Anna's Adventures

As a female maintainence worker in Alaska, I meet people from different walks of life every season. I am forced day after day to work, live, eat and share a bathroom with people I would probably shy away from in "real life" if I saw them in the lower 48 (This is what Alaskans call the rest of the US). When I arrived in Sitka this season it was no different. A slew of of scruffy men in Carhartts streamed in our common meeting room, the CFL, the mean of which deserves it's own story entirely. I knew about half of them from the year before, the other half were workers from other plants or contracters from "down south" (another term Alaskans use for the rest of the US, I mean Seattle IS in the south if you live in Alaska...).
As the lowest paid and lowest ranking maintainence worker on the staff, I often get assigned the tasks that everyone else convieniently
put to the side... Many of them require being in small spaces, cleaning, or doing insanely boring tasks that simply take time. Other days I am a "gopher" for people who are much more skilled than I. Anyway, this means I often am left to my own devices with nothing important to do, which is why I was so happy that I remembered to bring my Ipod to work. Unfortunately it was dead, and I went in search of someone with an Ipod dock to charge it on...and I ran into the death metal welders. The origins of the crew are largely unknown, one of them lives in Washington State, we only know they were brought in as short-term employers for thier welding skills, they keep to themselves and listen to death metal 12 hours a day at work. One co-worker has confessed that working near thier music prompts him to work faster, though it may just be an attempt to escape the noise as soon as possible. I approached the situation with doubt, two of the five were bent over pieces of metal with thier welders, I avoided the burning light and stepped over thier Tungston-filled welding hoses and approached twoof the younger ones, before I could say anything they said

"hey, tell us a joke"

I was caught of gaurd and answered
"umm...I'm usually the butt of all the jokes..."They guys chucked and smiled a bit, they seemed to loosen up and I hesitatinly asked
"Hey! Do you guys have an I-pod charger?"

The shorter of the two responded politely
"no, but you could put your Ipod on our dock for a few minuets to charge it if you want, what kind of music do you have?"

"Umm...probably nothing you guys would like?"

"just go ahead and put on all your rock music, we'll find something"
in the meantime, they put a few artists on thier Ipod for me to listen to, the taller guy said to his friend
"If she listens to that stuff all day she's going to get pissed off and won't want to help us anymore"

"Yeah guys, you'd better watch out, next time you need a hand I'm going to tell you 'Go fu** off and do your own sh**!'"After two hours of death metal (it was actually the most benign of his selection), I had fantasies of throwing crap accross the engine room
floor and wished I could put two pieces of metal together like the welders. When I came to pick up my Ipod, they were listening to Jack Johnson and it made me giggle a little inside because it was from the "Curious George" album...

The guys no longer seemed quite so scary...the death metal welders just seemed kind of lonely and bored. I found out that they are stuck in hotel rooms after work with no car and this really frustrated them...my view of them was transformed. Those scruffy, intimitading, torch-wielding men were pretty much whining about the same sh** my girlfriends and i complain about. It's funny to think that underneath our Carhartts, me and the death metal welders probably have more in common than we think. We spend so much time seeking others who we think are like us, but I probably have more in common with one of the death metal welders than with any woman who goes to the mall regularly, which kind of makes me smile inside. I may be dirty, cold and overworked but I'm pretty happy with life all in all, and people like the death metal welders certainly make mundane jobs a little more interesting. If only I could figure out how to attach piece of metal and get paid lots of money to do it...

Riding in cars with strangers.
During my week in Panama city, I bucked the traveler trend of cheap taxis and school busses and undertook a monumantal, torturous task of walking, walking to the old city, to the old old city, and finally my last goal was a park, Parque Metropolitano, located (just) a few kilomeaters from what looked to be a central part of the city. As the crow flies the distance was not far, but after hitting a dead end at a highway, walking up and down and off ramp, and taking the Lonely Planet advice with regard to street crossing "run like hell" to heart too many times, I
reached my destination. The park was full of furry and feathery creatures and a few kilomeaters of trails. One of the park rangers, who looked about 12 years old, insisted on walking with me so he could point out all the tropical birds hanging out in the trees that I was so oblivious too, making a futile effort to teach me the Spanish names for everything. After hours and hours in the hot sun, I wearily headed back toward the city, determined to find a shortcut. The shortcut it turned out, involved walking next to cars on an overpass. Basically it involved running like hell, which was only made esier by the sheer panic the ensued every time a honking SUV whizzed past my head. I finally reached a street with a sidewalk, it was safe, but it was long, and I felt like I was going to die of something heat related if I didn't find shade soon. A car slowed down and rolled it's windown down, my instinct in these situations is compleate and utter denial. Don't acknowledge the person, don't even give them a shred of something to grab onto. But...the voice that spoke was only lightly accented (I could actually understand him!), the quality of the language, it's tone, it's carefully choosen wording, convinced me to turn around and give the man a minute to see what he had to say.

"where are you going? I saw you running down the road!"
"i need to go to Multicentro" I didn't want to tell him too much, but I did want directions.

"you're pretty far from there, Im headed that way if you want a ride" he seemed willing to help, but not desperate or crazy

"well, honestly as a woman alone I just don't accept rides, but if you could just tell me what road we are on that would
help" As I said this, the fear of accepting the ride seemed to melt away. I had actually felt comfortable enough to express
my concern that he might be a psychokiller or something right to his face, and he didn't flinch, didn't show any bit of insult

"Oh, well I can understand that. Anyway, we are on Via Espania, after about 2 kilometers you will reach Balboa Avenue,
from there multi-centro is on the right"

"Ok, thanks so much!"
"Where are you from anyway? Why are you alone?"
What followed was a 10 minutes of compacted life stories, first mine then his. After learning about is international background, his unusual bi-lingual (Spanish-German) upbringing, I began to trust him. I just had that good feeling in my stomach (as opposed to that bad one I always have when traveling in airports). I stepped in the car, Mario turned the air conditioning on full blast and we chatted for another 20 minutes while wading through a Panamanian traffic jam, and in this time I'd made my first Panamanian contact. I never made the time to hang out with him for the few days I had left in the city, but I do know that sometimes following the rules and sticking with common sence is just a pain in the ass, our fears and stereotypes sometimes become so encoded into our everyday interactions that we miss the point- that an interaction is a feedback loop, we talk and we get a reaction, and from this we should judge individuals. Otherwise we are left with judging from appearence, not trusting others who look different, or just those who may hold a different passport than us. The whole point of traveling is to open yourself up to new expreiences- give me the good, the bad the comical and puzzelling, and then I am truly traveling.