More Laughs

My last entry got me to thinking about some funny comments I've heard or read over the years. Here's a brief collection

When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes thrown in Ernie Martin's face.
--Playwright George S. Kaufman; Ernie Martin was one of his producers.

They weren't blind; they were just hard to see.
--A former colleague of mine
.

Guido Nadzo is nadzo guido.

--George S. Kaufman again, writing of actor Nadzo's performance in a Broadway play. Nadzo changed his name.

Yes! They won't let us rap, they won't let us wear boubous, and they won't let us jump high.
--A former student, in response to the question, "Are whites oppressed?" Note: Boubous are long, handsome, formal, shirt-like garments worn by many Muslim men in West Africa.

Not all alien abductions are bad things.
--Another former colleague

Embarrassing, but Funny

Remember the old joke where you walk up to someone and say, “Did you know that Mark doesn’t have a last name?!” The other person almost invariably replies, “Mark who?”

Well, I have a real-life reversal of that story.

I'm good friends with a family I'll call the McClendons. A few days ago, they sent me an email with a newsletter attached. I was delighted to hear from them, but I completely blanked on their last name, and couldn't find it in their message. It wasn't part of their email address. It wasn't in the body of the email. I looked in the attached newsletter--not there, either.

That night, frustrated and embarrassed that I still hadn't remembered their surname, I decided to ask a friend who also knows them well. The next time I ran into her, I said, "What's the McClendon family's last name?" As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized what I'd done, and we both burst out laughing!

(By the way, I later learned the explanation for the case of the missing name...but I'm not going to tell you.)

Reprogramming the Automatic Response Bin

Have you ever changed jobs and found, on your first day, that you've driven half way to your old place of employment by mistake without realizing it? Or bought a new car and then spent half an hour looking for the old one in a grocery store parking lot? One of the things our brains are great at is doing things without making us consciously think about them. Occasionally, this comes back to bite us, but usually it's a great thing.

Imagine that dozens of things that have worked a certain way your whole life suddenly work a different way, and the action your brain has stored in the Automatic Response Bin is now the wrong action. For example, flipping light switches down turns the light on. Or you flush a toilet by pushing a button on top of the tank instead of flipping a handle on the front. These are little things, to be sure, but face enough of them at one time, and it can be surprisingly disorienting. That's part of what moving to a new culture involves. These little things add up to a bigger mental adjustment than one expects, or even consciously notices.

So, here are a collection of differences I've run into living in Senegal, some having to do with technology, and some not.

• Light switches: Up is "off," down is "on."
• Other power switches: Green is "off," red is "on."
• Hailing a cab: Holding your hand up and waving your hand means you don't need a taxi. Pointing down towards the road and waving slightly means you want one (you're saying "pull over here"). It's funny how much this throws me off, especially given how seldom I have taken a cab in the US, and how often I have taken one here.
• Toilet handles: Toilets here don't have handles. Instead, they have buttons on the top. Pressing the button flushes the toilet. (For a few, the water tank is attached to the wall above the toilet seat, and you pull a string to flush.)

Hee are a few more differences that aren't in the Automatic Response Bin category, but are nonetheless interesting.

• Honking: First of all, horns here don't honk, they beep. Secondly, when someone beeps at you, it doesn't mean that you're doing something unsafe, or that he's mad at you. Beeps are usually directed at pedestrians, and mean "I'm coming up behind you." Only in huge traffic jams where no-one has moved for a while do drivers bear down on the horn in disgust--but this is usually aimed at the policeman directing traffic.
• Door handles. Doors here have handles rather than knobs. Several times as I've entered or exited my office, the handle has slipped inside the front of my shirt and torn it.
• Getting directions. In Senegal, terenga [tuh-REN-ga], or hospitality, is a key cultural value. This has some interesting corollaries. To not help someone is virtually a moral failure. So, if someone asks you for directions, you must give him directions, even if you don't know how to get where he wants to go. Giving wrong information is better than being so rude as to give none!

This list was difficult to assemble, and that's part of the point. These aren't things you think about. They are so entrenched a part of the way one's world works that it's only when they work differently that they are noticeable.

Shopping Spree

On my way home from bird-watching yesterday, I stopped at a neighborhood grocery store and bought the following:

• 2 boxes of cereal
• 2 1-litre cartons of fruit juice
• 1 can of powdered milk
• 1 package of chocolate cookies*
• A candy bar...OK, five candy bars*
  
  *Studies have shown that dark chocolate is good for heart patients!
  Unfortunately, these were white chocolate cookies and milk chocolate candy bars...

The total for this shopping spree was 17,700 West African francs (cfa). At today's exchange rate of 400 cfa to the dollar, that trip cost the equivalent of $44US! When I arrived in 2003, the same items would have cost about 15,000 francs. With an exchange rate that hovered around 550 cfa to the dollar, this was equivalent to only $27US (and that wasn't cheap--$5 to $7 per box of cereal!).

So, yesterday's shopping trip cost about $17 more than it would have 5 years ago. Rising prices account for about $5 (15% if I've done my math right). The drop in the dollar accounts for about $12 (30%, give or take).

This makes me all the more thankful for my church and the friends who donate to my support each month. I am financially solvent because of your generosity!

"That's Africa for You"

A lot of things *in* Africa get blamed *on* Africa.

It is true that, for a variety of reasons, numerous things don't work as well here as they do in some other places. Since I am American and work mostly with Americans, we usually compare things here with things in the US.

Some typical complaints: the city electricity is frequently cut off without warning, for long periods of time. Meetings don't start "on time" as Westerners think of time. Bureaucracy can be paralyzing. The phone company sends out bills every few months, but may cut your service if you haven't paid before the bill arrives. Some governments officials are corrupt; bribery and nepotism are common.

"That's Africa for you!" folks exclaim when we encounter one of these circumstances.
But when things in the US don't work, we don't say, "That's the US for you!" We say, "That's the phone company for you," or "That's a politician for you." Why do Africa's problems get blamed on Africa, and American problems get blamed on individuals or organizations?
Consider the following.

I recently moved my office desk and computer a foot or two to the right. I had to unplug all the computer equipment to do so. When I plugged everything back in, the computer wouldn't turn on, though the monitor (which was plugged into the computer, not directly into the wall) did turn on! I tried everything I could think of to address the problem. I changed what was plugged into what (computer, power strip, regulator, wall socket) in every combination I could think of. No matter the combination, and no matter how many times I pressed the power button on the front of the computer, nothing worked.

Finally, I unplugged everything again (including the mouse and the monitor, etc.) and took the computer to our tech team who flipped a power switch on the back of the box, and it started right up. Apparently it had gotten bumped when I rearranged my office. But why are there two power buttons on the same computer? Sheesh! That's Africa for you!

Well, no, actually, the computer was bought in the US. That's the computer industry for you. That's the Secretary of State's Office for you. That's the Airline Industry for you. That's the Government for you. That's Republicans for you. That's Democrats for you. That's the human race for you!