It was a lovely nine days during which I saw the full range of what people ate in the jungle, including river turtles and tapirs (herbivores that resemble pigs). Some of the communities we met still held on as hunter-gatherers, living in a different cultural universe from the one I know.
But the chefs also had their own subculture. I clearly remember a young Tacana man and one of the cooks comparing their tattoos. It was a beautiful moment.
What’s something about your life as a correspondent that might surprise readers?
The amount of time I spend trying to pull money out of an A.T.M.
Ninety-five percent of the world still doesn’t accept credit cards, especially when there’s an emergency. You can identify the correspondent as the person after the earthquake who has found the one working A.T.M. on the outskirts of town, and is sending a prayer up each time there’s that familiar sound of the machine counting the cash.
How does it feel after you publish a big story?
It’s humbling. The impact of The Times is still hard for me to believe — its reach, its readership, its impact.
But it’s humbling in another way, too. I work in a home office, not in a busy newsroom like in the movies. The New York Times isn’t printed in Colombia. Sometimes even when I’m sending the largest story to my editor, it can feel no different than another long email to my boss. You have to pinch yourself to remember this is real.
If you had to choose another job, in journalism or not, what would it be?
I probably would have tried to be a classical musician. I didn’t find journalism until after college. Before that I played the viola. It was kind of a religion for me during those years, and very much the opposite of what I do today.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/reader-center/nicholas-casey-behind-the-byline.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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