Even as I continue to become more accustomed to daily life in southern Africa, I keep encountering things I am at a loss to explain.
As an anthropologist and a secular humanist, I very much like the theory that most people are fundamentally the same - excepting pedophiles, rapists and other severely mentally ill individuals, I believe that everyone everywhere has the same underlying needs and the same general motivations which inform their behavior: we all need air, food, and sleep, but we also need social contact, understanding, affirmation of our value as humans, and some sort of goal to work towards.
This emphasis on sameness, on what people have in common, is what I rely on to inform
my behavior in a foreign country. I generally think that if I can find common ground, I can communicate with just about anyone; I also think that we all have common ground to find.
This has worked for me reasonably well in terms of establishing cordial working relationships, but it's also, perhaps, made me a lazy anthropologist. I haven't spent too much effort lately on getting to know the particular customs and preferences of communication and behavior here in southern Africa because, hey - we can all get along, right?
Usually - but in the few instances of direct conflict I've had with people here, I think that at least part of the cause was my inability to see that my behavior at these times was a source of discomfort or outright insult to those around me. I pretty much assumed I was acting in a more or less universally accepted way, when in fact I was pushing buttons. Goodwill doesn't always go the distance. I wouldn't have realized this unless people hadn't spoken up.
I am not going to flog myself for causing minor social conflicts; it happens, I probably couldn't have known, and now I know better. The point I am rambling to make is that sometimes, acting like everything is perfectly normal - and believing that it is - can bite a person in the ass. Inattentiveness, intentional or not, to the more subtle patterns of behavior of people around us can lead to some real surprises.
Surprise! Not all humans think alike! That is something I know so well as an anthropologist, but don't always understand.
The particular event which inspired me to write this post was an interaction I had this morning with two fellow museum staff. I walked up to the staff kitchen to refill the creamers of the tea service in order to fuel further my coffee addiction, and in the kitchen I encountered these two staff member, both of them male. After the requisite "Molo, unjani?" exchanges, one of them asked how Mthatha had been treating me. I was so pleased to be asked, since in the last few days I'd actually been feeling more and more out of sorts - little work was to be found around the museum, little inclusive attention was to be had from museum colleagues, and as a result I felt rather out of place. So I told him that Mthatha was generally good but that my only complaint was a lack of work to do.
It turned out that he'd really been asking a different question - I am not even sure he registered my answer - because he followed up with "You haven't found someone?"
Coming out of nowhere, this took me rather aback. I responded in the negative and tried to explain that I wasn't looking - I feel no need to start something in a place I'll be leaving in less than a month. I also tried to explain that I am actually happy being single. They pressed with more questions, asking whether I didn't want someone to "keep me company".
I tried to make a joke out of it, asking whether there was a bet on to see who I'd hook up with, adding that I wanted in if there was a lot of money at stake. I am not sure if my humor translated - it fails to do so even more often here than it does back home - but honestly, I didn't mind returning a little of the discomfort I'd just been served.
I've been asked similar things several times both here and two years ago in Botswana. People often seem concerned that I don't have anyone to "make me happy", and more than once people have tried to set me up with a boyfriend or even a fiancee. People, male and female alike, genuinely seem to think that being single is a truly undesirable condition and that no one would choose it. Most people I know here are in some sort of relationship.
The museum staff guys this morning likewise didn't really seem to understand what I was saying, but they appeared to accept it. As it happened, the kitchen was out of cream, so one of the guys walked downstairs with me to requisition more (we go through a lot of tea, coffee, sugar and cream here). I thought our conversation was at an end, as we walked almost a full minute in silence, until he turned to me and said out of the blue, "You have a very beautiful body."
This put me at a loss, so I said, "Thank you....", paused, and then replied, "So what you're saying is that I am wasting it?", meaning my body, and he simply replied, "Yes."
We reached the office I'd been heading to before I could formulate an articulate breakdown of just why his opinion was, in my opinion, a very chauvinist one, and that I actually am as happy as I've ever been, relationship or no, thankyouverymuch. I don't think it would have benefited anyone had I exploded on him then and there, but I was tempted. I think, though, that later I
will corner him and the other male staffer involved - separately - and politely explain how uncomfortable they made me and that their behavior, in the US at least, could constitute sexual harassment.
Every anthropologist has to find their bottom line when it comes to involvement with "the other" - the people they're living with, studying, collaborating with, however you want to frame it. Every anthropologist, whether we admit it or not, has to live with some degree of relativism but also has to find their bottom line for that as well. I just found mine. It's interesting and, objectively, just fine that people here appear comfortable with discussing quite openly about sex, sexuality, and personal relationships. I don't want
my body involved in that, though. I don't give a shit what men or women in my workplace think about my body, my relationships, or anything else so personal to me: I have the right to not give my privacy away, and I
will speak up when that line dividing personal and public is broached.
Postscript: I wrote this in my notebook during lunch. In the afternoon, I returned to the office I'd been working in to find the same male staffer who'd made the comment about my body along with a couple of other staffers, and a toddler. It isn't unusual to see random children hanging around the offices since people often bring their kids or their relatives around for a visit. So I entertained the little girl, giving her a piece of paper to draw on and letting her sit on my lap. Once she'd visibly become comfortable and affectionate with me, one of the women made the comment that the girl had a new
mulungu (white) mommy - and it turned out that the male staffer who'd made the comment was her father. I like kids - other people's kids - a lot, but the whole implication of trying to draw me into an arranged family relationship induced a whole lot of GAH in me after the morning's events. Let me repeat that: GAH. I even said straight out to the poor kid, in botched Xhosa, that I am not her mother, knowing as I said it that "mother" is an honoriffic title that women are called all the time here as a sign of respect. I doubt she understood why I said that, but I hope her dad did.
*Edit*:
It's been brought to my attention that I need to clarify something in this post. When I talk about "the other" and being a "lazy anthropologist", what I mean is that I think it's valuable to always try to understand the way people around you think, especially when you're in a foreign country. What I *didn't* mean is that I see people here in South Africa as merely research subjects on which to focus a microscope. I don't. I see them as regular people - that's what I was trying to say in the beginning.
But I do think that using an anthropologist's toolkit can be a good way to understand any and all people, including myself.
There will probably always be some degree of difference in the way an American thinks and the way a South African thinks, because we grow up in different circumstances. The events I write about above are what reminded me of this.
