One small positive in
dating a local (other than having a souvenir) is that he unwittingly shares common
cultural practices and colloquialisms for me to dissect.
Like the harvest song that
the beneficiaries of his project sang to work late one evening – about striking
the ground as though each blow was killing someone from a neighbouring
tribe. Most of my colleagues are from
this tribe, and I’d heard stories of how, during one of the many wars that have
plagued this nation, they had created artificial borders in order to catch (no
release that hunting season) those not from their tribe by checking the
pronunciation of a certain greeting. At
that time, I’d decided that this tribe was quite obviously stark, raving
mad.
Now I see that their foray
into early immigration policies was possibly justified.
-
Maashi vs. Babembe
-
Nande vs. Hutu
-
Banyamulenge vs. everyone else
I’ve further learned that
locals apparently believe Europe is everything not-Africa and not-‘the West.’ Thus, Europe includes Australia. So when I was part of a mental health training
session where everything from mass shooting to euthanasia seemed to come from ‘Europe,’
which I clearly represented, I tried to stay calm. Yeah,
well, at least we don’t rape without compunction, or note ‘embezzlement’ as a
job task, or kill people routinely due to the shapes of their noses, or... I continued until I realised I was
expounding on the theme that my culture’s method of destruction was much more
civilised than another.
“If divorce comes from the
West,” I tried to explain rationally,
“so did the emancipation of women – our ability to be economically independent
and our right to be safe from abuse at the hands of our fathers and husbands.” Does
that mean good ideas came from Europe too?
Freedom? Peace? All from Europe, d’you think?
Indians tend to follow this
fatally derailed train of thought as well:
Everything degenerate came from the West!
Yes, because burning a widow on the funeral pyre of her husband
was brilliantly enlightened – pun fully intended – thank you.
No culture is perfect. Quite frankly, we’re all bat-guano cray-cray,
and the worst thing is that we’re proud of it.
I have a friend in the fashion and journalism industry who is of Asian
descent, does not like being asked where he’s from, sometimes sports ice-blond
hair, talks often about his ‘spirit animal,’ and bemoans a white girl ‘misappropriating’
a hanbok.
We’re so blindly unreasonable
in our judgements of right and wrong without
being willing to do anything about them.
So I listened to doctors and nurses at the end of a mud road in
Central Africa note that ‘Europeans’ are savagely individualistic, uncaring
swine, and Indians are quite hopelessly backward for their beliefs in a
pantheon of gods.
“If I marry in India, they’ll give me a dowry?! We should start
a campaign!!”
- Father of 10,
grandfather of 16
When yoga, named as a form of exercise
and relaxation, was also identified as coming from Europe, I’d had enough. “Actually, yoga originated in India.” When all eyes turned to me for a
demonstration, I continued, “Indian Christians generally do not practice it
because it was intended as a form of worship.”
Which was when the entire room realised I
wasn’t Muslim and blessed me in the name of the Lord.
I gave up. I’d been violently feverish most of the
weekend, had only been partially lucid for most of the day – for example, when
we had an apparently serious discussion on the chances and consequences of an
epileptic fit during sex – and had realised that being the only woman and
foreigner in the room was not ideal.
Settling our bill at the local hotel was
another adventure as I was apparently the only one who wanted an official, completed
receipt for the nights I stayed there.
The manager calmly offered us all completed receipts even in the face of
incredible pressure, so I shook him warmly by the hand and congratulated him on
his principles before scampering out behind my frustrated friends. Once outside, I held out my hand and received
an empty receipt that one of them had threatened from one of the workers in the
office.
I carefully folded the slip of paper into
my pocket, blaming my tight throat on my recent illness.
Finally on the long, long way home, using
public transport that took one hour to make absolutely certain that it was
impossible to fit more than 22 people in a 16-seat bus, at 4:30pm on Sunday
evening, I started a war of the sexes on the bus. My session co-facilitators seemed somehow
convinced that women were the greatest obstacle to adequate family
planning. One of them cited a BBC
article in which a group of Rwandan men were apparently lobbying to sterilize themselves
because the women around them were incapable of understanding that ejecting a
3-4kg human through their vaginas every year from the age of 18-65 was infeasible.
Right.
While I have no doubt that there are many
African men who would be willing to follow principles of family planning for
the health of their wives and the success of their children, the notion that the
majority of African women are so pious that they cite the Bible while pulling
their husbands to bed after a day-long struggle for food and water, all while
breastfeeding two toddlers seems… unlikely.
One gloriously forthright woman took up
my banner and said that men were the problem, citing her own example. Neither of us denied that most women wanted
children, but my understanding was that local women were generally content with
5-6 spaced over a longer period. The men
whom I’d questioned, on the other hand, had humbly stated that they would
accept as many children as God gave them – which, as far as I can gauge, means 8-12
living offspring.
Though I cannot fault this Christ-like
obedience, I wonder if their opinion would change if their bodies were affected
at all by pregnancy and labour.
This resulted in a spirited conversation
that took over the whole bus, with the single women and the men on one side,
and the married women and me on the other.
During this trip, it was decided by the men that ‘European’ women didn’t
want children. This came from yet
another state-employed official who usually tries to convince me that foreign
donors are stingy and should budget a regular salary for his fellow citizens (from
the health care professionals to the community leaders) for the hard work of
accepting training in identifying mental illness and offering trauma healing
for their own population. In addition to
increasing the amount they pay him to teach.
Oh, and perhaps also a little something for the poor villagers who come
for individual counselling, group therapy, to learn about sex- and gender-based
violence, etc.
As I usually bite my tongue in order to
keep from throttling him with it, I also ignored this straw man in the face of
the bigger battle – that we all have preconceived notions that take courage to
face and change.
And I wondered how long this journey would
take.
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At the risk of sounding desperate - PLEASE WRITE TO ME!