Slowly but surely I am getting a bit of a
cultural shock here and there. In the break between trainings, while lining up
with the South African military police for the ladies' room (it is still, not
logically but consistently the same everywhere that the number of ladies' and
men's room is exactly the same. There is still some progress to be made in this
world.), one of them turned to me and said „my sister, the last one isn't
occupied”. At first I was puzzled, we certainly didn't look like sisters, but
by the end of the day I learned that it's usual here. The trainer called the
men in the audience „my brother” just the same. In the canteen the men are
„papa”, the cleaning ladies are „mama”, and it has nothing to with their age,
but means something between sir/m'am and „my friend”. Our cleaner is papa as
well, he will be mentioned later on.
One evening, still in Entebbe, Uganda, I was
poking around my phone in the hotel lobby (the only place with wifi), when a
guy I knew from the morning shuttle to base showed up and asked if I wanted to
join them for fish. I normally don't turn down offers like this, so the next
thing I knew was sitting by the Lake Victoria, under palm trees (still no
bananas), with a bunch of strangers who work in far far away corners of the
world in peacekeeping missions, and are talking about the great parties they
had in East Timor when they were UNVs (which is what I am now, a UN Volunteer).
Then they warmly welcomed me to the UN family and told me to forget about
paying for my taxi, they will do that, and one day when I grow up, I can give
it to somebody else who will be a newcomer then. (If somebody has the strange
feeling that I have told this story before, it's no coincidence. Feel free to
replace „UN” with „EU” or „NATO”, the Lake Victoria with Tallinn or
Senningenberg, and voilà... nothing new under the sun.)
Nincsenek megjegyzések:
Megjegyzés küldése