A few minor adjustments...

19 Mar 12

Is one of the hand books sent to you with your invitation and welcome book that I never read. After visiting PC volunteers in a couple different countries and having traveled to some developing countries myself I thought the title probably said it all and that I didn’t need to spend already precious time on reading anything extra on top of graduate school. Maybe I should have…?

I’m not sure but was faced with an adjustment today that I had not really mentally prepared for which I probably should have.

We were sitting around waiting waiting waiting for something. I had just come home from my language class which is just a five minute walk away from my house at my LCF’s homestay house. After class there are about two hours before lunch which are the most trying two hours for me as breakfast occurred almost three hours ago and was just bread and butter and poor quality coffee with sugar.

I had been trying to integrate more by helping out with more chores and house stuff and had asked my mom if I could help and she had me pull up a bucket to sit on next to hear as we stare off into a bowl full of dry rice and peppers, smell it, and wait. I start to gather that we don’t have any matches to make fire to start lunch. Finally my 14 yr old sister comes by and is asked to go to the market and to take me and my 4 yr old sister with her (or so I'm guessing as my language is still a work in progress). My sister had just dawned on her uniform for school (beginning in the afternoon, probably so that the young women can help with morning chores), so we left in a bit of a rush as I could tell she was worried about being on time to school.

My four year old sister is carrying an empty sprite liter bottle which I figured was a toy. We go to the first bitek (shop) when my sister tries to get some sandals. Her and the shop keep argue over the price for a while. I wondered if he thought the shoes were for me and if he was giving her some "foreigner tax" on the shoes making me feel bad for interfering in the situation by just being there. But I know bartering is a common mode of shopping here for non-packaged items. My sister gives up and we leave when the shop keep calls her back in. I figure he’s going to give in. He reaches over the counter and grabs her aggressively and begins to scold her. This might sound really mild but it really startled me as I didn’t know what they were saying or why he was grabbing her and if it was going to go any further. I was so frustrated and shocked I didn’t know what to do but to say “hey! hey!” He looked at me just as stern and finished yelling at her and we left. I was so stunned and didn’t even know enough language to ask if my sister was alright. I knew how to say good or ok and phrase it in a question but didn’t feel like it would be appropriate to say “good?” right then.

She put her hands to her face and I wondered if she was wiping away tears. I put my hand on her shoulder lightly to ask universally if she was ok and she just marched on forward with a strong determined stride. We went into another shop when my four year old sister offered the sprite bottle to be filled with cooking oil. “Oh! I thought, that’s what we were waiting for!” My sister pointed me in the direction of home and went off with her classmates to school. My four year old sister walked me home holding the full bottle of sprite and looking at me questioning the whole way home. I called my LCF to express my concern and he said he’d come by after my sister comes home from school to clarify everything. I could tell from his tone that he did not find anything of concern and that I was probably overreacting.

After we clarified that this was the “joking” relationship that this family had with that shop-keepers family, and that everything was fine, I went to my room to cry a little bit dabbing my eyes with my quick dry towel. It wasn’t funny! And I think it really did affect my sister regardless of their cultural joking relationship. Some joking relationships, I was told, can seem very serious like fights but it’s just the way those families interact. And for me, coming not just from the U.S. but from my peaceful self, violence and aggression are so foreign and so difficult for me to digest that I struggle a little bit more when confronted with it. I realize that they are a part of human nature and that I myself can be angry and feel aggressive, but also being a pacifist (I am in the Peace Corps after all…) I never act on them and don’t know what purpose is served by acting on such emotions.

So that was rough but if that was the hardest thing I’ve had to go through I think I should count my blessings. My dad explained that he was very happy that I felt so defensive for my sister and that I did not react in an aggressive way as the way of our family was that of peace, peace only, and for the shop keepers family, aggression. It just seems like a sorry excuse to me to allow unnecessary behavior but that’s my own personal perspective.

I was thankful for the resources I had from the host country nationals to help better explain these joking relationships to me and that even for them they are sometimes surprised as to how far they can go and that sometimes they think they can go too far. But they say that slowly but surely this is being recognized and that positive changes are occurring, but it’s a slow process.