LOVE

Love is cultural . . . in some sense. Some cultures think it comes before marriage, some after. Sometimes, it’s just a semantic difference where different people and groups use the same word “love” to mean different things.

I’ve learned that some actions or concepts are neutral. A good example is audibly burping in public after a meal. And then different cultural place evaluative judgments on such actions or concepts. In that example, some cultures might find such excess gas rude; others may see it as a sign of thanks. Beyond that, I’ve actually learned that some aspects of culture are negative regardless of how that culture views it; a good example is beating your wife or preventing girls from attending school. Some aspects of cultures are positive no matter how others view it. So even though the understanding of love is cultural, I’ve learned there are better understandings of what it is and how to provide. Most recently, I’ve learned in my own life that the truly best understanding of it isn’t anything emotional at all, but a decisive commitment, a gift, a choice, a decision, a commitment. Sometimes, you won’t find out that love isn’t actually there until you get to something that a person cannot handle or chooses not to handle, then that limiting occurrence uncovers the fact that it wasn’t full commitment.

Better than me talking about love, I thought I’d share 3 stories of love to show it’s cultural (mis)understandings and deeper understandings.

The first is a story of a woman who met a man in India and their relationship.

The second is a guy who admits he did not love his wife when he married her. He uses love in the same way I do.

The third is a segment of This American Life called Unconditional Love, which talks about love between parents and children.

Enjoy.

INDIA

One friend said she was looking forward to hearing what I thought about India. I didn’t write too much about it last time, but I had to visit a second time in November, and I’m going a third time this weekend. I thought I would write just a bit more about what I have observed.

Culture – If you read the opening story you saw a small picture of the culture: one southern U.S. man using the addressing others with “sir” for an entirely different reason that a student addresses someone with “sir.” In India, a teacher is respected. Of course, a professor is respected more; education appears to be big business. Really big. With over a billion people, it’s highly competitive to get into the right schools. I read articles and saw news reports about the university/college entrance exams that students put their heart and soul into. The reason that education appears to be so big is that it is directly linked to job opportunities. Again, with such a large population (and not necessarily a large number of jobs) there is so much competition, not just at the educational level, but even at the professional level. Newspapers are filled with job “classified” sections. People often feel that how you fare or perform in secondary school and on the entrance exams can determine your life. Lately, though, there have been many for-profit universities and institutions springing up because of the demand for education. You can go to a 4-year university, a vocational school, a technical college, a training centre, etc. The list goes on. If I were prime minister, one of the biggest initiatives I would work on in order to alleviate poverty would be opening up educational access for all and job access for all.

One important job I’ve seen in India is that of a matchmaker. Just as in the paper there is the classified section advertising job opportunities, there is a separate section in the Indian newspapers for love matches. In the U.S. and on many matchmaking websites in the UK and North America, the person looking for a match, husband, or wife advertises himself or herself in the paper or online. In India, family members or a matchmaking agent usually represents young single people. In my family, we often joke about taking resumes of potential wives and conducting interviews or the difference between a potential wife on paper (her resume) and in person (same for men). Well, they still actually do it here in India. There are even matchmaking meetings, almost like speed dating but instead of the potential dates, it’s their agents. People come with photos and resumes and they get down to business. Big business. Finding a partner and wedding, in India, is like getting a job or getting a car. Again, it’s hard to paint India with one brush because there are definitely young people or celebrities in India who are pushing the envelope and widening the spectrum. But on the whole, marriage is just something you do, as it is in many countries. And finding the right partner can mean the difference between favour and acceptance of your families and good social status versus rejection by your family, family rifts, or even mediocre status. One of my good friends does not talk to her father much because she married the wrong caste. He tries, he really tries to talk to her, but it grieves him so much that he must apologise for not speaking to her. The problem with the huge drive towards weddings and marriages is the disparity between the male population and the female population.

The Underside – To explain the importance of the disparity of the male and female populations, remember that India is this dual-personality country in terms of “development.” It all depends on the context and perspective. For instance, in Africa, India is seen as another “developed” nation coming in to invest in Africa in order to reap a return; others have included the UK, the US, France, and now especially China. The G20 considers India to be at least emerging. To the Department for International Development (DfID) here, India has reached a point where the UK feels comfortable ending aid to India. This means there will no longer be any new grants to do development in India from DfID, and ongoing projects will end by 2015. But then if you look at the numbers or visit India, you’ll see that a majority of the world’s poor live in China and India. You’ll see that India has the largest class of poor people in the world. To Prime Minister Singh, his number objective is poverty alleviation; that’s a “developing” country prioritization. So it’s a mixed bag, and the society in India is highly diverse and stratified.

