It didn’t amaze me about that country, it amazed me about my own, Canada.

We lived in Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, where the local people were as curious about Canada and “the Big Countries” (as they termed “the developed world/first world/whatever”) as we were about Vanuatu.

They would often point to some aspect of their infrastructure and ask how Canada looks different.

In the downtown section of the capital, a cyclone had back-washed a storm drain and blew the grating away, leaving and open hole in the gutter of the street. I pointed to the missing grating and commented that one would never see that in Canada, US, Oz, NZ, Europe, Japan, and so on, because the city would be afraid that someone would fall into the hole and sue.

The ni-Vanuatu reaction was always on the lines of, <expression of surprise, momentary loss for words>, then, “But, aren’t people meant to look where they are walking?”.

That made me begin to perceive how we differ profoundly in terms of individual responsibility. For better or worse, people don’t fall in holes in Vanuatu, or Mexico, IME, because they pay attention.