By the Rivers of Babylon

On the plus side, there are usually
roses blooming outside

Let me explain where I live. 

It's a shoebox.

A relatively nice shoebox with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a sort of living-room-with-a-sink hybrid - but a shoebox nonetheless.  It lives on bricks and blocks overlooking an incline that leads directly into another annex and then the lake.  Sometimes I worry that when I jump off my top bunk, I will Cowabunga! us all to watery graves.

The bathroom is constrained by four walls, an overfriendly shower curtain, and a door that does not lock.  My room is next to the bathroom, and the walls are thin, so I am spiritually omnipresent - the silent listener to every pee break – and sometimes physically present for the brief, embarrassed second it takes to ascertain that the bathroom is occupied.  When the shower is opened, a pipe in the ground apparently spurts water, which I only discovered after the bathroom inexplicably became another Great Lake after my shower the other day.

“Whaaat?!”

“You deed not know zis?”

“No!  Did you tell Carrottop?!”

“What can she do?”

“Oh, hm, here’s a wild gander:  Get a plumber to close that pipe so the shower is useable?”

“Welcome to DRC.”

“That is not an answer.”

Meanwhile, my bladder is locked in a nightly cage as my brain refuses to allow me to descend the ladder from the highest tower of my little castle and disturb my roommate with my less-than-fairytale grace.  (This has now changed as we’ve disposed of some teammates and can now have our own rooms.)

Remember that I have a lakefront view and avocados and guavas fall from the sky at all hours! 

(I have heard they belong to trees – I can’t be sure of anything here.)

I cook and eat with my teammates (of whom there are now fewer – I want to be more sad, but a corner of my introverted brain is very excited) in the main house, where Carrottop and her husband live.

I may not have mentioned this, but dust and mud are a large part of my life now.  Only the main road through the city seems paved (the trouble seems to be that the city grew in population by leaps and bounds in a fashion that was not supported by infrastructure - necessity may well be the mother of invention, but genocide and carpe-diem get drunk together and have one-night stands they later regret), so when I get a ride anywhere, I practice waving like the Queen.  On my newly free weekend, we drove to a market area roughly twenty minutes away – further than all my travels in this country.  I nearly peed in excitement.  Or maybe fear, as the street vendors were much feistier than I am used to and nearly pushed their way into the car to sell me carrots and strawberries; it was as desperate as any zombie attack.

Then there are the stores.  Which are really very good and more than I expected.  But still.

By the shelves of household items where I stood / Yea, I wept / When I remembered Home Plus (a Korean supermarket truly worthy of its X-Men name).

There was hair mayonnaise and a few hair oils from India (at which I gazed longingly until I remembered that we’re all snake oil sellers), but no conditioner.  When I asked a teammate about it:  “Oh, no.  I use one from Europe.  Here they are all from China.  Not good.”

My body is 82% conditioner.

All these things aside, though, I have been reading quite a bit, which is generally a happy-making activity for me.  I have been miserably unable to share this relaxation and goodwill though – I’ve been labelled an extremist for my ideas about a woman’s mythical ‘place’ in the household, and I’m quite stressed about peacemaking.  I like to discuss the way things are, but often this comes across as zealous evangelism for my point of view.  I end up being defensive about issues I really don’t want or need to defend, and I walk away most worried that I’ve offended someone – who, in reality, was either joking or has forgotten all about it.  The Pastor and I got along well (I think) because we thought in similar ways – ideas are worth discussing, even if we disagree, and humour is always necessary.

One famous line I remember from our conversations on feminism and dowries is “You Indians have it all wrong – at least we pay for [wives] here.”  I burst out laughing and was much more comfortable than when I heard, for example, “India sucks; I hate it here.  You cannot be Indian!  You speak English so well; you must be American.”

I don’t mean to say that I’m constantly in a state of war, but I feel very controversial.  I’ve been reading some great books on adjusting to different cultures and the (often incorrect) paradigms with which we view different societies and the Bible.  I’m also reading a book entitled Surviving Without Romance:  African Women Tell Their Stories, but this does not help with my anger management issues.  Another book entitled Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes has really made me want to re-evaluate the way I approach a group discussion in an unfamiliar culture.  The reason I’m so worried about my need for discussion and clarity is that feelings matter.  What people walk away with matters.  I’m trying to balance that with what is true.  Both are equally important, as you’ll see from this excerpt that terrified me (and made me laugh so hard I snorted).  It is apparently a back-translation to English of a famous Psalm as understood by the Khmus tribe in Laos: 

The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his Name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, For you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.

The Great Boss is the one who takes care of my sheep; I do not want to own anything. The Great Boss wants me to lie down in the field. He wants me to go to the lake. He makes my good spirit come back. Even though I walk through something the missionary calls the valley of the shadow of death, I do not care. You are with me. You use a stick and a club to make me comfortable. You manufacture a piece of furniture right in front of my eyes while my enemies watch. You pour car grease on my head. My cup has too much water in it and therefore overflows. Goodness and kindness will walk single file behind me all my life. And I will live in the hut of the Great Boss until I die and am forgotten by my tribe.