As I first arrived here and saw my apartment I did not like it very much for a variety of reasons. Now, I have come to appreciate the space and its general location. There are a few things that are minor annoyances but nothing major to report. Having seen a few other places where my colleagues live I decided this is the best possible apartment I could get. I have an unobstructed view of the outside with no other buildings facing me directly; the major balcony is rather spacious and I have bought a mat that can lie down on to soak up some sun from moderate shade. Most of all though I like the fact I can observe the locals in their households and they can do nothing about me taking pictures often being unnoticed from the comfort of my home.
I often look at the life unfolding in the four households at the ground level. There are no excitements in general and people just go about their daily business. I cannot put a number on how many children there are in each family but there are a fair few and generally they all get along. The other day I saw a boy of about 10 years old who was washing clothes in a metal basin. I marveled at the sight as he seemed to be enjoying it, or at least there was no resistance on his part to carry out the chore. I am not sure these households have any tap water and even if they do washing machines are a luxury that few of them dare to dream about. Most commonly laundry is done in wide, shallow, metal basins. I have seen men do it as their business. My young neighbour spent some time doing the laundry and then disappeared somewhere. He made me think about teenage issues that we are so often exposed to back home and that are a source of many domestic battles.
During my first week at school here we were shown a video trying to sensitise us to the needs of the youths. It was a very loud and rather patronizing clip from some American show where parents anticipated their child 13th birthday: the day when they officially become teenagers. As midnight struck the child went through a drastic metamorphosis from being a sweet little person to a nasty monster. What followed was an animation (no presentation is ever complete without an animation) of changes in a teenage brain. Apparently the hemispheres cannot decide which one takes over and they constantly battle and as a result we get the atrocious adolescent behavior.
When I was much younger I remember my grandparents reminiscing about their childhood. They were all about 10 when the war broke out; our area was not badly affected but everybody was poor. One of my grandfathers always talked about how they had to go find work to help feed the family. My gran was taken to her distant family who were farmers to work the fields all day long just to be fed. Did they have conflicted hemispheres? Did they rebel against their parents? I don’t think this concept ever entered their apparently batting with itself mind. Or if it did it would have been ousted by cane or belting before it could settle. No evolution scientist in their right mind would say that the change between then and now is due to evolution at play; the time is just too short. What is it down to then?
I am a keen observer, and now living in Africa and I often think about tribal societies living here. They also have people of all ages, including teenagers and I wonder if many of them go against their parents’ or their elders’ advice? My suspicion is that maybe having a conflicted teenage brain is only reserved for youths in developed countries where they are allowed to act the way they do as soon as they reach puberty.
I fear that research can be doctored to prove any point, including contradictory ones, by looking at the same statistics. What would be the agenda behind promoting ugly adolescent behaviour? What would be the agenda behind stopping to teach facts? Or am I simply being paranoid?
Another pet peeve of mine is the child protection section in any modern school. All sorts of policies are implemented all in the name of child safety. What is it that makes teachers silently agree to the scrutiny of the police checks and other tools apparently to help weed the garden? Since when has the profession been infested with pedophiles? Why is it that the schools assume the role of the policeman and tell the parents what to do and what not to do. This is particularly pertinent to schools accredited by international organisations. As a parent of a child in such a school you not have the right to choose what punishment to use for your own child! If corporal punishment evidence surfaces you will be reported to the police or threatened with the child’s expulsion. And why is it that we, the people from the Western (obviously uber or even superuber) developed countries are usurping the right to know everything best? What gives us the right to go and meddle with other peoples’ ways of bringing up their young generation? Many international school counselors will say: in this culture child abuse happens frequently but the issues are swept under the carpet so we must be supervigilant to spare the children the harassment and violent treatment. The whole list of suspicious things to look out for will follow. If this is their country and their culture why is it our role to interfere with this? I do not condone maltreating any creature, children included, but corporal punishment was applied to me when I was younger and while it hurt I do not think it left any scars on my psyche. Well, who I am to judge but I guess you catch my drift…
What makes our egos so inflated that we feel it is our responsibility to go to other places and tell people how to live? I find this particularly unsettling in the current climate of all the changes happening back in Europe. Do we really have our life sorted? How can we say with a clear conscience that our way of life is the one to promote when we have crime rates on the rise, employment opportunities in decline and housing prices skyrocketing leaving many families in torment?
I met a person here who sympathises for and tries to help the IDPs. So I ask who are IDPs? Internally Displaced People. In other words: migrants. Economic migrants. So many politically correct terms for people going to other places looking for a better future. But us here: aren’t we Displaced People as well? And what gives us the right to go and say: “Here, let me help you coz I think you need my help. Let me buy you a football and a pair of sneakers”. After all are we not here just because our job brought us here? OK, our earnings are so disproportionate to the local wages there is virtually no scale to compare them but why is it that we look down on others thinking that a little handout will serve them? Are we not doing this to silence our guilty conscience? Am I being selfish not sharing what I have with the more needy? The ancient tribes have survived here much longer than we have. We have developed much faster than them, but maybe what we are doing is our own destruction? Maybe it is them who hold the secret to survival and we are doing them a huge disservice by trying to make them imitate our ways?
They leave us alone, why can’t we let them be?
I keep thinking about the mother dove on my balcony as she keeps coming here quite often. She has been temporarily released from her duty of being a mother. Maybe it is a rest she needs and some creature did her a favour by taking her young away. I could have left food for her on the balcony but that would be interfering with the nature. In fact, I destroyed the nest and I rearranged the stuff on my balcony. I want her to change her nesting spot. This one is just not safe. Am I doing it for her good or do I protect myself from another unpleasant experience? I myself am interfering with the nature meanwhile trying to persuade others not to. Am I a hypocrite?