Sometimes I forget just how different my world is from the world of the people that I work with every day. This morning, there were two little things that really reminded me of it and helped me put my feet back on the ground in this place!
First thing happened before I had even had breakfast - I was in my kitchen making coffee with my little filter and some hot water, when I noticed Elizabeth starting to clean the kitchen floor with a wet rag. Elizabeth has been working in our house for two weeks, since our regular much-loved Sunday is on "maternity leave". Now, I had noticed that the floors in our house were getting rather dirty (I like to run around barefoot on our cement floors because it's cooler than wearing even flip flops all the time!). And I also noticed that there were cobwebs gathering on our mop.
So even before I had breakfast, I put two and two together and figured that she hadn't been mopping our floor. So I asked her (in my very limited Arabic!) if she knew how to use a mop. She didn't. Of course - she lives in a mud hut with a dirt floor - why would she need to know how to mop?! So we had a little lesson on how to mop. And she did a great job - grabbed her baby (who comes to work with her every day), tied the baby to her back and started mopping with great gusto! And our floor is amazingly clean today :) Scrubbing the toilet and sink is another thing we've been working on teaching her - again, she's never had a toilet or a sink in her house - she has a pit latrine and a bucket of water. So why should she have learned how to use Vim to scrub the scum off the sink?!
And I am also very aware of the fact that if you put me in a tukel with a dirt floor and a squatty potty hole in the ground and asked me to keep it clean, I'd also be completely clueless, too! I think the women who work with us already think I'm a complete failure as a woman, since I don't know how to make asida or ugali, I don't want to have a baby next year, and I'm not actively seeking a husband to cook for!
The second little thing that happened today to make me realize just how different I am was when one of the translators (who, by the way, has been working with us and using a computer for close to two years now!) came to my office to ask a computer question. I happily trotted along with him to his office to see what the problem was. It's too late tonight to write out all the details, but it was such a basic thing that he needed help with - something that I would have thought the guy was doing every single day, but he was so confused! So once again, it was a good reminder for me to really go back to the basics again and again. I sometimes take for granted a lot of things on the computer which have become second nature to me, and they're really quite a foreign concept to the guys that I work with here!
But I still love the challenge of trying to somehow cross this cultural chasm between my own culture and the one that I find myself in here! There's always something somewhat surprising to keep me on my toes, and I love how so many of these little daily situations make me think about my own assumptions and the little things that I can so easily start to take for granted - like how to use a mop, but more importantly, things like how I see the world, how I see relationships, how I see God, how I order my 'world' and value things and people... And having a few challenges to these things can only help me figure things out better, and hopefully will help me sort out the good things in my own culture and perhaps even replace some of the not-so-good things with some of the better things from a different culture!
Perhaps this is also a part of what that Proverb is about... something about "iron sharpening iron"... Probably causes a few sparks now and again, but in the end, both bits are sharper and more effcetive to do what they were created to do!
Sorry if this is a bit of a rambly post - we had a dinner party here tonight, and though it's quite late, I'm still rather wound up after all the fun we had! I'm so tired, but not the least bit sleepy...
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