Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [142]
WHAT I'VE LEARNED
Such delicate goods as justice, love, honor and courtesy, and indeed all the things we care for, are valid everywhere but they are variously molded and often differently handled and sometimes nearly unrecognizable if you meet them in a foreign land, and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease with their fellows.
—FREYA STARK
My experiences writing this book have been satisfying on intellectual and emotional levels. I have always loved Culture and Personality studies and now I can be an anthropologist in my own town. Every day I hear incredible stories. All of a sudden, I am reading every word in the foreign news section of our paper. Because of my human connections, I am curious about the situations in El Salvador, Sierra Leone, and Macedonia.
Before I did my homework, I knew little about the Kurds or the Bosnians. I was woefully ignorant of Africa and the Middle East, and my knowledge of Southeast Asia was limited to the Vietnam War, which the Vietnamese call the American War. Now I am interested in the Sudanese government, the economic troubles of Tajikistan, and the geography of Africa.
Writing this book has changed me profoundly and forever. I have a much broader sense for what being human can entail. In Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels wrote, "There's nothing a man will not do to another and there is nothing a man will not do for another." I've been a witness to the truth of her statement.
When I first began working with refugees, I was anxious around them. I worried that I wouldn't be able to communicate or that I would accidentally offend them. The more time I have spent with Laotian, Kurdish, Croatian, and Romanian people, the more comfortable I have become.
I have worked to decolonialize my mind and examine my ethnocentric assumptions about everything from cleanliness to psychology to what is edible. It was easy to confuse local culture with universal human nature. It was easy to assume that the way we do things was the most sensible way. Refugees would often ask me, "Why do you do it that way?" and I had to ask myself, "Yes, why do I do it that way?"
Everything is more complex than it seems. Religion and politics are danger zones. I asked an Iranian, a liberal well-educated woman, about the Ayatollah and she glared at me and said, "We do not discuss Imam with Americans." When I first worked with ELL high school students, I was ill-informed about the war in Bosnia and Croatia. I barely knew the names of their countries and leaders. Especially given my ignorance of the politics of other countries, it was easy to say the wrong thing about foreign policy or the causes of the war back home. And what seemed like a small mistake to me felt like a giant insult to someone who had lost family members in a war I did not understand. I am trying to become better informed, and as I grow more interested, the world becomes much more interesting.
In my interactions with newcomers, I learned the importance of keeping things simple. Instead of grand gestures or big, overwhelming events, small quiet lessons worked best. Elaborate events tended to overwhelm newcomers and involved complicated scheduling, which could set things up for failure.
Expensive outings, dinners in restaurants, or concert tickets could make newcomers feel beholden to me in ways that made them uncomfortable. They couldn't repay the gifts and thus felt like lesser people. Generosity could be perceived as a burden and a statement about status. I learned to let refugees give me gifts and to make sure my gifts were small enough that we could have a reciprocal relationship.
Of course, sometimes giving money was absolutely necessary. But more often knowledge and love were what pulled people