘Why not?’ and the tourist responded ‘Because in a few years, I will be able to come to this country and buy a whole field’s worth of peanuts for twenty cents and you will be lucky to find a job cleaning toilets. This man should be grateful I am offering him my business at all.’
- The tourist was from a country in europe which is dealing with the financial crisis in the area relatively successfully (to say the least) -
Our guide is a woman who has worked hard all her life to support her family. She could not express how shocking it was for her to hear that tourist’s words.
I’m not trying to make a political statement about one european country over another with this post, I am not in a position to make that kind of criticism for a start…but I wanted to share it, cause it struck me that this arrogance and discrimination is commonplace today (in the EU in particular) and that it shouldn’t be, this arrogant sense of superiority should not be used to exploit others, and to me, cannot be justified.
