2/26/05

For all their generosity, Chadians sure can be a demanding bunch of people...

I remember being told during training that it was routine in Chadian society for someone to ask you for almost anything, and that it was almost always meant as a joke. All you had to do was respond with, 'maybe tomorrow,' and the person would pick up on the fact that there is no way in hell you'll actually be giving them your bicycle, radio, or anything else.

Between Chadians, this system seems to work just fine; throw a nasarra into the equation though, and things change. In many cases, people actually expect you to give them something. The logic (as I saw the other day with Samson, the man who manages the water pump) is, "you're white, so you must be rich, so you should give me something because I don't have much."

Maybe this is simply my American cultural perspective talking, but aside from the general fucked-up-ness of that, it's just rude. It's true that I'm here to help the people of Chad where I can, but that doesn't extend to giving gifts- I'm not Santa Claus, and demanding something from me certainly isn't going to make me want to give freely.

Now, I'll admit that in many ways Chadians have been given a pretty raw deal in terms of development- when you live in a country where there are a total of four paved roads, and the national dish resembles a lump of dough and snot in a bowl, I can see why people might want a bit more. Although I sympathize (I wouldn't be here if I didn't care), that doesn't make it my responsibility to give away what little I have for myself here. I'm not the World Bank, so stop asking me for money, dammit. Perhaps I sound a bit too stingy to be a model Peace Corps Volunteer, but I'm here to teach English, not to be a philanthropist.

I notice this same thing with my neighbors and my students as well. I happen to have two kerosene lanterns at the moment, which have been getting almost no use lately, for the same reason they aren't very common in the States or Western Europe- once you have electric lights, they're quaint, but not really worth the trouble. I was sitting talking with Livana not too long ago (we resolved the problem we'd had early last month, when he'd stolen cell-phone credit from me), and we were just chatting, sitting on a mat on my patio.

"So, you have two lanterns now," Livana said, in keeping with the Chadian tradition of stating the utterly obvious.

"Yes," I replied.

"Can you give me one?"

As patiently as I could, I explained to Livana that yes, I had the ability to give him a lantern, but that didn't mean that I was going to, at least not right away. I tried to give him an idea of just how rude something like that would be where I'm from, and to his credit, he immediately apologized, and hasn't asked me for anything else. When it's time for me to return to America, he may well just find that lantern on his doorstep, but it won't be because he asked.

Not everyone learns so quickly though. In my classes, I've started something of a tradition, where at the end of the period I take the tiny scraps of chalk that I have left over and toss them into the crowd, almost like a drummer tossing his/her sticks into the crowd at the end of a concert. I imagine that this is more of a reflection on teenage boys than Chadian society as a whole, but it's like throwing meat to a pack of starving wild dogs- a piece of chalk maybe two centimeters long will make 10 students jump up from their seats, frantically grasping for it. From the reaction, you'd think I was tossing gold nuggets, electronics, or American passports- its just chalk, for God's sake. In one of my classes I had a student ask me several times, and each time I told him no, I'm not giving it to you simply because you ask. I warned him as well- telling him explicitly, don't ask again. Yesterday morning, at the end of the second hour, his hand went up, just as I'd feared.

"Give me one chalk," he said. I already had a response planned.

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get out. Leave. I warned you already."

After he left, I told the class- "Don't ask me for chalk again. Understand?"

"Yes, teacher."

This made it even more surprising when less than a minute later, another hand went up.

"Can I have the chalk?"

A moment later, he was chatting outside with the first student who'd asked.

Where does this sense of entitlement come from, anyway? Perhaps it simply is a Chadian cultural thing- families are large, and virtually everything is shared: clothing, dishes, medicine, and more. To me it seems strange that this same behavior is practiced in public though. Maybe it's because I'm white, or maybe it's simply because I'm nicer than most teachers my students will ever have- either way, it's just one more thing to add to the list of cultural quirks I'll never truly understand...

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