Friday, August 11, 2006
How about those Mets, huh? As I sit here in one of the many internet cafes, checking sports in the U.S., I marvel at all the contrasts. Around me sit 10 young men playing interactive video games. There's one female here, a woman with her head covered in the Muslim way, but I can't see her screen (doubtful she's playing Doom II). And just outside are peddlers pushing rickety carts crying out their services or wares. These contrasts are everywhere - small, modern markets next to room-sized stores selling individual lightbulbs or foam stuffing.
Yesterday I had to leave the sidewalk to step around a tiny foreign stationwagon filled with lose green beans, halfway up the windows. They had created their own market by unloading the beans into pails on the sidewalk. Another car parked near my apartment and the scruffy driver barked into a microphone; a speaker in the grill announced he was there. The back of his car was open, showing piles of women's underwear for sale (of the rather large, old-fashioned type). Just 7 miles away, however, is a four-story mall that is as slick and modern as any I've seen in the U.S.
Part of my desire to travel to places like Turkey is to see a different way of life, but I fear that over time (decades, or more) economic globalization will produce more modern markets and malls, and push out this other way of life. And I'm contributing, because I'm sitting here in an internet cafe (obviously an old store, with beveled mirrors on two walls, ornate gold and crimson wallpaper, and inlaid marble floors, now filled with rows of fiberboard desks and Samsung computers), and buy my bottled water in the larger markets (about 90 cents for 5 liters).
Maybe I don't understand enough about commercialism, and these small markets will always exist. But I've grown up with the fear of the "Walmart Effect." Right now there are hundreds and hundreds of shops on Sukullo street (within a mile stretch), bustling with people throughout the day and into the late evening. The shops are at street level or below, with two or three stories of dwelling space above. It has the feel of what many city planners now hope for, a thriving community. Already I can see some difficulties, such as when the store keeper has to dash next store to make change (a regular occurance), or when someone buys a cold drink from the cooler, to reveal that there is only one row of cans, stacked in front, to make it look full (and the store clerk makes a quick effort to fill in the stack to present that look). And maybe these aren't difficulties, but the way it should be, with low overhead.
Tomorrow I get to meet Turkan's sister, brother and nephew (Turkan is the wife of my exchange partner in the U.S.), and though only one speaks very limited English, I am looking forward to it. I am to get my mobile phone, which will make me feel that much more secure and independent.
Yesterday I had to leave the sidewalk to step around a tiny foreign stationwagon filled with lose green beans, halfway up the windows. They had created their own market by unloading the beans into pails on the sidewalk. Another car parked near my apartment and the scruffy driver barked into a microphone; a speaker in the grill announced he was there. The back of his car was open, showing piles of women's underwear for sale (of the rather large, old-fashioned type). Just 7 miles away, however, is a four-story mall that is as slick and modern as any I've seen in the U.S.
Part of my desire to travel to places like Turkey is to see a different way of life, but I fear that over time (decades, or more) economic globalization will produce more modern markets and malls, and push out this other way of life. And I'm contributing, because I'm sitting here in an internet cafe (obviously an old store, with beveled mirrors on two walls, ornate gold and crimson wallpaper, and inlaid marble floors, now filled with rows of fiberboard desks and Samsung computers), and buy my bottled water in the larger markets (about 90 cents for 5 liters).
Maybe I don't understand enough about commercialism, and these small markets will always exist. But I've grown up with the fear of the "Walmart Effect." Right now there are hundreds and hundreds of shops on Sukullo street (within a mile stretch), bustling with people throughout the day and into the late evening. The shops are at street level or below, with two or three stories of dwelling space above. It has the feel of what many city planners now hope for, a thriving community. Already I can see some difficulties, such as when the store keeper has to dash next store to make change (a regular occurance), or when someone buys a cold drink from the cooler, to reveal that there is only one row of cans, stacked in front, to make it look full (and the store clerk makes a quick effort to fill in the stack to present that look). And maybe these aren't difficulties, but the way it should be, with low overhead.
Tomorrow I get to meet Turkan's sister, brother and nephew (Turkan is the wife of my exchange partner in the U.S.), and though only one speaks very limited English, I am looking forward to it. I am to get my mobile phone, which will make me feel that much more secure and independent.
# posted by Michael Strich @ 5:18 AM 