So when people talk about the emerging Indian giant, don’t be completely fooled. Remember that as India’s GDP grows, it does not mean inequality is decreasing. On the contrary, it is increasing. India is still a majority rural country with a roughly 60-55% rural population and a 40-45% urban population. If a majority of the “growth” isn’t happening in rural places, then there naturally is a disparity. Because of the inequality, it often reminds me of places like Brasil or South Africa who deal with relatively frequent crimes such as murders, rapes, car-jackings, muggings, etc. In India there is a sexual harassment, sexual molestation, and rape problem. Some people will disagree and say it’s concentrated in the north of India and not in the south. Some say it happens everywhere. I don’t have numbers on the relative frequency of different regions of India, but it definitely happens as the recent story of the gang-raped university student in Delhi shows us. The story is recent news, but the news is an old story in India.

One of the reasons blamed for this situation leads back to the differences in male and female population. There is a sex-selective abortion problem here, as in China. Due to the one-child rule to help curb population growth in China, not only are a group of words in the Chinese language slowly moving closer to being obsolete (uncle, aunt, brother, sister), but people will selectively abort female fetuses when they find out the gender of the child through tools like ultrasound (this also means the practice is concentrated towards populations that can afford it). The one-child rule did not create a gender preference for boys in China, but it has exacerbated that historical preference. The same is true in India, and studies have shown that the ratio of boys to girls is rising (you can think of this as gendercide). In some places like Punjab, I’ve seen it reported as high as 120-126 boys to every 100 girls.

Now the gender imbalance is not an excuse for sexual harassment. I’m just telling you some people use it as an excuse, as if the fact there aren’t enough women for every man to wive means that men can act out frustration by harassing women or raping women. Others blame clothing (which is ridiculous); some blame a woman’s lifestyles. The misogyny and specifically harassment, molestation, and rape of women in India are not specific to India. But the acceptance and apathy of the state and the shame forced on victims makes the problem very difficult in India. Of course the problem manifests on many levels of society. First, there is a type of misogyny present in society (we have it most societies); there are men that are not respecting women. Secondly, many girls and women don’t report rape because it means you have lost honour. Plus, even if you are raped you are “used,” in a sense, from the perspective of someone looking for a virgin to marry. Thirdly, many male policemen are rude, uncaring, and harassing. Some do not bother to file the report when a woman has the courage to report it. Even doctors can be unhelpful. Fourthly, even when a report is filed, it is often mishandled in court, the accused gets off, or it takes too long to even come before a judge (check out the 1972 Mathura case, the 1992 Bhanwari Devi case, the 1996 Suryanelli case, the 1991 Kunan Poshpora case, the mass rape of women from the 2002 Gujarat riots, etc.). Lastly, even if a woman has the courage to report it, a police officer sensitively and patiently investigates and files a report, and a court quickly takes the matter to trial convicting the perpetrator, the punishment is often too weak. Sexual harassment is not considered rape and so if a rapist is given a sexual harassment conviction or even if the perpetrator committed sexual harassment without raping the victim, the perpetrator’s sentence is low and will be out in a few months to torment the victim again, taking revenge. It would be really great if each of these problems could be addressed possibly through 1) better education of the value of women both in schools, at home, and in entertainment; 2) educating women about the importance of reporting rape in order to stop it and that it is not the end of your life, increasing post-rape support services (including marriage-finding support possibly); 3) including lady police officers in every location, letting women officers handle rape reports, training all officers on how to handle rape incidents and reports; 4) including women judges in city courts, and creating a separate fast track for rape, molestation, and harassment cases; 5) widening the definition of rape or increasing the punishment for molestation and harassment. I’ll be visiting India again so I’ll write more about it later. Though I focused on some of the work that has to be done, there are many things I love about the culture including Indian movies. J

ITALY – CULTURE

So I went on a trip to Italy and met with Bianca there. Some missionaries she knew in Rome hosted us. It was a pretty nice trip, and I could write for days on it. Instead I’ll give you a link to a blog on Italy that sums up our trip. I left for the trip on my birthday. So it was a nice present of sorts. I never imagined or thought of going to Italy, honestly. Most of my trips or travels are service-style trips to developing countries. The funny thing about Italy is that it’s considered a developed country but it has a kind of developing country feel or even a very small-country feel.

