To Blog or Not to Blog?

A question that I’ve had for a few years now but there are always three big deterrents that have held me back.

1.       Firstly it of course seems terrible arrogant that I should think I have something sufficiently interesting to say that other people want to read it. It may be possible to have the occasional engaging thought, but can I manage it consistently? There is an idea among my friends that because I live in a foreign country my life is somehow more interesting, but after the first year you stop noticing most of the differences, life is normal just a different normal.

2.       Secondly privacy seems to be a sensible thing, why would I want to put my musings in an almost uncontrollable public domain?

3.       Finally on leaving Guyana, after it being my home for more than 3 years, a Guyanese friend gave me some good advice, he told me to be careful what I told people of Guyana and my experiences there. His reasoning was sound, almost everyone I would speak to would have no knowledge of Guyana and therefore their entire opinion of that country and its people would be based on what I said to them. Since few people know where Guyana is and it rarely makes the news he was perfectly right, for good or for bad I had become an unofficial “Ambassador” for Guyana and despite the difficulties you inevitably face living in a different culture and country I knew I wanted to be a good ambassador.

I have noticed that in some popular books of travel-writing the author seems to relish pointing out the idiosyncrasies of the host community to which he or she is visiting and the longer I live abroad the more that style of writing irritates me, it seems so superior trying to gain laughs at others’ way of doing things. It is inevitable that we will all notice differences when we spend time in other cultures, but I think to live well we need to recognise that differences have their reasons and “our” way of doing things may be better in some ways and “their” culture is better at others. I am not always successful at living with and among others culturally different from me with an attitude of learning, but I hope I’m getting better.

Being an outsider, sometimes we see more clearly and sometimes what we think we see we’ve totally misinterpreted. Being an outsider should mean we learn to see our own culture a little more clearly too and that also can be uncomfortable.

So, obviously, the fact you are reading this means I have decided to take the plunge and try to blog. Hopefully I will manage to be a good ambassador, but not a false one, and in that offer a little more understanding of our common humanity as well as offering a few of the cultural frustrations and mishaps that inevitably face “the outsider.”