Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community
- Автор: Fians Guilherme
- Год: 2022
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
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As the days passed and the packing went on, our conversations continued. On one of these occasions, he explained to me why we were packing only books, even though UEA's bookshop also sold other products:
Usually we send CDs and DVDs as well, but not this year. When the congress is in Europe, it's easier and cheaper to transport all these things. But because this one will be in South Korea, the carrier that will ship all this told us that we can send books and pay only the transportation costs. If we also ship CDs and DVDs we have to pay special taxes for this material to enter the country, and that would be too expensive. It means we would have to raise the price of these products when selling them at the congress and it wouldn't be worth it.
Andrei was particularly careful about the categorisation he had drawn on his title list when separating the books into boxes. As these materials would reach the congress venue in Seoul before him, he would rely on the volunteers from the local organising committee to set up the tempo- rary bookshop. Thus, while separating books of poetry, novels, national anthologies, academic and language learning materials, among others, he also sketched a tentative map outlining the position of each shelf and table in the congress bookshop, to make sure the South Korean volunteers would place them correctly. After explaining the tasks he would have to fulfil during the congress, Andrei also commented on the purchases in Rotterdam:
The sales in our bookshop are not as good as before... I know that a lot of other things have also changed. In the past, the television, the
Internet, they didn't exist — so people had more free time; more time to read books. And Esperantists, particularly, used to read a lot: apart from congresses and local meetings, the only way they had to use the language was through reading magazines and books. Nowadays people can read things in Esperanto and contact Esperantists online, everywhere, for free, and they don't rely on magazines and books as they did before.
He was also concerned about pricing the books: we were putting the price tags on each of them in Euros, hoping that most people would pay for them by card or transfer money through UEA's online payment system—but Andrei would also have to juggle exchange rates and payments in South Korean Won. During his explanation about curren- cies and payments, the other office workers started to come downstairs for lunch, and since some of our boxes were blocking the way to the refectory, we had to stop working and open a path. Hearing part of the conversation as she approached us, Zlata, the main person respon- sible for the associations accountancy and finance, also had something to say about UEA's online payment system. Looking rather anxious for her overwhelming task, the middle-aged treasurer from the former Yugoslavia, astonished and with effusive gestures, told us that she had seventy-five unread messages in her professional mailbox, most of them from people who had paid the registration fees to attend the forth- coming congress. She had to deal with financial operations, making money circulate from people's bank accounts to UEA, and then from UEA's managerial system to the congress' local organising committee. The latter would then be responsible for registering the participants and allocating rooms to those who chose the accommodation options offered by the organisers.
After having lunch with the office workers and volunteers in the asso- ciation's refectory, I went back to the books and boxes. There, I saw Andrei leaning on the table with one hand. He seemed lost in thought, staring at a pile of empty boxes in the corridor and reconsidering his booklist:
The thing is that, for this year's congress, apart from Korean Esperan- tists, everybody else has to take a plane to reach South Korea. It means that fewer people will buy books this time, because of the weight of the luggage — people won't be willing to pay for the extra weight on the plane [...]. Besides, there are fewer participants registered to attend the congress this year, because of the distance from Europe [where most of the regular congress-goers live], and also because many elderly people are afraid of dealing with such different living conditions in Asia, like the weather, the long time spent travelling... Many older Esperantists are concerned about having health problems after eating the food there, for instance, and some end up giving up on the trip.
When Andrei is not packing books or attending Universal Congresses, he sits behind his desk at the bookshop. Even though few people walk in and buy books, CDs and DVDs in person, he receives several orders online on a daily basis by e-mail, WhatsApp messages or through UEA's online payment system, and sometimes also by phone or post.
Apart from recognising shifts in how people place orders, Andrei also pointed out the impact of changes in currency and methods of payment, arguing that the creation of the Eurozone made it easier for UEA to sell and ship products within the European Union. Previously, Andrei constantly had to calculate the conversion rates from Dutch Guilder to other currencies. Likewise, the creation of online payment systems like PayPal and the fact that many credit cards nowadays can be used for international transactions made it easier for people to move money over- seas, which facilitated sales to Esperantists outside the EU. In his one week in Seoul, his job would be more challenging: aside from continuing to manage online sales for those who were not attending the congress, he would have to handle more currencies and customers in face-to-face transactions. Additionally, despite Zlata and most of UEA's office workers also attending the congress, they would not be near Andrei's congress bookshop, and he would have to solve any problem with UEA's online payment system by himself.
Three weeks later, Andrei and I had almost finished packing the books, but we had to interrupt our activity that day: that afternoon, a truck arrived from the print shop bringing piles of copies of Kontakto, the bimonthly magazine edited by TEJO. Since the copies of the magazine would also be provisionally stored downstairs, Andrei and I had to move our boxes aside again while Laetitia and Mihaela, volunteers at TEJO, walked from one side of the semi-basement to the other carrying huge bags, preparing to stick address labels on the magazines and, later, post them to TEJO members.
The following day, Johannes, another staff member at UEA's office, would contact the carrier and double-check the conditions and prices for shipping all those cardboard boxes to South Korea. Since Johannes was one of the few native Dutch speakers in the office, he was responsible for most external communication within the Netherlands.
As I learned during my stay in Rotterdam, what moved the office workers and volunteers at UEA and TEJO was their constant need to keep Esperanto-related things on the move. While Johannes contacted the carrier, Andrei bought his own plane tickets to South Korea, and Zlata, in turn, was kept busy with annual membership fees, congress registration fees and other money transfers from people's personal accounts at UEA's system to the association and the congress' organising committee, and vice versa. The travelling and circulation involving people, things and places could not stop, and even though UEA's office provided me with a comfortable armchair from where I could observe people and things being set in motion, this ethnographer was also supposed to join these flows at some point. Where would Esperanto bring me next?
3.2 TheTerritorialisation
of a One-Night-Stand Relational Assemblage
Andrei was one among numerous Esperantists who showed me that working at an Esperanto association meant performing, on a daily basis, a vast array of practices related to circulation and mobility: to come, to go, to transfer, to pack, to send, to post, to mail, to dispatch, to receive, to travel and to attend. These practices propose to address the issues recur- rently raised by Esperanto learners: 'once I learn the language, how can I meet other Esperanto speakers?'; 'if Esperanto is not customarily spoken anywhere, how can I find ways to speak it?'.