Just does not exist here. They would not recogise it if it bit them in the bottom. Every time we leave the house we get 'oporto' yelled at us, mainly by children but sometimes by adults as in 'oporto, come over here!' Oporto means white person. Lots of us find it very wearing after a while.
Itry to hear it as my name or as hello, but it does not always work. why has my type gone funny? Sorry. Can you imagine what would happen if we yelled ’black man’ all the time in London?
They can’t tell us apart at all as we all look the same to them, as they will very cheerfully tell you. They sometimes call the Filipinos ’ching chong’, thinking they are Chinese. My housemate Annette is Filipina and people think she is my daughter.
They have a totally different of concept of body image, too. Not long after I arrived a man asked me if I was English and when I asked him how he knew he said it was because we all have fat bodies! He meant it as a compliment as that is what they like. Fat=prosperous. When we went to Tiwai island 2 weeks ago and slept in tents, the man said the fat one (me) should have the biggest tent. Again, a compliment in his terms but not in mine. For anyone who does not know me, I could certainly lose some weight (and am over here) but I am not grossly overweight. I don’t get upset really but it gets irritating.
There is no privacy at all here Life is lived on the steet in public, like a goldfish bowl. It is hot and most of their homes aren’t good, so it’s much better to be outside. Meals are taken outside from a communal plate. They think we are really odd eating inside, behind our compound wall. And maybe we are.
They watch everything we do, which some expats have failed to grasp unfortunately. My housemate Celine (who returned to Canada yesterday) told me when she first came here she went for a drink at a bar and was told the following day exactly what she’d had to drink and who her companions were. Still, the upside is that if you can’t find your friend you just ask anyone ’where my paddy?’ (friend) and they say she just went into the bank.
Who needs CCTV cameras?
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