Home Is A Nice Blackhead
Rusinga Island Is a Remote, Underdeveloped, Poo-Dotted Paradise. There is a group of PCVs COSing (Close-of-Service) in two weeks, so Rob decided to have a going-away party at his site, a small island in Lake Victoria. From my site I had to take three matatus, a ferry and (theoretically) a boda boda across a causeway from a neighboring island. Fortunately one of the party-goers was an Irish NGO employee visiting from Nairobi, with his 4-wheel drive all-terrain pickup, so we nixed the boda boda for door-to-door service from the ferry
dock to Rob’s house, including a complementary in-transit beer. It was a perfect, drama-free ending to seven hours of dusty, sweaty, brain stem-jolting, jaw-clenching, I-will-not-strangle-this-rude-jerk-who-reeks-like-a-goat travel. We arrived with lobotomy grins and a small buzz growing in our heads.
Oddly enough, the island is arid and dotted with cacti even though it’s surrounded by water. Maybe that shouldn’t seem odd. There’s no electricity or running water at Rob’s house, and the beach is a ten-minute hike away. Basic vegetables and fish are available nearby, but not that nearby. There are giant cockroaches in his choo, which offered an interesting opportunity to observe the habits of Americans. ALL Americans are afraid of giant cockroaches, so all the Americans at the party decided to pee NEXT to the choo at night.
Because Rob is Rob, his house looks like an artist’s studio in San Francisco. He built an easel, tables and counter space that are all color coordinated. He designed a Zen rock garden in his back yard. His house is full of sculptures made from locally-available garbage like rusty steel wires, shells, and sticks. He made sconces for his walls out of tomato sauce tins.
His neighbors are the standard-issue dusty, snot-encrusted kids who hover at the edge of his compound staring for hours, except that because Rusinga is Luo country, they speak neither Swahili nor English, which made it interesting when he asked them to fetch water for us. “Bring pee,” he said. “Pi” is the Luo word for water.
The beach near the house has actual waves. Good news for people who don’t want schistosomiasis, those little snails that burrow into your skin and set up camp in your liver, eventually expelling tasty trails of parasitic eggs in their wake. We hiked out to the beach in the middle of the day, when the heat got so oppressive we couldn’t even sit in the shade without panting. Half the kids in the village followed us. The other half was already stripped naked and waiting for us when we arrived.
Swimming in Kenya is a culturally revealing activity. Nowhere else do boys and girls publicly expose every part of their body that is a taboo to reveal, and yet it’s all completely devoid of sexual meaning. It was just a bunch of butt-naked kids yelling and playing like they couldn’t believe their luck to be tossing a football and paddling an inner tube with six grownup mzungus. There was nothing on that beach except pure, child-like joy. There was even a mama washing clothes on the beach, wearing nothing but a half-slip around her waist, boobies wobbling to and fro. She could tie them in a knot she could tie them in a bow she could throw them over her shoulder like a Continental soldier…
How Many PCVs Does It Take to Extract A Guinea Worm? The second morning on Rusinga Island, one of the volunteers discovered a huge blackhead on another volunteer’s back.
“Oh, let me squeeze it,” she begged. Girls love to squeeze things out of people’s backs. Why is that?
Mr. Blackhead had just applied sunscreen, so she couldn’t get a good squeeze in. People with dry hands lined up. People with dry hands squeezed. Mr. Blackhead winced. Some black stuff came out. People with dry hands squeezed some more. Some yellow stuff came out. Someone started giving a running commentary.
“EEWWW,” she’d say. “EEEEEWWWW.”
Tweezers came out. More people squeezed and more people tweezed. Mr. Blackhead’s eyes glazed over.
“Wait!” said the volunteer wielding tweezers. “I think there’s a worm in there.”
“Whatever,” we said.
“No, really,” she said. “Hold these. I’m going to squeeze some more.”
“Doesn’t squeezing just spread the bacteria?”
Mr. Blackhead rolled his eyes and his tongue flopped out of his mouth. “What the hell is going on back there?” he said.
“OH MY F***ING GOD!!” said Miss Running Commentary. “OH. MY. GOD.”
“Wait! I see it,” the blackhead huntress said. “Oh, wait. It went back inside.”
People lined up. People peered into the hole where the blackhead had been. It was a worm all right.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEKK!”