Traffic lanes are a suggestion and you can drive however you want.

Three cars can meet an cobblestone intersection with no lights or stop signs and the people will stick their heads out of the window and argue about who show move or back down. The entire walking population in the area stops and watches. This actually happened while I was in Rome.

People in Italy will yell, scream, argue, beg, and plead with customer service representatives when the service is poor or when they have been wronged in someway (complete opposite of the UK). People speak with their hands a lot. A lot. It’s interesting.

There graffiti everywhere. Everywhere. It was hard to find a subway car or an aboveground train car that did not have graffiti on it.

There are lots of people hustling to give you a guided tour or hustling to give you a taxi ride.

And pickpockets are everywhere.

(If you watch Burn Notice, I’m about to do one of those Burn Notice-teaching moments) When you are being trained in certain industries, one thing you learn or know is that pickpockets use the art of distraction. For that reason, whenever I am bumped or there is pressure against me, I know I should be checking my pockets. The other technique I use a lot is to consciously “listen” for the feeling of my wallet against my leg. The brain receives millions of stimuli every second. The brain also uses a certain filtering mechanism, so you aren’t overwhelmed by an overload of information.

Even in the area of memory, sensory memory is the first level of memory, and nothing will be encoded into short-term memory unless something or someone calls your attention to something that you are sensing. If you stop and concentrate right now, you probably realise you can hear tons of things you didn’t realise you were hearing—the hum of the air conditioning unit, the rustle of leaves, the chirping of bids, the typing of the keyboard, some weird knocking sound in your pipes. So one technique I use is to tell my brain that the feeling of the wallet against my leg is important and I want to keep feeling it, focusing on it. This allows me to notice more quickly when it is gone or being moved.

Well, I’ve never been pick-pocketed so I’ve never had to worry about it if works, but in Rome, pick-pockets are everywhere, and on this particular day I was wearing cargo-shorts (khaki, short trousers/pants with the extra side pockets).a guy with a tight-fitting t-shirt, almost-bald head, large sunglasses, and dark blue new looking-jeans above white sneakers/trainers/tennis shoes was staring at me intently as I stood near the exit door of the bus. I believe this gave him a nice opportunity since he would have a reason to stand near the exit bus. So he came over and stood as if waiting to exit and he pushed against me. Now his push wasn’t unnatural. It felt like it was just a crowded spot; though you could always ask “Why didn’t he stand further away and wait until the bus came to a stop and then go towards the door?” That’s true, too. Anyway, when he was pushing against me, something told me “that’s pressure” so I just lightly put my hands over the opening of the right side pocket with my wallet and passport. I did not turn around and acknowledge anything as I was facing the left side of the bus talking to Bianca who was seated. He did also did not turn around and acknowledge anything as he was facing the right side of the bus with the exit door and carrying a jacket which he was using for covering. As soon as I put my hand to my side pocket, I felt his fingers trying to slowly and smoothly reach into my pocket. I remained calm and closed the pocket saying nothing. The bus stopped and he got off. It shook me, though; it really shook me. I was supposed to move closer to the front to the driver could tell me when my stop was but I missed the opportunity because I was still processing what happened. Bianca thought I was crazy just standing there. Then the next stop came and the driver was calling out and I was still in a daze, and then we realized this was our stop and we got off to go visit one of the ancient Roman catacombs that harboured Christians running from Roman persecution.

