catching up

I realize I haven’t posted anything in several weeks, and December is flying by! So here are some entries from my journal to fill in a bit what I’ve been up to lately.

(Excerpt from Wednesday Dec. 3)

Last night a family three houses down from ours had their house burn down.
And I slept through the whole thing.
I woke up this morning at 6:30, peed, went back to sleep, and at 7:30 got up again, greeting my host mother Rama after I’d brushed my teeth. “Did you sleep well?” she asked, the usual morning question. I had in fact slept soundly. “Yes,” I replied, “very well. And you?” To which she replied, essentially, “Not a wink! I was up all night.” I asked why, and she proceeded to recount to me the story of the nosie, the flames, the whole family rushing out with water, buckets… how my sister had been so frightened by the blaring light at her window that she had practically fainted. And I just stood there astonished, and guilty that I had not heard anything, that I could have peacefully slumbered while an entire family not half a block away scrambled to save their few belongings from an accidental near-deadly blaze.

“Nothing made it out,” Rama continued. “Everyone is fine, Alhamdulilah, but nothing, NOTHING is left.” I just kept on standing there in her doorway, numb to the strangeness of such a close encounter. I had only ever known one family personally back home who had had their house burn down. But now here I was, putting on my sweatshirt to venture out into the still cool morning to follow my mother around the block. To see for myself the awful damage. It was a family compound made up of wooden poles supporting corrugated aluminum roofs, some in straw even, the perfect starter for a low-burning candle flame. As I stood there, watching the family pick through pieces of rubble and ash, I didn’t have anything to say. Other neighbors were standing close by, and a door-to-door clothes salesman I know came over to greet me, telling me how he had brought water from his family’s house two blocks away but it hadn’t been enough. There just hadn’t been enough water, he said. And then he told me how the family’s cooking gas had exploded from the heat and almost reached a nearby parked car with the flames.
And I slept through all of it.

I watched as Rama stepped through the scene, talking to the family, staying where I was, a short distance away. Feeling like a voyeur, like one of those people who stops traffic when they slow down their car to gape at the wreck. Only I felt especially wrong being there, being white, not being from here, not knowing this family well, hardly at all. A young man in his 20’s or so asked me how I was (usual greeting - “Nanga def?”) then continued with another normal phrase: “Yaangiy noos?” (This literally translates to “Are you having fun? / Are you having a good time?”) I surveyed the damage, the family standing around, still cold from the night, with nothing left but the clothes on their backs, and I looked at the man. “Noosuma dara,” I replied. (No, I’m not having fun at all.) He seemed surprised by this response, telling me I should be “noos”ing more (always the response to someone saying they’re not having fun) and I just looked at him again, and back at the trash heap that had just yesterday been a home. “Yow, mën nga noos, yow?” I shot back at him. (Are you able to enjoy yourself, you?) “Sure, yeah,” he replied. “Why aren’t you?” he continued. “Ana xaalis bi?”

And this (after the fact that I had slept through the blazing fire and all accompanying noise and neighbors roused to aid) was perhaps the most frustrating part of the morning for me. Because I understand that “Yaangiy noos?” is one of the many standard greetings, and you are never supposed to say “Waaw, maangiy noos” (Yes, I’m having a good time) because in this society it is assumed/culturally ingrained that you are only capable of really having a good time if you have money. (And the general populace never does seem to have any.) So in asking me “Ana xaalis bi?” (Where is the money? / Where’s your money? / How’s your pocket looking? or whatever you want to translate it as…) he seemed to be saying to me, “You, you have no excuse not to be enjoying yourself, because obviously you have money. (You’re white.) So don’t go pretending that you can’t have yourself a good time whenever you want.”

I was struck by the coldness of his blunt question, and all I could think to say was a simple “Xaalis amul.” (There’s no money.) Turning away from him, I thought that standing there, I felt more out of place than ever, and even less understanding of a culture that can stand in front of a burned down house and ask another onlooker lightly if she’s having a good time.

Maybe it’s part of an unspoken understanding, an implicit set of rules that everyone follows, to keep emotions in check, never to show your vulnerability. It’s like what a good friend of mine was talking about in a recent email to me, about the people she met in the Czech Republic. I suppose it makes sense - life is hard, people die quickly, houses burn down easily. And if every time you let it get to you? and ask why? That’s a short path to depression. And who wants to live that way? No, much better to move on, say “Yalla moo ko def,” and just keep going. “It was God’s doing,” they say, throwing up their hands.

But to ask me then, at that moment, how/where my money was, though part of the normal greetings repertoire, seemed particularly cruel. I’d barely gotten up, hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, and yet here there was already someone ready to jab me in the stomach when I wasn’t looking. As if my relative affluence could shield me from having feelings. As if somehow I had a say in the choice of the color of my skin, the country in which I had been born, and the fact that our two situations were so vastly different. As if somehow, somewhere along the line of my creation, my parents had traded in my heart to replace it with cold hard cash.

Some people resent me just for being here, and I resent that. They don’t know me, don’t know who I am or what I’m doing here. They assume, and they judge, basing their quick conclusions solely on the color of my skin. It seems like a reverse racism (or is it just plain old racism?), this one bred from a history of colonialism and imperial sovereignty. It’s a strange feeling to be the minority. And to know that as much as I can dress like them, eat like them, and speak like them, I will never be one of them.