“Hey guys?” Rob said. “I just found something in my med kit called The Extruder. Or The Extractor. Something like that.” It was a plastic yellow pump with a suction cup at the end. It was used. Repeatedly. Mr. Blackhead breathed through his mouth.
“I thought you were just supposed to use a matchstick and wrap the worm around it.”
“Medical is not going to be happy about this.”
An hour later Team PCV had extracted a centimeter of the worm. The rest of it went back inside. Mr. Blackhead looked exhausted.
“What now?” someone asked. After a few moments we shrugged at each other, swabbed the wound with vodka and went to the beach for a swim.
Happy Birthday To Me. On Tuesday I was still tired from my trip to Rusinga Island. I barely remembered my own birthday, until I started getting birthday SMSes. (Thanks Mom and Dad! And thanks Nick for the phone call!) Around mid-afternoon I finally got my act together enough to invite a few volunteers to go out to dinner.
It started out with a sampling of Tony’s experimental batch of mead (like apple juice with no sugar and no acid, not bad for the first try) and good gossip about American politics and misbehavin’ PCVs. It ended up being way too much bar-hopping in my town, something I will never do again. Why would I go to a place designated for drunk, idiotic men peeing all over themselves when I spend most days avoiding them everywhere I go? By midnight I was exhausted, mostly from being irritated at drunk bar patrons bursting through doors and asking us for money, but Tony and Neetha still wanted to watch a gladiator movie, so we went back to my house.
“Your chickens are fighting. Their house is too small.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Ow! That brown one just bit me.”
“It wasn’t the brown one.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Intelligent conversation was futile, so I put on the DVD. We munched popcorn and squinted at Russell Crowe on my laptop screen until we fell asleep. Four hours later, the sun was beaming through my curtains. I heard Tony wheeling his bike out the door, while Neetha slept like a log next to me, dead to the world.
“I’m going home to start breakfast. Come over in a bit, and bring some eggs,” he said as he passed by, inexplicably chipper and not hungover.
Thirty minutes later Neetha and I hopped on a matatu to Tony’s house. Four drunk idiots sitting in the back row harrassed us loudly in slurred mother tongue, while the rest of the passengers stared and snickered. It was too early to deal with this crap, and I still had a short fuse from the night before, so I turned to the drunk next to me and said, “Unalewa.” You’re drunk.
A simple, obvious statement but such a direct, honest and audible observation of un-Christian behavior that a sober person would have been shamed into silence. “Nani?” he said, as if he didn’t know. Who?
“Wewe,” I said, pointing at him. “Na wewe, na wewe, na wewe.” I pointed to each of his friends, who all laughed at me.
“How can you know?” he said.
“Because you all stink kabisa,” I said. “And you talk like drunks.” I started making slurred jibberish sounds to demonstrate, and the entire matatu burst into laughter, mumbling to each other about my moronic behavior, and doing nothing to improve my perception of alcohol abuse in Kenya. It was only 8:30 in the morning and I was already feeling my fingers tingle with a desire to snap someone’s neck.
Tony served up his signature breakfast hash, a lovely Mexican-themed concoction of potatoes, tomatoes, bok choy, and egg. Adrienne came by, and I had a thought as I was shoveling food into my mouth and washing it down with non-instant coffee that we were four Peace Corps volunteers doing nothing together on a Wednesday morning and if we stepped outside the house we would be in the U.S.
I have those moments occasionally, usually when I’m engrossed in a movie or a book, or a conversation with other volunteers in a place where there’s no one staring at us, when I’m convinced that the world beyond my immediate senses is the comfortable, welcoming and safe place that was all I ever knew before I came here. And the inevitable disappointment that follows when I remember that it’s not. That when I open the door, step outside, and walk as fast as I can with my head down, I’m back in a strange, infuriating place that has become my reality, a reality that everyone else around me finds to be normal, and yet there’s nothing that will ever be normal, much less acceptable, about it to me, which in turn is even more infuriating and disorienting.
So I spend a lot more time seeking cultural refuge these days, both actively and with the help of my odd subconscious, which will convince me in those moments of intense fixation that my physical environment resembles home. I’ve shut down a lot of the little pores that used to occasionally let Kenya in, the ones that I used to keep open because everytime I braved the frustration or discomfort just a few seconds longer than I wanted to, I was rewarded with a new personal connection, or a new cultural insight, or just a smile. Now I no longer have the energy to be an open-hearted cross-cultural ambassador, even for a few seconds. Now I walk head down, with long strides, and ignore everyone who doesn’t greet me by name. I spend my free time with Americans, and old Kenyan friends. I don’t try to make new friends in my community. I’m burned out by so many social and cultural gaps in understanding that I won’t even start to list them.
