”Which country in South Africa?” asked the American, upon learning the home country of the visitor with the strange accent.
”Oh, yes,” he said, as a light of recognition flickered in his elderly eyes. ”Isn’t that the home base of that delightful Negro person who spent all those years in jail?”
This was not an uncommon reaction during a recent State Department-sponsored learning trip to the US by a group of 22 foreign visitors, including South Africans.
Asked a retired evangelical worker on a flight to Grand Island, Nebraska: ”Do you still have giraffe roaming around your suburbs?”
A Washington post-office employee believed the country is one large jungle. And a surprised hotel cleaner didn’t know there were white people in Africa.
Jean AbiNader, former executive director of the Arab-American Institute, argues that Americans are not compelled to know anything about the rest of the world.
”The United States believes it is the universe and foreign countries are an inconvenience,” he told the visiting group last month.
He says most American schools have no language departments, and less than a fifth of US citizens have been to a foreign country other than neighbouring Canada and Mexico.
A handful of members of the current Congress had a passport when elected.
Who can blame them really? They live in a country of more than nine million square kilometres, which offers domestic travellers anything from deserts to forests, arctic Alaska to tropical Hawaii, high-rise cities to quiet agricultural towns.
Its population of about 290-million includes people of almost any thinkable race, language, conviction and religious belief.
And then there is the terrorist threat — which has tended since the September 11 attacks to make Americans even more inward-looking.
Living under constant reminders of potential threat is probably not conducive to developing an interest in foreign countries — several of which are regarded with suspicion anyway.
And the reminders are constant indeed, with terror alerts being frequently updated — mostly hovering between ”elevated” and ”high”.
On the website of the Department of Homeland Security, under the title ”recommended activities”, Americans are warned to remain vigilant, take notice of their surroundings and report ”suspicious” items or activities to local authorities.
”Everybody — whether living in New York City, Washington, DC, or another part of the country — should establish an emergency preparedness kit as well as a communications plan for themselves and their family, and stay informed about what to do during an emergency situation,” it says.
At many airports, even domestic travellers are thoroughly scanned, often having to take off their shoes for checking.
”One can’t help being afraid every time you fly,” said one American passenger.
Added a government official: ”Since 9/11, terrorism has been our main priority.”
Some blame American ignorance of the outside world on the perceived isolationist policies of the administration of President George Bush.
One analyst believes that Republicans view international politics as ”a Darwinian struggle characterised by the survival of the fittest”.
This is demonstrated, he argues, by the US’s rejection of international treaties on the creation of an international criminal court and the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions.
Said one American resident, a Cuban immigrant: ”Some people think America is the world.”
And they are content in their ignorance.
As Bush once reportedly said of the world’s second-most-populous continent: ”We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.” — Sapa