Semester at Sea Fall
2006 Voyage 
- Home
Sweet Home
- And Now
Introducing...
- Multisited Ethnography Project
- A
Shipboard Interview
- Japan:
The Wisdom of a Soggy
Monk
- Hong
Kong: Looking for a Scam
- Vietnam:
Vietnamese Pie-Plate
to the Face
- Burma:
"Ok. Ok. No Problem." Androgyny in
Old Bagan
- India:
Traveler's Schizophrenia
- Egypt
vs. Turkey: Brains over
Beauty
- Croatia:
An Obscure
Conversation between an American Girl and a Croatian Forest
- Spain:
An Olive Offer Changed
My Life
- Open Letter
An Olive Offer
Changed my Life
Amy Dewitt
Preface
There was a card table set up outside, like the kids’ table at a holiday meal, but instead it held five vats of olives, different spices and different juices, all soaking under the unusually warm Andalucian sun. A toothless man smacked his gums at this vat and that, making it clear I had no choice but to trust that his favorites would also be my own. I walked off swinging a soggy bag of olives giddy as the child with a seasick goldfish in a tight plastic bag after a visit to the pet store. Excitement makes me destinationless, sucking on olive pits and smiling from ear to ear.
An Olive Offer…
Diego also
loves olives. I stumbled into his shop in
Cadiz after my purchase, completed
complimentary
greetings – Hola, ¿que tal? – and
tipped the bag his direction. After the
sticky, olive-juice handshake with drips down to our elbows, I was
hooked. His persona was contagious and
magnetic; I
returned every day at dos y media (2:30)
for lunch, music, dancing, good company, new friends, and new
discoveries. All of which constituted
siesta. The Spanish culture runs on its
own
clock. Siesta is an integral part of
daily life, but is often misinterpreted by outside cultures as an
afternoon nap
– used synonymously with catnap, snooze, sleep, and forty winks. Diego was my introduction to the life of the
Spanish siesta. I returned that first
day, as he asked me to do, at 2:30 un
punto (on the dot) and was surprised to see a handful of other
people
waiting for the same grand man: Inese from
Changed My Life
Diego did not speak
English. Jim and Murphy did not speak
Spanish. I do not speak French, Latvian,
and only very little
Spanish. Andres – Spanish and French, and
the others
only Spanish. And yet we could all
communicate. Diego’s door is always open,
and he uses it as a gate through many cultural barriers: We were
sitting
outside a café picking through a pile of fried seafood. Throughout the meal several homeless people
and street peddlers routinely came up to us with pleading eyes and
outstretched
hands. Without question, he broke into
conversation with each as if old school-time friends, and offered them
some
food. Many he knew by name because they
were people in his eyes, people worth a real conversation, handshake,
or
cheek-to-cheek greeting.
“We are all born
naked; we are all equal; we are all human.” Diego
explained to me that his great-grandfather was a
revolutionary
anarchist, martyred for his spoken words (the above phrase included)
and
published works on the government’s role. He
knew very little English, but knew enough to voice his
hatred for
President Bush – a common thread I have found throughout all of the
countries I
have visited. It was refreshing,
however, to hear such a realistic perspective on our government and its
policies. He acknowledged that the
responsibility of all American actions with which he didn’t agree did
not come
down solely to one man; he knew that only a small percentage of
Americans were
supportive of such actions (specifically the involvement in the Middle
East),
and agreed on our false claim of democracy: “I will go to the United
States
when it becomes a democratic society.” To
which he chuckled and continued, “I will never see the
As the Mystery Guest to a Spanish Siesta.
I
spent my time in 
Watching
the sunset on the beach at
the base
of Castillo de