TIA

I was reminded of this phrase when I was watching Blood Diamond last night for the second time (excellent movie, btw - I recommend). Leonardo DiCaprio's character is at a Freetown bar and is explaining things of Africa to Jennifer Connelly's character, when he says TIA (This is Africa). In my months here, I have had many TIA experiences. One happened just recently with the arrival of some new cereal in Juba. I had ordered some Kellogg's Honey Smacks which I thought would be an exciting change up to breakfast from my usual Wheatabix (I know, it's the little pleasures in life). As usual, some generic came. I was gone from Juba for a while and no one had tried it so I decided to crack open the first box. The cereal is called "Poppies" and comes in a purple box with three characters (sort of like chipmunks) surrounding a bowl of cereal (you know the drill, just like all those kiddy cereals at home). Because this was German, the little animals were saying something in German which I can only assume to be something like "snap, crackel, pop". Anyways, the cereal was fine and I appreciated the change-up. Later that day, the smoke alarm in our kitchen went off and our Logs Manager ran up to the house to see the problem. Mandy, our Sudanese cook, clearly was cooking (or rather burning) somthing in a frying pan on the stove. Tito, our Logs manager, asked what she was cooking and she informed him that she was making us fresh coffee beans (sidenote: In the Juba markets, you can buy uncooked coffee beans - you then fry these and have coffee beans - I actually did this for a few Christmas gifts). Clearly, Tito could tell with the rate that these were burning, these weren't the coffee beans. He finally got to the bottom of it, and realised, she was frying up the Poppies (Honey Smacks). She thought they were coffee beans! I would think the little cartoon characters on the box would make me question no matter what culture I was from, but I could see where she was coming from - they do resemble.

Another TIA moment I can remember happened when I visited a fieldsite - I was visiting a feeding center where pregnant and new mothers come for supplementary feeding. A mother there had been the previous week where it was identified her baby had an ear infection. She was given a liquid antibiotic (I think the pink amoxicillin that we had as kids). When she returned and brought the baby, the baby's ear was looking strange, actually crusty. Turns out, as her child had an ear infection, she was putting the antibiotic in his ear. After having a little laugh, I was thinking, you know that's sensible- the baby has an ear infection, why would he take an oral medicine? Fair enough.

I share these things not just to give you a laugh (although I hope you did chuckle when reading) but to analyse how many things which seem "normal" to us are actually learned or so embedded in our culture, they are obvious. It also makes me think that we (those from modern, developed places) are a bit crazy. There are lots of inventions (appliances/trinkets) that are slightly crazy especially if taken out of context in a place such as under-developed Africa. Another cook nearly had a heart attack when we introduced her to a toaster. No one warned her the bread would pop out, and she was quite startled!