Gettin Angry

When talking about my experiences here, people often say, “You must be learning so much!” I feel that I am, but often the lessons are so experiential that they are hard to share. Yet one lesson that I can share with you is how being here is teaching me to use anger.

Normally I pride myself on being a generally patient and tolerant person, perhaps to a fault. For example, if someone is slighting me, I generally shrug it off. However, being out of my culture and being in a situation where I feel that I am often slighted or overlooked, I am learning that it is not appropriate to bear every situation, sometimes it’s good and wholesome to get plenty pissed off and to make sure other people know. This may seem like an obvious statement, but for a long time I was pursuing a path where I was hoping never get “irrationally” angry. What I have realized now is that a lot of what I thought of “irrational anger” is pretty rational. Here are some examples of situations where I have profited from getting angry at rather than just dealing with:

Kids – I don’t know if you have ever had 20 or so kids follow you around town chanting “white person” to no end, or if this has ever happened to you everyday. When I first arrived I tolerated it because they did not know any better, even though they should have. Now, I give them the option of greeting me and chatting for a bit and then moving on and if that does not satisfy them, I give them a physical message that it has to stop.

Lines – There is no concept of lines or “your turn” in West Africa. I have spent hours sitting on busses while the driver and sometimes police sorted out where people should be sitting because no one sat in the seats that their tickets said, these being people who can read and have ridden busses before. They just don’t get the concept of that sort of orderliness. I used to tolerate it and let people budge ahead of me, now I don’t put up with it. If I piss people off by yelling at them for treating these situations with complete anarchy, so be it.

When people lie – It is not exactly accurate to say that people lie a lot here. It is more like they don’t always mean what they say. The difference is subtle but important. Since the culture is so indirect, often it is more impolite to tell the truth in a situation than to lie. For example, it is generally impolite to refuse anyone for anything, if you get an invitation to visit someone’s house and you don’t want to go it is general practice to accept the invitation and then just not show up. People take that better than saying you would rather not go. People also view life as very uncertain, a lot depends on Allah. So maybe you say something that you don’t really mean or maybe you did mean it but the will of Allah interferes. I used to take these situations in stride, but because it makes it difficult plan a day, I now let people know how displeased I am that they did not show up or do the work they promised to do.

In all of these situations I have been surprised to find that people actually respond positively to my anger and will often modify their behavior. I liken it to someone poking you with a stick. Perhaps the person does not know that it is bothering you and if you share a little of how you are feeling, you can get them to modify their behavior rather than trying to learn to like being poked with a stick.

This is how I am learning to use anger.