The World is Flat

I often eat dinner at my neighbors’ house. They are wonderful people and very nice to let me eat there frequently and are patient as I struggle to follow the flow of conversation. A few days ago the topic took a turn from a discussion about the timeline of the World Wars and the Cold War to the question/statement, “I’ve never heard of anyone who has seen the end of the world.” They were all looking at me, waiting for me to tell them exactly where the end of the world is. As I struggled to formulate my answer, they thought maybe I hadn’t understood the question. I also thought I must have misunderstood the question; we were on the same page there. But after some clarification it turns out that that was, in fact, the question.

As you can imagine, this lead to quite a few questions and (bumbling) answers. I explained that yes, maps look perfectly square, but really they are distorted and should be like an orange peel laid flat; that in fact if you go north to the top of the globe, you can’t go north any more but then would continue going south; likewise, going east you would eventually come back here again. To me it’s a pretty big mental jump to go from “the world is flat” to “we live on a giant soccer ball,” but they took it in stride. The father did have one comment that summed up his surprise: “People cannot begin to understand the mind of God.”  

This whole business of round worlds tied in quite nicely with our daily guessing game: “What time is it where Elsie is from?” They can figure out the time conversion; they know that when we sleep here my family is awake; that my mom and dad drink their morning coffee while we eat dinner; but it wasn’t quite clear to them why.

The statement that brought about the discussion of Earth orbiting the sun was from the mom: “It always surprises me when I’m in Toamasina [on the east coast] that the sun comes out of the ocean.” Again, this was presented as a statement, but really it was a question. Luckily we had already brought in the soccer ball for a practical illustration of roundness, and I had my solar lamp with me. Not quite proportionate, but quite useful for demonstrating that when the sun rises, it’s not coming out of the ocean (or the land, for that matter) but just coming into our view; that when the sun is on one side of the world, the other side is very dark.

            What’s amazing to me is not so much that they don’t know about planets and the sun; where would they have been taught that? What does surprise me is that they are willing to take my word for it. If I were told something that drastically different from everything I knew, I would ask to see their sources. Three things: they have no way of verifying what I say; they have good reasons to believe I would tell them the truth; and finally, it just makes sense (giant fireball coming out of the water vs. flashlight behind a soccer ball). Still, it’s a pretty strange feeling to know that what I say is taken as fact and they really don’t get second opinions on most of these things. Especially strange when compounded by the fact that I’m pretty sure a lot of what I say may have some details lost in translation. It would be funny to hear the stories they will tell once I’m gone.