Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Their Eyes were Watching Me

I found this post.... it was while I was in Moshi with no internet :)

Everything I say, everything I do, people are watching and absorbing. Merely by being here, I am imposing my culture upon them. Abdullah invited us to his place for lunch on Thursday, and his wife taught us how to cook some Tanzanian food, very delicious, with fairly simple ingredients (though in America we would probably used canned coconut milk and meat that had not just been chopped off a cow).. Their next door neighbor and her small daughter (they say small instead of young) (her name was Mary) came over and Mary was fascinated by my camera.

I let Mary explore all the buttons and after that she just got fascinated about everything about me. She was playing with my hair, intently investigating the hair tie on my wrist, and investigating the bandaids on my hands (casualties of trying to cook with limited utensils). Mary started copying some of my actions, some really basic things I was doing like dancing with my 2 index fingers, or playing air keyboard without really realizing it… and then it hit me that things I do without even thinking affect someone. And things I do on purpose can affect people in different ways. How can you ever know how you’re changing those around you, whether it’s for the better or the worse? Noone (though some believe differently) ever wants to make things worse for anyone… though sometimes this may be a necessary casualty in their eyes of making things better for themselves

No comments: