Dateline 18 November 2010. Mitad del Mundo, Ecuador…
My Spanish teacher was kind enough to take me on a field trip to the countryside outside of Quito so that I might practice my fledgling Spanish and get a true taste of indigenous culture.
Along the way we decided it would be fun to visit the tourist trap known as Mitad del Mundo (literally center of the earth).
Anyway, after failing miserably to balance an egg on the head of a nail…
… and taking the obligatory photograph of my feet straddling the equator…
I turned around and there it was…
[scroll down to see what I am talking about]
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Mind blown!!!
How did I become so conditioned to think that North is “up” and South is “down”?
How did I allow myself to become so Northern Hemisphere centric?
(moreso the Euro-centricity of the map makers)
And I realized that the map above was not just a different way to look at the world, but that it was also, in many ways, a more accurate way to look at the world. (By the way, despite my exposure to this new perspective, I confess that I still find it difficult not to think of North as “up”).
But the lesson wasn’t over yet… as I began to wonder what other kinds of centricities and prejudices, far more consequential, I was conditioned to accept without question.