Risk Taker

Upon hearing that the next destination in our Latin American journey is Colombia, my brother emailed me. In his eyes I am crazy to travel to a country full of terrorists and drug cartels that kidnap or kill honest people. He cannot fathom why on earth I would take such a risk. This got me thinking about the subjective nature of ‘danger’.

First, let the numbers speak for themselves. There were less than 300 kidnappings in Colombia in 2010 for a population of 43 million: this represents a probability of 0.06 per 100,000 if you spend a month there. In comparison, the annual risk of dying of cancer is roughly 160 to 190 per 100,000 depending on your country. The annual probability of accidental death in the US is 38 per 100,000. Yet no one calls you crazy when you cross the street (you could get squashed by a bus), when you drive your car (you could hit a lamppost), when you smoke a cigarette (you could get cancer) or when you eat greasy food (you could clog your arteries and get a stroke).

But travel to Colombia and immediately the alarm bells start ringing.

I will venture to say that the actual risk is irrelevant when it comes to human perception of danger. What matters is how terrified we are of an event, however unlikely. Fear trumps danger any time.

If the movie “Jaws” left deep scars in your psyche (like it did in mine), then you probably freak out every time something moves in the water, even though the annual probability for a surfer to be attacked by a shark in the US is barely 0.8 per 100,000. If every time you hear the word “Colombia” on TV the news anchor recounts the story of a kidnapped politician or a drug cartel being dismantled, with images of handcuffs and bleeding wounds, in your mind the country becomes dangerous. And since the media focus on sensational and eye-riveting news, you are not likely to see anything positive about the place: no one cares. Soon you imagine the entire planet divided into three categories: safe places (the familiar ones you hear about all the time like Europe and the US), dangerous places (the ones you hear about once in a while, always with negative news), and mysterious places (the rest of the world). How puny!

In the past 6 months I crossed 7 countries in Latin America. Two of these are flagged as ‘dangerous’ and get a lot of negative coverage from the media: Mexico and Guatemala. It so happens that these are the places I loved most in our journey. Both are blessed with so many amazing landscapes as well as genuine and generous people. I am looking forward to discovering Colombia for what it is, not for what it’s supposed to be.

As long as there are no big spiders.

Cedric, 1/29/12