It goes in waves. It used to go in more extreme waves, where I could be completely shut off one week, then the next week be perfectly happy to play with kids and shrug off ignorant, well-intentioned remarks from strangers. Now it’s a flatter wave of varying degrees of closedness. It’s for sanity and for survival. I wish I were a bigger person than this. Maybe one day I will be. But not today.
dock to Rob’s house, including a complementary in-transit beer. It was a perfect, drama-free ending to seven hours of dusty, sweaty, brain stem-jolting, jaw-clenching, I-will-not-strangle-this-rude-jerk-who-reeks-like-a-goat travel. We arrived with lobotomy grins and a small buzz growing in our heads.
Oddly enough, the island is arid and dotted with cacti even though it’s surrounded by water. Maybe that shouldn’t seem odd. There’s no electricity or running water at Rob’s house, and the beach is a ten-minute hike away. Basic vegetables and fish are available nearby, but not that nearby. There are giant cockroaches in his choo, which offered an interesting opportunity to observe the habits of Americans. ALL Americans are afraid of giant cockroaches, so all the Americans at the party decided to pee NEXT to the choo at night.Because Rob is Rob, his house looks like an artist’s studio in San Francisco. He built an easel, tables and counter space that are all color coordinated. He designed a Zen rock garden in his back yard. His house is full of sculptures made from locally-available garbage like rusty steel wires, shells, and sticks. He made sconces for his walls out of tomato sauce tins.
His neighbors are the standard-issue dusty, snot-encrusted kids who hover at the edge of his compound staring for hours, except that because Rusinga is Luo country, they speak neither Swahili nor English, which made it interesting when he asked them to fetch water for us. “Bring pee,” he said. “Pi” is the Luo word for water.
The beach near the house has actual waves. Good news for people who don’t want schistosomiasis, those little snails that burrow into your skin and set up camp in your liver, eventually expelling tasty trails of parasitic eggs in their wake. We hiked out to the beach in the middle of the day, when the heat got so oppressive we couldn’t even sit in the shade without panting. Half the kids in the village followed us. The other half was already stripped naked and waiting for us when we arrived.
Swimming in Kenya is a culturally revealing activity. Nowhere else do boys and girls publicly expose every part of their body that is a taboo to reveal, and yet it’s all completely devoid of sexual meaning. It was just a bunch of butt-naked kids yelling and playing like they couldn’t believe their luck to be tossing a football and paddling an inner tube with six grownup mzungus. There was nothing on that beach except pure, child-like joy. There was even a mama washing clothes on the beach, wearing nothing but a half-slip around her waist, boobies wobbling to and fro. She could tie them in a knot she could tie them in a bow she could throw them over her shoulder like a Continental soldier…
How Many PCVs Does It Take to Extract A Guinea Worm? The second morning on Rusinga Island, one of the volunteers discovered a huge blackhead on another volunteer’s back.
“Oh, let me squeeze it,” she begged. Girls love to squeeze things out of people’s backs. Why is that?
Mr. Blackhead had just applied sunscreen, so she couldn’t get a good squeeze in. People with dry hands lined up. People with dry hands squeezed. Mr. Blackhead winced. Some black stuff came out. People with dry hands squeezed some more. Some yellow stuff came out. Someone started giving a running commentary.
“EEWWW,” she’d say. “EEEEEWWWW.”
Tweezers came out. More people squeezed and more people tweezed. Mr. Blackhead’s eyes glazed over.
“Wait!” said the volunteer wielding tweezers. “I think there’s a worm in there.”
“Whatever,” we said.
“No, really,” she said. “Hold these. I’m going to squeeze some more.”
“Doesn’t squeezing just spread the bacteria?”
Mr. Blackhead rolled his eyes and his tongue flopped out of his mouth. “What the hell is going on back there?” he said.
“OH MY F***ING GOD!!” said Miss Running Commentary. “OH. MY. GOD.”
“Wait! I see it,” the blackhead huntress said. “Oh, wait. It went back inside.”
People lined up. People peered into the hole where the blackhead had been. It was a worm all right.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEKK!”
