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Human Interaction
Apr. 27th, 2006 12:01 pmPublic Entry
My first order of business is to wish a HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hotstudboi427!!
What's funny that I'm not sure most travellers anticipate is that sure, you'll be interacting with local people, but you end up bonding with so many people who are ex-pats just like you, would ordinarily be "foreigners" or "strange" but you bond almost entirely on your shared skin color and shared experience.
I've been chilling with this German guy, Willi, for about a week and I've not really ever had proper German friends before. Being ignorant, my brain usually just makes "verboten" conversation topic lists in my head. So the same way you'd avoid coming up to some Rwandan and going "How 'bout that genocide!?" you'd probably want to avoid starting any conversation with a German using "So tell me about Nazis"
Willi works for the Salvation Army and yesterday, after my endless long day of IPS meetings in Kampala, he and I went and had dinner at a local Indian restaurant. And honestly, I figured we'd never end up talking about World War II topics, but he brought them up, but for some reason, it wasn't somehow awkward and I was given this awareness that not only is it a "fresh" topic in the minds of a lot of people, but it's fresh in the minds of the German people too. I'd also never known about the impact of the war on Germany right afterwards,
I guess one is always influenced by the "tv version" of anything. You see everything from the outside -- the big events, the momentous days, the leaders of the party. You don't think about German soldiers trudging across Russia without shoes in winter.
Also, sometimes Uganda is too funny, and we laughed about the fact that a room would offer you a television without an actual outlet to plug it into.
Oh, and in the matatu park on the way home, this guy was trying to sell me boxes of men's underpants. Uh, what? What do I need those for?
Tomorrow I go to Kalinzu with Steph, which should be really exciting for a 2 day respite.
I could swear I had more to write in this public post, but I can't for the life of me remember what is was.
My first order of business is to wish a HUGE HAPPY BIRTHDAY to
hotstudboi427!!What's funny that I'm not sure most travellers anticipate is that sure, you'll be interacting with local people, but you end up bonding with so many people who are ex-pats just like you, would ordinarily be "foreigners" or "strange" but you bond almost entirely on your shared skin color and shared experience.
I've been chilling with this German guy, Willi, for about a week and I've not really ever had proper German friends before. Being ignorant, my brain usually just makes "verboten" conversation topic lists in my head. So the same way you'd avoid coming up to some Rwandan and going "How 'bout that genocide!?" you'd probably want to avoid starting any conversation with a German using "So tell me about Nazis"
Willi works for the Salvation Army and yesterday, after my endless long day of IPS meetings in Kampala, he and I went and had dinner at a local Indian restaurant. And honestly, I figured we'd never end up talking about World War II topics, but he brought them up, but for some reason, it wasn't somehow awkward and I was given this awareness that not only is it a "fresh" topic in the minds of a lot of people, but it's fresh in the minds of the German people too. I'd also never known about the impact of the war on Germany right afterwards,
I guess one is always influenced by the "tv version" of anything. You see everything from the outside -- the big events, the momentous days, the leaders of the party. You don't think about German soldiers trudging across Russia without shoes in winter.
Also, sometimes Uganda is too funny, and we laughed about the fact that a room would offer you a television without an actual outlet to plug it into.
Oh, and in the matatu park on the way home, this guy was trying to sell me boxes of men's underpants. Uh, what? What do I need those for?
Tomorrow I go to Kalinzu with Steph, which should be really exciting for a 2 day respite.
I could swear I had more to write in this public post, but I can't for the life of me remember what is was.
