On 2 October 2006, the CBC News World aired the first
episode of a
three-part documentary series titled EQUATOR in which Simon Reeve, a BBC
Journalist, travels�with his camera rolling-- through countries that lie on
the equator. Africa is the continent of choice for the first episode and
Reeve gives his viewers a synopsis of what life is like in these African
nations.
While on the surface the documentary is lightweight entertainment, there are
segments that scream much deeper messages. For example, in
Congo-Brazzaville, Simon travels by boat on a narrow river that runs through
a shantytown. Along the coasts of the river are substandard, primitive,
unhygienic dwellings of the locals. For us, the viewers of the documentary,
it felt as if we could sense the rotten smell of the setting right through
the television-set. Yet, at the sight of Simon--a well-groomed journalist�a
local shanty-dweller yells, �White-man your breath stinks!
To me, this scream screams a much bigger meaning.
Belonging
In our world filled with conflicts, economic burdens and globalization,
increasingly, we are living in
places far away from home�both in distance and in customs. Irrespective of
the degree of hospitality and
warmth extended to us in our new environments, there are never shortage of
elements, small and big, that
remind us that we are not at home. Only those who live away from home are
capable of understanding this feeling.
To me, it was this drowning feeling of homesickness that was momentarily
brought up to the foreground of my thoughts by the Congolese scream. Why?
While among ourselves-- the citizens of this world�we agree to disagree,
embrace our differences and cherish
diversity, there is a permanent identifier, if you will, that is ingrained
in our brain that defines who we are. There are some settings that put us
more at ease than the others. But it is at home that we are at total ease.
For many members of the Diaspora communities, each day,
significant portions of our energy and capacity is unknowingly directed
towards imitating someone that we are not. While all cultures are precious
and the different
value systems are explainable, only in our own can we truly be comfortable,
effortlessly.
For example, a Tamil man, say in Canada, who daily enjoys a spicy meal of
rice and curry, which he eats by his right hand while in his �Heavenly
Invention� called sarong, would most likely not embark on this very routine
if a non-Tamil co-worker was visiting. Likely, he would ditch the sarong for
a pair of pants and pick up a fork and struggle with rice in an attempt to
feel comfortable. However, if this situation were taking place in Jaffana,
the man would not feel such an urge to hide his tradition that is different
from the western norm. Hence, the reason for his behavior in Canada is his
subconscious realization of the �living away from home� phenomenon and the
courtesy resulting from it. In other words, a deep inner voice reminds him
that he may be in his home but not at Home. Of course, this example cannot
be generalized to all Tamil men, but equally it is not out rightly
deniable.
In our adopted homes, irrespective of how assimilated
we are and how much warmth is extended to us, for many of us there is always
that inner voice that keeps reminding us that we are away from home and that
voice demands us to act accordingly. We are constantly trying hard, with or
without realizing, to comply with value systems that in some cases, we don�t
even fully understand to begin with. Under these circumstances, even
watching on TV a shantytown dweller in Africa teasingly remarking to a well
dressed, well groomed-- according to western norms of course�white
journalist that his breath stinks makes many of us immigrants curl in
awkwardness. Like an abused child that freezes whenever it encounters anger
in its life, many of us immigrants freeze when we see such judgmental slurs,
irrespective of how frivolous they are.
However, chances are that neither the white-journalist nor the African
shanty-dweller would have felt the way some of us immigrants feel, because
they both are comfortably nurtured by their own homes. The shanty man is in
his own home where he knows that he is only joking and according to his
value system such joking is acceptable. The Shanty man never left his own
home and therefore does not understand that his joke, in fact, exhibits an
underlying prejudice. Further, the potentially painful effect such
judgmental remarks may have on the recipient is incomprehensible for the
shanty-man who always lived in the total comfort of his own home. As for the
Journalist, he knows that he is only visiting some one else�s home and all
along anticipates that some or all of the host�s children could potentially
be mischievous and ruckus. Further, the journalist knows that at the end of
the day he has his own home to return to. But, we immigrants, at least some
of us, we feel the way we do because we are not just visiting, we came in
Aeroflot with a one way ticket!
