Life After Peace Corps
In Virginia and DC, there are lots of young Spanish immigrants. They are usually employed by the cleaning, construction and food service sectors. Most of them are uneducated; speak very little English but they are pleasant, polite and hard working. Some of the young workers still have the baby fat, rosy cheeks, innocent look and playful attitude.
Every day, I go to McDonald for a cup of coffee. (The only treat I can afford nowadays for being a Federal employee) The girl who greets me daily is a young shy Spanish immigrant. At first she avoided eye contact with me, just took my order and said “thank you”, with a heavy Spanish accent and a bashful manner. After a while, seeing me every day, she began to relax a little bit. One day, I took the initiative to break the ice, used my broken “Spanish” to say hello and made her laugh. After that day, she became much friendlier, had the coffee ready for me as soon as I arrived.
Yesterday, I went to McDonald again. My young friend was helping another customer, an old African lady. While I was waiting for my coffee, I overheard what the old lady said to her.
“Why didn’t you do as I said?”, “What is wrong with you?” “Do you know how to take order?”, “Do you understand English?”, “Go back to where you come from!”
My friend’s face was all red. Her eyes glued to the cash register with a blank stare. She did not move, did not look at the old lady, did not say a word and did not attempt to defend herself. The old lady went on and on with her complaints.
Her insensitivity and rudeness toward the young girl brought back unpleasant memory of my past. Years ago when I was still a foreign student, I was harassed by a young black girl in the NYC subway. For no apparent reason, she approached me and hit me on the head, “Chin!” mocking me with her racial slurs. For many years, that event haunted me and I lost my self-esteem. It was when I finally graduated with honor, became a CPA and had a successful career that I finally realized that I was no less than they were. But to this day, I still have a hard time understanding why “they” could be so unkind to “Others” when they are the ones complaining how badly they have been treated. Maybe they are just a few bad apples, I surely hope so.
Next day, I saw my young friend again. She seemed to forget what had happened to her yesterday, and gave me the brightest smile. She is a hard worker and I picture her getting married, having babies and a lovely home in American. I know she will make it, just like ME!
1 comment:
Put it this way, I believe the problem here is education failure (just like you experienced when in Peace Corp). They were never taught the meaning of respect since they were a child (their parents probably behave the same way). Unfortunately in the US, school is not responsible for teaching their students moral and ethics (we believe it is the parents' job, which sometimes it just doesn't work that way if the parents have poor behaviors too).
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