"Dreams of Freedom"
Trieste, Italy
June 7, 1984
Dear Folks,
Since this letter will be reaching you around the Fourth of July, I would like to share with you a story from the worldwalk that concerns others' struggles for freedom. In this special story, which still haunts me even now as I'm reflecting on the very pleasant walk I had through Italy, I want you to mentally journey back to Africa with me. I want you to meet someone very young: a 14-year-old Polish boy named Luc. I met him in Boudouaou, Algeria, last February, and he reminded me how lucky I am to have a free nation like America as my birthplace. Luc,as you will see, knew all too well what it is like to live in a society where the people are controlled by an outside power.
At the time Luc "Skywalker" and I met, his parents (both professors of mechanical engineering at an Algerian university) and he were staying with a Polish priest in whose home I was also a guest. The boy and I shared the same bedroom, and late one evening I couldn't help thinking that Luc was the brightest lad his age I'd ever met. In addition to speaking six languages, he could discuss just about any subject with the utmost comfort. To my further delight, he even picked an entire album's worth of tunes--from the Beatles to bluegrass--for me on a banjo.
I told him that with such intelligence, his future should be extremely promising. However, rather than being pleased with my comment, he grew silent and looked sad as he set his banjo down onto his bed. In the weak glow of the ceiling light bulb, his face looked as if it had aged 20 years. His eyes ceased to sparkle, and his voice grew deeper with much seriousness and thought.
"In America, I believe what you say would be true. There I could do what I wanted. You have much work and, for me, I could pick many professions. Or--" He glanced fondly at the banjo. "--if I wanted to only be a musician in a little band all my life, I could do that, too.
"In Poland, though, I do not think I have any future."
His voice went from resignation to bitterness, the sort of bitternesss that had been burning inside him for a long time. "We are a very poor country, and we have no way to escape our poverty. The Russians have too many soldiers watching us for the Polish people to try to be free."
He stood and paced the room nervously.
"Everywhere in Poland. everyone you meet on the streets will tell you how much they hate the Russians. How can we ever grow, when we must do only what they want us to do? They keep us poor, so we can't fight them and be rid of them. They have too many soldiers. They are too strong. We have nothing to fight with. The Polish people can only hope that someday they will have to go away, or someone stronger will defeat them."
He suddenly plopped down beside me. "Did you read about the American cosmonaut who was able to leave the Columbia a few days ago, without any rope attached to the Columbia?"
I hadn't. I asked him if he meant the astronaut had been using some sort of manually controlled propulsion unit.
"Yes!" he replied. "I was so happy to read that. Do you know what that means?"
"It means that repairing satellites and building stations in space itself is now possible," I answered.
He nodded approvingly. "That means the Russians will be very nervous. Now they will feel they have to do the same as the Americans. It will be necessary for them to take more money from the military to spend on their space program.
"Every time the Polish people hear about the Americans doing such things, we are so happy, for we think maybe the Russians will have to spend so much money that they will not be able to keep so many soldiers watching over us."
He said no more about the Russians. However, he had left no doubt about the frustrations the situation in Poland was causing his people.
"We could be proud, if we could only live like you do," was all he added.
Luc is one of the many examples I've found on my journey of how detrimental it is when a nation is controlled by another. In those nations where outside colonial powers had ruled the inhabitants for a long time (as was the case in the recent past in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia), I found societies that had not been allowed to grow at the rate they should have. Life in those countries was decades behind ours, in terms of technology and the standard of living, even though the people are as intelligent and energetic as those of the progessive nations.
The temptation to exploit another nation's energies and resources has, in every case, proven too irresistable to the ruling country and its men of power.
Although America is increasingly being viewed abroad as a kind of imperialistic nation--particularly after Grenada and Beruit--there still remains a sense of awe at our nation's rapid growth, and at the freedoms allowed its citizenry. Take, for example, the nearly one hundred names and addresses I came away with from northwest Africa. They are nearly all young men who hoped that I would correspond with them, so that they could use that as a device to convince their government to let them visit the USA (where they hoped to work and live).
Unquestionably the USA is still viewed as a land of opportunity and as a role model by a large proportion of the world's peoples. Our nation's founders were very wise indeed to have struggled early on for our freedoms. They realized, as I'm now learning, that true growth, prosperity, and happiness are not fully possible when others hold the strings of freedom.
When I saw firsthand how the French purposefully kept the North Africans poor and dependent, and how the Russians are now doing likewise to the Polish people, I have no doubt the same would have occurred in America, had not a small and vastly under-equipped, but highly heroic, group of colonists taken their destinies into their own hands.
We should be thankful that they did so when they did, while it was still possible. Now, especially in the case of the Polish, their dreams of freedom may have to remain just that--dreams.
Steven