Usually, when in another country, the first thing I subconsciously try to do when talking to someone for information is find out which language to use. Which of us speaks the other person’s language better. However this was hard to do in Italy because no one admitted to speaking English well or even a fare amount of English. The answer to “Do you speak English” was always “no” or “a little bit.” So then you speak Italian to the person and she answers back in English. If you speak English, he answers back with better English than you. I’ve realized that they must have a high standard for speaking a language since no one speaks English. And then there were tourist places where people actually didn’t speak any English. So you had to speak Italian. I couldn’t believe it when one day, two women asked me to be an interpreter or intermediary between them and the bus driver because he didn’t speak English. It’s funny because I don’t really speak Italian but I know more Italian than the driver who didn’t speak any English. And it actually worked, I could get the point across. At one point the woman wanted me to ask what time we would arrive at her stop. I asked him but his answer didn’t make sense to me. The only thing I could think was to tell my brain to think. So that’s what I did. Slowly but surely, my brain began to register that he said something like 10:30 PM in a long drawn-out way. Thank goodness for similarities between Latin-based languages. The sad part about that day was that we were trying to catch a train into Tuscany to a town called Sienna (where the colour Burnt Sienna comes from). The train station announced that the train was canceled (all in Italian). Later we found out that a bus would come and take us to our stops. Then it turns out that a train did come, but because we were outside waiting for the bus, we had to run back in and try to catch it, but it left before we got to it in time. No apology from the train staff. We wait longer for the bus, and two of our group (two Italian women) get a ride from someone driving to Florence (Sienna is on the way to Florence). So the rest of the group is left. The train station staff do not seem to know when a bus is coming, or at times, if a bus is coming. We’re all a bit distressed because there are no more trains to our destination. Finally a bus arrives, and it takes probably 45 minutes to an hour to leave because the bus driver refuses to take 3 women and one child to Florence where the train was ultimately going. Whoever had called the bus didn’t give the bus orders to take all the people who were waiting for the train to all the stops the train was going to go. So the women were visibly and aurally upset, crying, yelling, screaming. The train station staff had all left by this time and there was no service even though there were still trains coming in and out of the station. Finally the bus driver called a bus company colleague to come down and explain to the women that the bus would not go to Florence; this was completely unfair. They finally got off the bus (they had refused before) crying and standing at the station as we left. I don’t know what happened to them, but I should have done something better to explain we would have paid for the bus to go to Florence if that was the issue especially since the train station promised we would all be taken to our destinations by bus.

 

My favourite part of the trip was spent in a group of five towns in the northwest Mediterranean coast of Italy. The towns are called Cinque Terre and each of the towns sits on a cliff overlooking the water. The towns range in size from 200 like the town we stayed in and 500 residents for the bigger more touristy towns and they are located in the Italian Riviera area, not as glitzy as the French Riviera but still quite beautiful. I loved these towns. It felt good to feel like a local and see the people and greet them each morning and night. The hiking was brilliant in these parts and the swimming, though quite cold, was a good way to cool down. Instead of sand beaches, though, they are mostly rock beaches. But I still enjoyed myself as I had not yet experienced summer in London. So this was a welcome vacation and warm respite from the cool, cool London. The weather made me wonder how the art would compare between the UK and Italy.

Locks hung by lovers, an Italian tradition

EMPATHY

It reminds me that, many times in life, people tell me “you don’t understand.” And many times they are right. But paradoxically it’s not always true that you have to go through a situation yourself in order to understand what it is like. You can understand what something is like (at the very least intellectually or philosophically) and be spurred to action because of it. Think of the many people who fought social injustices like child sweat shops, slavery, the degradation of women who were not children, slaves or slave descendants, nor women.

Moreover, I daresay I have met people who have an uncanny ability to empathize (now I’m speaking of experiential knowledge) with suffering people without ever having gone through the situation of the sufferers. My mother and my good friend Peter are the two prime examples in my mind. I think it’s a gift from God and it comes in handy with showing compassion and serving.

So many times people tell me “I don’t understand. You’ll understand when you become a parent.” It’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. You see, you can understand where a person is coming from. You can even understand why they are saying what they are saying, and at the same time, you can still disagree with it. I do this with myself many times. I know why I am thinking the way I am thinking. I know what is making me feel like this. I know where I am coming from, but I know my thoughts are wrong, bad, negative, malignant, unhelpful, and nonproductive. I know that. So disagreement or non-alignment does not mean you don’t understand. It means you go deeper. Now, disagreement COULD mean you don’t understand. But it doesn’t NECESSARILY mean you don’t understand.

The last time I heard this was in reference to my parents. A good friend’s mother was telling me I don’t know what it’s like. I have never had a twenty-something year-old child. Regardless I do understand the sentiments of parents. I know where Nigerian parents come from (different parenting cultures than American parents). I get it. And I understand the actions of such parents from where they come from. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with every action. I often disagree with stupid things I’ve done which were based on initial gut reactions or emotive impulse.

Especially in South Africa, I try to allow for the fact that though the person I’m talking to may not have stood in my shoes, he might have the ability to see things from my shoes. That’s quite possible.