Monday, March 21, 2016

Into the Mild: Rednecks For a Better World

Posted By on Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:30 AM

Houston, Texas – December 2015

Could first impressions be worse?

There they were, the four of them talking so loudly to each other that they were almost yelling. Their Cajun accents were so strong that they would have better fit in a cartoon. Their voices drowned out the conversations in the seats next to them. Two of them had the lower lip and gum decay that only a lifetime of chewing tobacco can inflict on someone, and they all wore amazingly greasy hair. Despite the frigid December weather, they boarded the plane in sleeveless shirts and ripped jeans. Did I mention that they were loud?

My mind was set.

I fortunately sat far enough away that their voices faded out after 30 minutes and I slept deeply. I was awakened to an intercom announcement: “We are now making our final descent into Istanbul, please turn off all electronics and return your seat to the upright position.”

“Idunmind if they speak Turkush here, suhlonguz everone understanz English too!” cackled my Cajun friend. It had to have been a joke. Nobody who willingly leaves their own country really thinks like that. But nobody else was laughing. Not even the others in his group.

We ended up standing next to each other for 20 minutes while waiting to deplane. Luck brought us together, I thought. Bad luck. Then I talked to them.

“What brings you to Turkey?” I asked. A standard question while trying to be polite as you wait, but I was truly curious with them. They didn’t seem to fit into any of the typical groups that I remembered coming to Turkey: the backpacker who wants to discover his/herself, the vacationer who wants to see ancient sites, the western Muslim who is using this as a stopover before entering the holy lands. They struck me as the types who would chase those people out of Donald Trump rallies. 

“This is just a stopover for us,” he replied as he reached into the overhead compartment and grabbed his camouflage bag, “We’ll be in Erbil tomorrow.”

“Ok… what brings you to Kurdistan? It’s a pretty poor vacation spot at the moment.”

He let out a big laugh and told me that he would be teaching English there with his team. “We heard about Peshmerga fighting off Saddam, Iran, and ISIS and wanted to help in any way we could. Not that they need us!,” he laughed again, “but at a minimum we can help at the schools and with construction projects since they’re short on money and their men are fighting the terrorists. This is our fifth time out here, we were just back in America to spend Thanksgiving with our families.”

Wow.

I immediately felt guilty for judging them. It was kind of mean to dismiss them as simple rednecks. Rednecks yes, but rednecks for a better world. And rednecks with a valuable lesson for all of us: don't use chewing tobacco.


*The ending of this post has been edited to reflect the original intent of the author. 

Jason P

I am a Tucson transplant, U of A grad, amateur superhero, and a teacher. After finishing grad school with savings left over, I realized that I had nothing stopping me from exploring the world. I quickly put my charity project on hiatus and began working odd jobs across the globe in search of adventure, understanding...