“Hey guys?” Rob said. “I just found something in my med kit called The Extruder. Or The Extractor. Something like that.” It was a plastic yellow pump with a suction cup at the end. It was used. Repeatedly. Mr. Blackhead breathed through his mouth.
“I thought you were just supposed to use a matchstick and wrap the worm around it.”
“Medical is not going to be happy about this.”
An hour later Team PCV had extracted a centimeter of the worm. The rest of it went back inside. Mr. Blackhead looked exhausted.
“What now?” someone asked. After a few moments we shrugged at each other, swabbed the wound with vodka and went to the beach for a swim.
Happy Birthday To Me. On Tuesday I was still tired from my trip to Rusinga Island. I barely remembered my own birthday, until I started getting birthday SMSes. (Thanks Mom and Dad! And thanks Nick for the phone call!) Around mid-afternoon I finally got my act together enough to invite a few volunteers to go out to dinner.
It started out with a sampling of Tony’s experimental batch of mead (like apple juice with no sugar and no acid, not bad for the first try) and good gossip about American politics and misbehavin’ PCVs. It ended up being way too much bar-hopping in my town, something I will never do again. Why would I go to a place designated for drunk, idiotic men peeing all over themselves when I spend most days avoiding them everywhere I go? By midnight I was exhausted, mostly from being irritated at drunk bar patrons bursting through doors and asking us for money, but Tony and Neetha still wanted to watch a gladiator movie, so we went back to my house.
“Your chickens are fighting. Their house is too small.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Ow! That brown one just bit me.”
“It wasn’t the brown one.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
Intelligent conversation was futile, so I put on the DVD. We munched popcorn and squinted at Russell Crowe on my laptop screen until we fell asleep. Four hours later, the sun was beaming through my curtains. I heard Tony wheeling his bike out the door, while Neetha slept like a log next to me, dead to the world.
“I’m going home to start breakfast. Come over in a bit, and bring some eggs,” he said as he passed by, inexplicably chipper and not hungover.
Thirty minutes later Neetha and I hopped on a matatu to Tony’s house. Four drunk idiots sitting in the back row harrassed us loudly in slurred mother tongue, while the rest of the passengers stared and snickered. It was too early to deal with this crap, and I still had a short fuse from the night before, so I turned to the drunk next to me and said, “Unalewa.” You’re drunk.
A simple, obvious statement but such a direct, honest and audible observation of un-Christian behavior that a sober person would have been shamed into silence. “Nani?” he said, as if he didn’t know. Who?
“Wewe,” I said, pointing at him. “Na wewe, na wewe, na wewe.” I pointed to each of his friends, who all laughed at me.
“How can you know?” he said.
“Because you all stink kabisa,” I said. “And you talk like drunks.” I started making slurred jibberish sounds to demonstrate, and the entire matatu burst into laughter, mumbling to each other about my moronic behavior, and doing nothing to improve my perception of alcohol abuse in Kenya. It was only 8:30 in the morning and I was already feeling my fingers tingle with a desire to snap someone’s neck.
Tony served up his signature breakfast hash, a lovely Mexican-themed concoction of potatoes, tomatoes, bok choy, and egg. Adrienne came by, and I had a thought as I was shoveling food into my mouth and washing it down with non-instant coffee that we were four Peace Corps volunteers doing nothing together on a Wednesday morning and if we stepped outside the house we would be in the U.S.
I have those moments occasionally, usually when I’m engrossed in a movie or a book, or a conversation with other volunteers in a place where there’s no one staring at us, when I’m convinced that the world beyond my immediate senses is the comfortable, welcoming and safe place that was all I ever knew before I came here. And the inevitable disappointment that follows when I remember that it’s not. That when I open the door, step outside, and walk as fast as I can with my head down, I’m back in a strange, infuriating place that has become my reality, a reality that everyone else around me finds to be normal, and yet there’s nothing that will ever be normal, much less acceptable, about it to me, which in turn is even more infuriating and disorienting.
So I spend a lot more time seeking cultural refuge these days, both actively and with the help of my odd subconscious, which will convince me in those moments of intense fixation that my physical environment resembles home. I’ve shut down a lot of the little pores that used to occasionally let Kenya in, the ones that I used to keep open because everytime I braved the frustration or discomfort just a few seconds longer than I wanted to, I was rewarded with a new personal connection, or a new cultural insight, or just a smile. Now I no longer have the energy to be an open-hearted cross-cultural ambassador, even for a few seconds. Now I walk head down, with long strides, and ignore everyone who doesn’t greet me by name. I spend my free time with Americans, and old Kenyan friends. I don’t try to make new friends in my community. I’m burned out by so many social and cultural gaps in understanding that I won’t even start to list them.
