Meta-annoyance

July 13, 2008

If I hear one more Western woman says she’s annoyed…

Argh.

There are so many White women here who act like they don’t understand they are in a developing nation that has its own well-established, complex, beautiful, functioning culture—and that we are guests within this culture.

It’s not just Americans, either. I won’t mention names or countries, but familiar people as well as those I overhear in restaurants and cafés complain about cultural differences and almost invariably use the word “annoying.”

There is one to my right as I write this, for example, who is annoyed that she didn’t get her iced chai latté the way she wanted it, so she sent it back. When the waiter tried to clarify if she wanted an iced chai or an iced chai latté, she tried to explain that latté means milk. She and the waiter went back and forth for a moment or two about what she wanted and how to make it, and then she started to dismiss him by saying, “If it’s too complicated….” He very politely said that is was not too complicated; he just wanted to try to understand what she wanted.

So then her drink came out again—very quickly—and twenty minutes later, it sits untouched. It is not how she wants it.

In all fairness, these are almost all girls who have just graduated with their bachelors degrees and have the time and money to be in Rwanda, so they are relatively young and inexperienced. Another shared characteristic of these women is that they are stunningly beautiful. One of the ones on my right looks like Cameron Diaz.

Snippets of conversation reveal (easily, because they speak so loudly) the two years of college that they were on drugs; where they want to apply for law or medical school; that they don’t have Republican friends, or if they do, they are cool, ya know?; they wished their mom had mothered them more; that a friend’s insides are so squishy [yes, really]; that thinking about turning 26 just feels, like, so old….

As I consider the possibility of bringing some of my own college students over here next summer, I think about how to prepare them so that they can experience and participate in this culture with sensitivity and respect. There are many ways to respect the culture here, even if we’ll never fit in.

But it comes down to this recognition:

Rwanda may be a developing nation, but the culture here is older than almost any in the West.

I’m reminded now of one of Gandhi’s famous quotes, the one where someone asked him what he thought about Western culture, and Gandhi replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”