I just wanted to reassure my family who read this and everyone who gave me tips on how to stay healthy overseas that I'm doing great, and have taken health consciousness very seriously.
For example, yesterday at the restaurant I ordered a bottled fruit juice, and ignored the glass of ice that was provided. (Which was okay actually, because I prefer drinks without ice anyway.) And today I picked up a plum that we just bought from the market, and I cleaned it and cleaned it and then put some hand sanitizer on it and cleaned it again so the skin tasted faintly of alcohol but at least I know I did my best not to let it kill me.
Fortunately I'm about as far away from Zimbabwe as I can be, so the cholera epidemic is unlikely to touch me - but I did a lot of reading up on it anyway, and seriously considered having the oral vaccination - just in case!
Actually, my health has been spectacular since I got here. I was very concerned about my allergies, but they seem to have completely disappeared. (I'm using the Flonase stuff when I go out, just in case.) And even though I'm not sleeping perfectly, I am in fact sleeping a lot and dreaming, so it's doing me some great amount of good.
So that's just to let you know it's on my mind and I'm managing.
Also, speaking of that plum, I went with AJ and Erika to the "informal market" this morning, where we got a great mass of fresh fruit for about R75. Looks like we got nectarines, plums, papaya, avocado, tomatoes, and bananas, and I'm not talking like three or four you buy at Wal-Mart. I think we got something like 5 kilos of one of these (tomatoes?) and that's about 11 pounds... Yeah, wow.
The "informal market" is a bunch of lean-tos along one side of this one street. The traffic is absolutely mad, and no laws apply there. Produce is on display in great big baskets and as you browse their sellers come up to you and point to each item and tell you the prices. (There's not really any haggling here. Prices are set, although if you find a better price down the way but like the quality of a different vendor you might come back and say I will buy more from you if you'll give me a better price than the other guy.) You have to go to many stalls to find the best price for the best quality, and while my American mindset says "Wow, half my weight in fruit for two dollars! What a deal!" you've got to be smart and know how much of what you're going to use and consider especially how ripe it is and so forth, or you've just wasted valuable cash.
And now for the Anthropologist in me! I am noticing that the rules for eye contact here are verydifferent, and I'm trying to figure out what is the most polite and effective behavior.
The thing is, there are SO MANY factors. Race, class, age, gender, and current role (ie. customer and seller, tourist and native, etc.) all play an important part in knowing how to behave. Back home I don't make eye contact with most people. "It's not polite to stare" is the unsooken rule so one generall lets one's eyes slide over people. Here though it's quite different. Children, for example, make absolutely no effort to conceal their interest in you. It's unnerving for me.
And adults are not much different. Among white people a verbal acknowledgment is also common; people I don't have a chance of knowing will look me in the eye and wish me a good afternoon!
At the market there was a lot of being stared at, but not actually much eye contact. It seemed fainly rude to me, like "if you can stare at me why can't you look me in the eye" but didn't feel rude at all, and was being done to everyone. So I just don't know what was going on, but I noticed it.
Anyway, more observations and thoughts as they come. I am also making a list of little phrases and things I'm collecting, to tell you about soon enough. For now, cheers!
(Oh, and my batteries are dead and new ones are charging so I got no photos of the market today, but no worries; there will be other opportunities!)
No comments:
Post a Comment