It goes in waves. It used to go in more extreme waves, where I could be completely shut off one week, then the next week be perfectly happy to play with kids and shrug off ignorant, well-intentioned remarks from strangers. Now it’s a flatter wave of varying degrees of closedness. It’s for sanity and for survival. I wish I were a bigger person than this. Maybe one day I will be. But not today.
posted by Justina at 1:07 PM
5 Comments:
I'd really like to know why you stay on in Kenya if it's so miserable. Honest question. Isn't your position voluntary? Why go through the torture? Is there a particular reason why you went to Kenya? Did you expect this misery?
Who's anonymous? Who's asking? Is that you, Mom and Dad? :) It's hard to answer your questions because it's hard to explain to most people what cross-cultural living is like, unless they have their own experience to relate to.
Peace Corps is also different from being a typical ex-pat because we live in villages, and have a similar lifestyle to the people in these communities. Not much money. Not many amenities. And on top of it all, we deal with cultural differences that are often extremely intrusive, offensive and constant.
It's hard to convey exactly what all this is like through a blog, because every post is written with an emotional quality specific to the time I write it, usually when I'm very happy or very upset, and because I only have time and space to write a fraction of what I do and feel. Sometimes it really sucks here. Sometimes it doesn't. I could leave anytime, true. I think about it all the time, as do many other volunteers.
Part of being here is constantly evaluating whether you've reached that point where being here is hurting you (and your community) more than it's helping. For most volunteers, things are rough on a daily basis in big and small ways, but we've developed coping mechanisms. For many of us, there's a lot to be said for finishing our two-year service. A sense of accomplishment. A sense of survival. It may sound like foolish pride. It may even sound selfish. But I admire anyone who has served as a Peace Corps volunteer, and even more so those who have completed their two-year commitment. And those people who extend for a third year...maybe they're superhuman, maybe they're crazy, I don't know. It's a learning experience that you won't get any other way, and as "miserable" as I may sound to you, I don't regret my choice to come here.
I invite other PCVs and RPCVs to add their two cents here, too.
i'm normally very long-winded and my mind's running with things to say in response to what previous anonymous commenter said. i'm too tired to get into it right now though. those are just dumb questions. thinking in black and white makes you stupid like Bob Wurmstedt.
being someone who has gone through the experience i understand just a little where justina's coming from. i also think that there are things that she has to deal with that other pcv's will never understand because of her ethnicity. theres alot that factors into why we go there, why we stay, why we put ourselves through that hell. many times we can't even answer that question for ourselves. when i was there i was also miserable a larger portion of the time. alot of the times ive also thought why am i putting myself through this hell. me like many other pcvs have thought i can go home right now because it is that difficult and miserable.
for someone who hasnt had the pc experience its hard for them to understand fully. even as pcvs at times its hard for one pcv to understand fully what another pcv is going through. it doesnt matter that your in the same country. there could be 2 of u living in the same house doing work in the same comunity and STILL have different experiences.
its easy to focus on all the negativity when your there and in the mix of it. but what people who arent there dont realize is that every day is an emotional rollercoaster that their mind will never be able to fathom. because of this many times the pcv telling their story forgets to write about the good things. at the same time maybe they didnt even realize it was something good. when i was miserable i thought about leaving all the time but for some reason i didnt. even to this day i cant give a good meaningful answer as to why i stayed. i just did.
in the end i feel its the pcv that gets the most out of the experience and maybe along the way they really helped out a person or two. but until you experience it for yourself its easy to just tell someone to leave just by reading their "stories". at the end of the day its that individual whose choosing to stay for whatever reason.
I think Justina and othe PCVs who commented on it had already hit on the points. I recently returned from a 2 year stint in Kenya, and have spent many fun times with Justina. We have complained some, but we also have laughed a lot. I think it is a valid point that we forget to chronicle things that made us happy. Mostly it's because someone who has't been in our shoes may not understand why something so small may have made us laugh. For example, when the neighborhood mama drops by with a bag full of sweet potatoes with mud still caked on them, to show you their gratitude, or when you had one hour of the day when no one called you "Ching Chong Lee"? Or even when you find yourself laughing at something, and a Kenyan found the same thing just as funny.....these are precious moments. Trying to understand someone, and being understood in return...it seems so basic but if you think it's hard to do at home, it's even harder when there is a language and culture barrier!
