One glaring difference from one culture to another is how locals feel free or not to comment on various aspects of your physical appearance.
“You are looking a little fuller!” said one of our local friends, a former language tutor, when he saw my wife and I again the other day.
“Maybe you enjoyed a lot of Chick-Fil-A!” he laughed. Suddenly, he caught himself, remembering that he was talking to Americans.
“I mean… for us… this is a good thing. You know what our people say? Skinny people are useless! Ha!”
It’s true. Our almost two years of recuperating in the US did what my freshman year of college and all subsequent years had failed to do – provide me with an extra 15 pounds or so. Forget the freshman fifteen, this is the furlough fifteen, the kind of thing we MKs in Melanesian knew to expect anytime one of our adult ‘uncles’ or ‘aunts’ got back from furlough. It’s nigh impossible for an adult to move back to the West without it affecting their BMI. I think this has something to do with the paucity and price of fresh produce in the US, combined with the lack of the constant stomach issues that come from living in a foreign context.
More processed food + less diarrhea = a little bit more dad bod.
“Don’t worry,” my wife and I often said to one another during our long medical leave in the US. “Once we move back to Central Asia, we’ll get sick enough to lose whatever we’ve gained.”
Either that or we’ll just sweat it off. This week had days up to 111 degrees Fahrenheit. As the locals say, Mud of the world upon my head. Summer is not letting us go just yet.
On the other hand, there is a case to be made that a mid-thirties body that is healthy and not constantly racked by stress is a body that feels free to put on a reasonable layer of warmth for the coming winter. In that case, we’ll gladly take the fifteen if it’s a sign that we’re actually in a better place than we were two years ago. I think this is likely true of my wife. Mine, however, is much more likely to be the result of too many late night American snacks.
On the bright side, at least locals will think I’m a little less useless now. And they will stop judging my wife so much.
“Why is your husband so skinny?! Don’t you feed him enough?!”
Then there was the taxi driver the other day who told me I look like a Nazi. Yep, first time I’ve ever got that one.
“You look German!” he proclaimed to me, despite my black-brown hair and dark brown eyes.
“Like the Nazis!” he continued, “They were really great, weren’t they?”
“Um,” I countered, “No, they were really bad actually. They killed lots of innocent people.”
“They were against the Jews. That’s why they were great.”
By saying this, this taxi driver outed himself as more Islamic. In fact, our people group is quite divided when it comes to their opinions about Jews and Israel. The more nationalist and secular, the more pro-Jewish they are. The more Islami, well, the more they like the Nazis.
“No,” I countered, “They were against everyone who didn’t submit to their philosophy. Not just Jews, but Muslims also, and Christians too. Any pastor who openly opposed them was arrested. And some were even executed.”
Here I was thinking of men like Bonhoeffer, whom my kids had recently been introduced to through a good audiobook.
The driver then pivoted the conversation to the failure of the leaders of his own people, much more fertile ground for conversation than discussing his admiration of Hitler (a disturbing trait among some of our locals that only comes out by prayer and fasting and the new birth).
“I look like a Nazi?!” I asked my wife as we got into the elevator, hands full with our bags of groceries. She just laughed at me.
“At least you’re a little less useless now.”
“Let’s hope so!”
I certainly don’t mind looking a little less useless. But I do hope to not look like a fascist, if at all possible. Mud of the world upon my head…
If you would like to help us afford a solid set of wheels for driving around our corner of Central Asia (11k needed), you can reach out here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Photos are from Unsplash.com
Entrusted to the Dirt 