Have you ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? I know that a few of you have. It’s this thing where you start thinking that someone who has taken you captive is actually good and you feel safer and more comfortable with them. You begin to fear the outside world. At least this is my understanding of it. Here, my supervisor and I call it curfew syndrome. We’ve been stuck inside for so long that we don’t really want to go out.
Nevertheless, things are finally starting to open up here. They have been relaxing curfew a few hours a day in the afternoon. It has been lovely! We feel the need to get out just because it is open and we can. Kallie keeps thinking that she needs to call her family and friends to tell them things are open and they can go out and buy some food. It’s really funny.
A few nights ago we were up hanging out with our landlord’s family and we began discussing fa.th. At one point in the conversation I felt like I really messed up. I got frustrated with something. Later though I talked to my supervisor about it and he encouraged me a lot. It’s good because we do not do this every time we go up, just sometimes. We talked for quite a while and are getting much better and understanding Badji who doesn’t speak English, which is exciting.
Today was a good day though. We were not sure what the day had in store for us. We had heard that schools were opening today. This did not mean the whole town was open. It meant that anyone with a school uniform would be given a curfew pass. When we were outside, though, we saw some young neighbors of ours and asked them if they were going to school. They said that their bus had been ruined by some stone pelters so, no, they were not going to school. Apparently many schools today were too afraid to open because it was supposed to be a protest day. One news source stated that their freedom is more important than education. We keep telling people that freedom is not attainable and is worthless without education. They have one single-minded focus though. Please lift up this situation. It’s a big problem when they have had school four times in about three months.
So after we ate lunch today our landlord and his wife came and knocked on our door. They told us that we were coming to visit Badji’s mother with them. Note that they told, not asked. I enjoy the bossiness of this culture most of the time. We went and met one of their sons who was staying there for the day. We stayed at the house for a while then we got to go out on a walk with our landlord’s son and of course his uncle to supervise. We walked to a small piece of land they own. Then, being appalled by the incredibly limited experience we’ve had of this area we proceeded to visit two of the famous gardens of the area.
The second one is called the botanical gardens (pronounced botnikl, and if it’s not pronounced this way nobody knows what you’re talking about). While we were walking through there, a gardener stopped Badji to talk to her. We kept walking and eventually Badji caught up to us and told us that the gardener said not to go very far into the garden because he had seen a leopard earlier. Kallie and I suppressed laughing but continued to joke about who the leopard would eat first. Luckily Badji does not speak English because she probably would not have appreciated our jokes.
A few minutes later, we were walking with our “brother” here, our baiye, when Kallie and I saw something shocking and astonishing. Before you get too excited, it was not the leopard but a foreign, even possibly American woman. You may be slightly confused as to our excitement, but when you live where you know almost all of the other foreigners, seeing a new one is just crazy. We then proceeded to convince our baiye that he should go up and ask her “Where from are you?” a most popular pick-up line with a foreigner. He agreed and we proceeded to attempt to find the foreign woman without his parents finding out what we were doing. Alas, though, she disappeared into the garden…there’s no telling what happened to her.
It started getting dark outside and Badji told us that we should go because “at night it gets difficult.” Kallie replied, “yeah, and there’s a leopard.” I could not stop laughing at this exchange first because of the utter ridiculousness of a leopard in the garden, but secondly because it was just funnier spoken in the language here.
That all happened last week I think. This last week since then has been really good. Curfew has started relaxing a lot more and things have actually been at least semi-open for a few days in a row! It’s crazy. Today I was excited because Kallie and I wanted to make some stir fry for supper and wanted this one veggie they have here. I could actually just go out the door and down the street and pick one up. When we’ve been living in the oh-my-goodness-shops-are-open-let’s-buy-all-the-food-we-need-for-the-next-month mindset, just going out to grab one thing is lovely!
We’ve also met some people this week. We had some of them over for some card games the other day. It was a little awkward, but I think it’ll get better with time as we get to know each other.
Since things have been open the past week (can you believe it), the milkman has been coming daily. He gives milk to the family upstairs and we buy some from them. Badji was getting us a liter a day for the last week- that would be seven liters for the mathematically challenged. We had so much milk! One day Kallie drank around 4 glasses of chocolate milk and barely made a dent. We attempted to offer our guests chocolate milk, but that is an odd offer to them here. Anyway, far too many glasses of chocolate milk, macaroni and cheese, a triple batch of muffins that took some milk, and a good amount of chai later, we can now fit all of our milk in one pitcher.
So we are having a little bit of trouble figuring out what to do for one of our school requirements. Conditions here just do not quite permit. Please yarp that we can get that settled. We have a few options, but I am not completely satisfied with any of them. I really want to share and do studies with people. Please yarp that we can in some way either with the people we know now or with some others.
In other news, we attended a wedding a couple of nights ago. It was our first time…
Anyway, you can read my ethnography if you really want all the details about that. But first I must share one quick story. We were sitting in the wedding tent with our supervisor and some other wedding guests. It was a little awkward, but then we made friends with some middle school friends. You can always count on them to be desperate for attention. It was getting chilly so the host brought us a blanket and Kallie, me, our supervisor, several girls and their brothers all circled around under the blanket. We were innocently talking about movies and vegetable names in the language. At one point I felt one of the little boys feet all up on my leg and I pushed it away. I don’t think he really noticed. They touch a lot in this culture. So after we left the wedding (at 1am) Kallie confessed to something quite scandalous. Her feet were really cold while we were in the tent. That little seven year old boy had made his under the blanket moves on Kallie and she had played some footsie with him. Kallie later admitted to being willing to do almost anything to warm up her feet or get a free pim pom (lollipop), but that’s a whole other story.
On a final note, having brothers upstairs has come in handy on more than one occasion. We convinced one of them to clean our VERY fresh chickens one day for fifty cents…but then he got his mom to do it for them. We play card games and Caram board (a game we are awful at). Finally, last week, our phone was ringing all day with this unknown number. We would answer sometimes and a man would speak to us in the language. We would ask who it is, but he would only respond by saying “who is this.” Later, we told one of our brothers who was quite appalled. The next time the guy called we gave the phone to him and he spoke in the language we don’t understand. All I really know, is that his voice deepened a couple of octaves and the guy has not called back since. I’ve never had brothers, but I’m enjoying it.
