i wish i could explain
i wish i could explain what my life is like now and what i've learned and what i still don't understand. but it's just so much. people ask innocently, "so what do you do over there anyway?" and i find myself at a complete loss for words. nothing, really. when it comes right down to it i'm mostly sitting and watching people and wasting the government's money. but at least i don't waste much of it.
and sometimes the questions people ask almost make you physically flinch. people who use words like "civilized" and "backward" are hard to answer. and you know from the reactions you're getting that you're only telling this tiny little piece of the story. either everything's awful or everything's amazing and it's hard to explain the range in between. so far a lot of people seem to approach it with the mindset that it isn't really all that different. i've had questions about the regularity of my electricity, whether most guineans speak english, etc., etc. and you don't want to explain things in a way that makes it sound like, "ooh, i'm so hardcore. i live in africa and do my laundry in the river." but you can't explain the problems without explaining the whole complicated background, and pretty soon you can tell you're talking too much and your audience has stopped listening.
probably about like now. so i'll stop for tonight.
and sometimes the questions people ask almost make you physically flinch. people who use words like "civilized" and "backward" are hard to answer. and you know from the reactions you're getting that you're only telling this tiny little piece of the story. either everything's awful or everything's amazing and it's hard to explain the range in between. so far a lot of people seem to approach it with the mindset that it isn't really all that different. i've had questions about the regularity of my electricity, whether most guineans speak english, etc., etc. and you don't want to explain things in a way that makes it sound like, "ooh, i'm so hardcore. i live in africa and do my laundry in the river." but you can't explain the problems without explaining the whole complicated background, and pretty soon you can tell you're talking too much and your audience has stopped listening.
probably about like now. so i'll stop for tonight.
1 Comments:
They don't understand the ignorance of the question.
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