Diplomacy stinks

Sunday 6 September 2009

As I was walking through the hospital this morning, the very pungent odor of our host nation brethren struck me, almost literally. It made me ponder the various smells of the numerous “outdoorsy” men that I have encountered from around the world. I have had the good fortune of traveling fairly extensively, and it occurs to me that the smell of the natural state of man varies from country to country and region to region. I should begin by acknowledging that I, personally, have an immense capacity to stink. The stench of my blue and white checkered Vans from seventh grade is still deeply embossed on my olfactory cortex. It was a sort of thick, vinegar smell that really sticks with you and generally precludes me from going sockless to this day.

Back to Afghanistan. I find that the smell of the local men is unique, sort of an old cloth smell with a dirt-tinged musk. This is much different from the odors that I encountered when stranded for five hours on a runway in Bangkok on an Air India flight. That was much more, well, predictable and bourgeois. These differences lead me to ruminate on the etiology of the different scents of people from around the world. My first theory is the most scientific, and postulates that bacteria from the local flora and fauna, after simmering in sweat, play a profound role in the way people smell. This might explain why the local Afghanis smell differently than naturalists in Palau or Thailand. The ubiquitous dirt and dust here seems regionally unique.

My second theory is that perhaps the food that we eat may play a role. This one is less convincing since it would lead one to hypothesize that a good working smell in Hawaii would be somewhat sweet, from all of the fruits and fish in the diet. I have personally disproved this theory on numerous occasions.

I do feel that I could sit in a hospital waiting room in up to 5 different countries with my eyes closed and make a pretty good guess as to my location. I’m not sure that’s a marketable skill, but it does help to occupy the mind, and it must be some soft of marker of international sensitivity.