When people go away, they send the best emails. In a new, occasional series, we air them out.

I arrived in Paris with some anxiety: prior descriptions I’d heard of the French (and you’ve undoubtedly heard them, too) ranged from irrational, blind admiration (we all know a Francophile), all the way to utter disgust (we’ve all had a Freedom Fry). Further, I came to Paris knowing I’d be on my own without much command for the language, and in this country above all others, I’d been told that was a cardinal sin.

My anxiety was grounded in the idea of dissonance and difference. And yet what I found was harmony, the type of raw and edgy harmony that can only happen when people and place intersect, with the very old and the very new working together.

In Blink, Malcom Gladwell gets at an unspoken truth: we have a sixth sense to “know” truth long before we can articulate the “why.” Our guts tell us its good before we have the words to say so. After two hours on foot in Paris, I was able to know the city as Ernest Hemingway did, as a Movable Feast. After 24 hours immersed, I think I have the words to express why Hemingway was able to say that.

In my world, people and place are inextricably connected, so I’ll have to address both. In Paris, I stand in awe of my physical surroundings: around me, the delicate choreography of thousands of people walking, biking, scooting, and driving, graceful as ballerinas, aggressive as teenagers. Cathedrals, palaces, museums, and parks, all dreamed up and executed on scales unfathomable at the time of their inception, and perhaps still today.

And the river. The River Seine flows as a primary artery through this city, as in so many of the cities I love. Norman Maclean puts it best: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”

As for the people of Paris, they are mixed but not melted. A strong display of personal identity reminds us that individual cultures are to be celebrated, and accepted where they can not be understood. Civil discourse is an art form (a well-regarded one at that) that pairs thought and action. People protest here, and it is meaningfully done. Rather than repressing inner concerns, the French populace finds means to relieve themselves of civic passive aggression. Yes, young guys fight in the streets after succumbing to alcohol, always at hand, but they don’t use weapons: they are bruised but not broken. Call it what you will, but I’ll call it respect.

Exposure is what leads to respect, and it’s perhaps the most important gift we can take away from the ideals of urbanism. Disregard is all too easy when you never cross paths with starving immigrants or wayward travelers. Standing face-to-face, sharing in our joys and our appreciation for beauty: you can not deny our shared humanity.

This shared humanity strikes a chord with this American of European descent. In the faces of those around me here, I’ve begun to see the roots of many of those people who surround me at home. The sharp and still prevalent features of our European ancestors transposed across generations and continents, not as copies, but almost like an old photograph. There is beauty in the rhyme that is history.

Before I left the US, Dr. Gary Weaver told our group that this trip would “help us understand what it is to be American.” I have to thank Paris for some of my newfound understanding on the subject. This is a city that has returned to me thousands of years of lost personal history, not just the hundreds that I once understood: being an American means knowing that history didn’t start with 1776. Paris is a place that speaks to the ages. And it reminds us, finally: we are more as many than as one.

Paris, je t’aime.

Josh McManus is one of CreateHere’s co-founders and Creative Strategists. He’s abroad on a month-long trip in conjunction with the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, and sent us this dispatch from Paris. A version of this dispatch appeared previously here. Photo (CC) by Flickr user · skëne ·.

When people go away, they send the best emails. In a new, occasional series, we air them out.

We are surviving quite nicely here in Swaziland. A week ago Friday we were invited to a farewell party for one of the assistant directors who is going back to the U.S. Since we would have had to spend the night in another village it seemed like too much of a hassle so we passed it up. Good decision. First, we were sick on that day. Second, one of the volunteers had swine flu and passed it around at the party, unwittingly. So we saved money and time and were not exposed to swine flu. Apparently lots of people have gotten sick but everyone is on the mend.

Our week went by fairly rapidly. If we are occupied, time flies; if not, it crawls. Anyway we continue to recover. We have now visited three schools with another one scheduled for tomorrow. We may postpone that one because we have run out of gas. We have LPG with one tank. When it is empty, we are done until we swap it. No big deal in the U.S.—throw it in the car and drive to town and swap it. Here it means hauling it a quarter mile to the bus stop by 7 a.m. Getting it on the bus, riding a fair distance, swapping it out and getting a khumbi back to one village, and then getting a pickup back home. With a car, it would take about three hours. Without one, it will take the day and we will not get much else done because we will be stuck with the canister (it is big). Of course, if we were like most people, we would be gathering wood to cook with so we are way ahead of the game.

This coming week, we have the appointment with one of the primary schools on Monday and will probably try to hit another as well as some nursing care points that day. Tuesday is looking like get-gas day. Thursday we are going to a school to teach  basic computing (spreadsheet, word processing) to some teachers and start reading a book about AIDS with some seventh graders. It is a story, The Heaven Shop, by Deborah Ellis, about AIDS in an African country. It seems pretty realistic from what we have seen. Get a copy from the library. Since we will only have one copy, we will have students read out loud and then discuss it chapter by chapter. It should be interesting.

We are struck by the fact that on a 40 passenger bus (with 65-plus passengers on it) one half of the people have HIV/AIDS. It makes you stop, most sobering, and wonder if this small country will still be here in ten years. How much behavior change needs to occur…and how fast?

David Frechette is a retired ER doctor who joined the Peace Corps with his wife, Cee Cee. The were placed in Swaziland. Photo (CC) by Flickr user Julien Legarde.

When people go away, they send the best emails. In a new, occasional series, we air them out.

On my second day here in Delhi, a colleague warned me that personal space is an almost alien concept to most Delhiwallas. He revealed this to me while we jockeyed for space on the sidewalks of Connaught Place, after a passerby smashed into me with his shoulder. An hour later, while finishing drinks and paying our bill, four men ranging in age from 20 to 50, stood on top of us waiting for our table. The oldest guy leaned on the chair closest to mine, drumming his fingers on the back of the chair.

Spend a little more time in India’s capital and this all starts to make sense. Life here seems defined by an idea that the city contains a finite amount of resources. From the moment one wakes, the race to claim one’s slice of said resources commences.

This is most noticeable on the city’s roadways. Auto rickshaws (250 CC motorbikes with a two-passenger compartments in the back), domestic compacts, motorbikes (with up to two females passengers sitting sidesaddle in saris) and the iconic Hindustan Ambassador Cabs (which recall pre-revolution Havana) sit five or six across on three-lane roads, jamming themselves into every available crevice.  The moment the light changes, the race resumes. Drivers constantly switch lanes in a dizzying sprint to somewhere.

For passengers, the harrowing lane changes without signaling, doesn’t mean you’ll reach your destination any faster. Since everyone speeds, it makes little difference. And that’s when the light actually works. Yesterday, I unsuccessfully attempted to walk across an eight-lane boulevard for five minutes. The traffic light leading to Delhi’s central banking district was out of commission. I finally wised up. I followed some local guys, trusting they’d know when to walk.  I made it. I’ve still got a lot to learn.

Guest blogger Adam Matthews is a frequent GOOD contributor. He moved to India last week to take a job at a new magazine, and sent us this email. We imagine there will be more where this came from—stay tuned.

Image via.