To start the day off right, yesterday I stopped at a local coffee shop before work. I ordered a small coffee and a butter croissant. The clerk couldn’t swipe my card. I couldn’t remember my zip code. My croissant order was overlooked, and I spilled my coffee. I had thirty minutes left so I played it safe and sat in my car. If you are waiting for work, the bus, the train, or Godot, it’s a perfect opportunity to think about the world, places far away, and other people’s problems. I sat and thought about a book I just finished reading.
Writers are readers and I just finished reading the biography of an American journalist in X land. To be politically correct, I will not reveal the name of the country. In X it is commonplace for everyone to spend four to six hours a day chewing a leaf called gat. Gat is a narcotic leaf. Everyone chews gat. In the middle of the work-day, journalists leave the office for four-hour-long gat breaks. Housewives, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, everyone in X chews gat. The solution to coming down from the gat high is to chew more gat. There is a very high poverty rate in X.
Much to my surprise, someone suggested that I consider the American coffee habit and not be so judgmental. Okay, being a fair-minded person, I looked objectively at my own coffee habit, and it is not the same as chewing gat. I drink coffee then I go to work. Housewives, if there are any left, drink coffee and still do the laundry. Drinking coffee may be addictive but it is not debilitating. The American journalist reported that she never saw anyone in the country of X reading a book. The truth is I have not seen anyone here reading a book either. I am going to take a radical risk and connect the dots between their national habit of gat chewing, high illiteracy, and poverty. Does it matter which came first?
Reading is essential for day-to-day living. The mothers in X can’t read so they dilute and misuse the formula for their babies. I am not sure how the author could have been working for a newspaper as a journalist if no one can read, but the fact remains that illiteracy, poverty and gat chewing are rampant in X land. There are twenty-four hours in a day and if half of the waking time is spent chewing or recovering from chewing gat then there is not a whole lot of time left for, dare I say it—work or reading.
The solution? “Think, Miss Pat Think.” I don’t have one. Solving international problems is out of my jurisdiction. I drink coffee and I go to work after stopping at the above mentioned coffee shop. “Anything else?” Well, I am grateful that I was born here and not there, that my problems are small and that I can read books about gat instead of chewing it. As for my addictions . . . my coffee habit is manageable. Usually.
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