Living somewhere where you don't know anyone, where all your regular comforts are gone are fine when you are in a normal mood. But as you know, we're only human, somtimes you can no longer take it. Let's say for example, if you have a bad day at the office, you can tune everybody out. People will sense that you are in a bad mood and even leave you be. Imagine in that same situation, that people just don't get that hint and keep on annoying you. How would that make you feel? Appalled? even more frustrated? Or imagine....after such a bad day, you can just drive home in your car and find yourself a nice couch with a velvety blanket, turn the television on, and make yourself a nice cup of tea or go buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream at the supermarket with your car, right? Well, we would have to board ourselves on the public bus where once again we'll go through a series of comments and harrassments.
The closest thing to comfort you get might just be a warm glass bottle of coke....since everything else is just too far away to get to.
like i said on a glorious day it's fine. It could be almost funny. If someone dares calls you names or wants you to marry her grandson, you'll just have a friendly banter. If you're not in a great mood, you try at first to ignore, but some people just don't get it.....hence we are tested on patience everyday. Each person has a different way of dealing.
It may sound like we are spending much of our time overly obsessing about finding our comforts but it's just that, you can take an American out of America but it's hard to take the American-ness out of us. When you know that it is physically and emotionally far away, you cling on to something as small as a bar of heshey's that your friend has sent for you in the mail.
It's actualy strange that we should find comforts in other PCVs since we barely know them just like a passing Kenyan. But the fact that we are all going through simliar struggles, simliar troubles getting understood or to understand, bring us togehter. So watching that pirated DVD copy of "Dodge Ball" together, nothing could have been better. If you found pop corn corn at the supermarket 5 hours away, it's even better.
What most PCVs had said while there, was that the 2 years truly was an emotional rollercoaster. Sometimes you just hate everybody, some times it was the best thing you ever decided to do. At the end, I think when you leave, go home and have time to think rationally of what happened in the 2 years or however length we stayed, everyone will agree it was truly the best time of their lives. All the bad days we have had just become funny. But while you're there its a mental battle. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer must be the closest thing to being a celebrity in America. We are on show everyday. What we each do, represents what an American will do. So let's just say...just like Fiona Apple, we all get angry some times.
Regards to Justina's comment of how she now only stays with her old Kenyan friends and other PCVs....I think is pretty normal and fine. Imagine that with your old Kenyan friends, you have already spent many many many hours discussing, and they finally understand where you are coming from...when something makes you angry or upset. There is no more need to explain why something may make us happy. We are still culturally exchanging, and I'm sure that she'll still meet some random mama on the street that she'll chat with for the first time. But can you imagine, as a junior in college, you have a good set of friends, and yet you still actively search for friends every moment at school? No, when we know certain people love us for who we are, we spend time with them instead of wasting it trying to find others right? So it's alllll the same.
To delve into specifics of Justina and my situation, remember that Kenyans are much more used to seeing the white or brown peoples. haha. British Colonists and Indian merchants have lived on the Kenyan soil for generations. The "American" Peace Corps Volunteers with the signature blond hair and blue eyes and the Indians therefore blend in a little better then your non-indian, Asian volunteer. Kenyans could assume that they're just the owner of Patel's Hardware store, or the tea plantation owner in Kericho. Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, forever has mad the Eastern Asian community to be seen as Karate masters. Therefore, we get constant....and when I say CONSTANT it's no joke, we get comments. You do get used to it, but some days you think....I've been here for X months and they've seen me everyday;... can't they just learn that I don't like being called that? Hence the pent up of frustration. Myself specifically...I lived in the city so it was fabulously horrendous. The moment I stepped out of my house, I had street kids, mamas, vendors, ...within a 1 hour walk into the center of town I must have gotten called "Chinese" "Ching Chong Lee." "China" and other variations about 60 times, no joke.
I've tried to make a lesson out of it a few times......it worked rarely. I had hoped that I had carried a world map in my pocket many a times.
So if anybody has further tirades to give to Justina for being negative, I will be ready to support her views. It's tough. And as much as we may complain....we do love it. So be patient with us too.
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