Musings on 9/11

As the five year anniversary of 9/11 passes, I'm sure it's passed through all our minds at least once today. While my experience of the time was certainly not extraordinary or unique, I took a few moments to write some thoughts.

Less than two months after 9/11, I left for Panama to visit my family who was working there at the time. Paranoia was still thick in the air. After grueling lines and searches at the airports, I finally made it—but this trip and its timing would prove to be more insightful than a short vacation.

We walked from the apartment in Panama City to the nearest grocery store. As we rounded the corner, two men guarded the doors of the market with machine guns. Terrified, I jumped back around the corner, only to face bewildered expressions from my parents. Machine guns were everywhere here; they were just a fact of life.

The next day, we drove to El Valle, an indigent village in the mountains. The greenery was gorgeous as we hiked to a little-known landmark of ancient history—a boulder with hieroglyphics far from the city or any tourist attraction. A small girl looked at me with big eyes and asked me where I came from. I told her, and she shyly asked where the United States was, if it was in El Valle, if she could see it from her house.

It dawned on me that her entire world was in this valley. Her young mind had never fathomed cities, culture shock, hatred, discrimination, destruction, or terrorism. Yet, only a few hundred miles away, people lived among Uzzis in the city and in fear of being kidnapped by Colombians in the rain forest. In America, millions feared further terrorist attacks would rob us of life and liberty. In the Middle East, thousand-year wars raged on. In Spain, Basque activists planted car bombs to assert their quest for independence. In Africa, entire cultures were becoming extinct from disease, hunger, and rebel forces. My stomach churned with it all.

I longed to be this little girl in El Valle and to live in the simple world she inhabited. Three days later, I returned to Willamette and America’s fresh wounds.