from the airport to the hotel

This is the best bit of taxi driver journalism I’ve seen for ages. The normal outcome of taxi-driver journalism is that the journalist understands everything after a short conversation en route from the airport to the hotel, and, lo and behold, it confirms everything he already thought about the situation in country and the role of humble, decent folk like taxi drivers within it. For George Packer, a look is enough.

The taxi-driver, who took me around Rangoon for a few days before I headed north to Mandalay and Bagan, let me know in a hundred subtle ways—sometimes it was just an exchange of looks—that Burma’s people might be cut off from the world, but they were not ignorant. They knew well enough that they lived in poverty, under a brutal regime, while their Asian neighbors were entering the modern world.

Of course they fucking well know, you solemn jackass. They live there.

Hello, this is Instant Wisdom Taxis. Can I help you?

….ah, I see. You’re visiting an emerging market. Now, do you want your taxi driver to be smart, practical and alert to the main chance? We have quite a few and they all come recommended by Mr Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. Alternatively, we have a number of academics, classical musicians and the like reduced to driving taxis by corruption and mismanagement of the economy. What’s your angle?

…ah, it’s politics you want. No problem. All our taxi drivers yearn for freedom. Some are fear ridden and communicate largely by winks, sighs and baroque metaphors drawn from local folk tales but we also have a bunch of guys who are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. How far are we off the people power moment here?

…No problem. He’ll be waiting for you at the airport. Do you wish to visit his family? How much squalor do you wish to find them living in? At what point would you like him to say that he yearns for his children to be able to study in the United States? How did I guess? Oh, they all want them to say that…

Comments

[ejh]

If you want off-the-shelf reporting you can try almost any article by a BBC correspondent about US foreign policy. I swear to God you could get primary school kids to write them with the help of flashcards.