The first thing we learned in our language classes was the
local greetings. Each language has their own words, but they are all asking the
same thing: "How are the home people? are you in peace? hope there is no
trouble". These greetings are exchanged every time you see
somebody, anybody, and everybody. They change with the time of the day and
things are added like hope the morning is good, did you sleep in peace, are you
tired? Also sometimes the home people is changed to your family, or the kids,
or your hosts, or the people you just visited. It goes on for a long time.
Although we were told greetings are important, I don't think it
sinks in until you actually start doing it all the time. At first I was
hesitant to walk through the village because I knew it would take me 20 or 30
minutes just to make a 5 minute distance. At first this made me pretty hesitant
to leave my house, I was always looking around and trying to judge when it looked
like people were not outside to move about. Now though, it is becoming the
opposite, maybe its knowing I have a lot of time to spend in my
village that makes 30 minutes of greeting not seem so long any more. Im not
afraid anymore to leave my house to run down and pick up a candle at the store,
or go to someones house and ask them a question. Even though I know I will run
into a lot of people and say a lot of greetings, its just
the way it is.
Interesting... in our culture, we rarely decide to greet someone as we walk to our car through the parking lot. When I was a grocery carry out boy, we were instructed to greet people throughout the store [60's in Minnesota]. Now I'd have to stop in front of a store worker and say, Hello, to get their attention--Get the job done, ignore the people!
ReplyDeleteThe country is still small enough that it feels like another time here. I think people want more money, work, and development, but the cost of it might be alot less time to greet, chat, be personable, and catch up. Maybe like the differences between a grocery store in the 1960's and the Whole Foods/Wal Mart way of today.
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