Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Complaint of the day

Well, yesterday, was one of those days here in the Gambia, where I often felt like I was going to strangle someone, or yell English expletives at them even though they wouldn't understand what they meant [though they hear them from our proud exports of rap music and r rated movies] Let's be honest here, many volunteers have days like this, where people here in this other culture do things to seriously offend your American cultural attitude. Even though you are here in their country, you can't help but feel like they are purposefully offending you. Like hiss at you every time you walk by, make kissing noises, yell, "Hey, hey, hey!", over and over again across the street, even when you ignore them, say, "Hey boss lady, boss lady hey!" say things they probably don't even know what they mean like, "I like your structure lady!", and all of the ones listed so far are generally from men in the 18-28 age range, but then you have to add on to that the majority of the population of 2-18 years olds that seriously populate the country, yelling over and over again, "toubab" toubab!", "Give me minty, spare me pen, give me money" like they expect you to answer .. honestly, on these days, I always think, um,... if this is a word in your language, and I am a "foreigner or tourist", why the heck do you think I would know what that means? This is also a reason why, if I ever see a tourist personally handing out giant gifts of minties to the local children, I will have a coniption, tackle them to the ground, of which I'm sure would be in super slow motion, Lydia, flying threw the air, "NOOOoooooo" landing on top of specified tourist which I'm sure would be clad in cut off jean shorts, and no shirt with hair chest blazing for all the ladies to see. And maybe instead of yelling out "foreigner!" to get said persons attention you could say the traditional greeting of someone you don't know, like "hello" [they do know this word], or, salamallekum.
As I'm walking around ignoring these happenings on the outside, on the inside I'm thinking about all these thoughts and on these days, I walk around, with what I call a "quiet annoyance". I just keep walking, and am calmly annoyed, because what else can you do?
I know some of this probably doesn't even make sense to most of the people that are reading this, but this is my outlet, and there it is.

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