Trust

Sometime back in 2001 or 2002, I went to visit a friend who was working at a hospital near Kisumu, in the western part of Kenya. I hadn’t told him when I was coming, though, so when I arrived he had just left for a long weekend at the beach and since I had no way of reaching him, I had to change my plans. I called the guy I had been chatting with on the bus on the way there all those hours. He told me to stay put; he would pick me up in an hour and a half. And he did. Getting to his family’s compound somewhere in the hills around Kisumu was a small adventure in itself; it took almost two hours of walking, sitting on the back of a bicycle, crossing a river in a dug-out canoe, and more walking before we arrived. Once there, I was told to sit down with the men on the side of the house made of dried red mud. So I sat there in the shade talking with his father, some of his brothers, uncles, and probably some neighbors, talking about life in Africa and Europe, about work and jobs and salaries. After a while I asked my new friend if there were any women. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but they don’t speak any English.’ His sister who served us drinks and food just smiled when I thanked her in English, so I took his word for it, but after I while I had enough of sitting with the men and their crackling transistor-radio, so I wandered over to the kitchen-hut and motioned if I could come in. Of course I could, the four women in the kitchen welcomed me in perfect English.

As it turned out, his oldest sister was the head nurse at one of the biggest hospitals in Nairobi, and had just come over to her parents’ village for the family gathering this weekend. We talked about life in Africa and Europe as well, and about their specific jobs and lives, their marriages and children. I was 20 at the time, and they were wondering why I didn’t have children. Suddenly my friend’s oldest sister looked me straight in the eye and said: ‘Can I ask you something?’ Of course she could. ‘What do you use for contraception?’ All eyes were on me. Two more women had arrived in the meantime, but no one made a sound. ‘Uh, well, condoms?’ I said, ‘and… the pill?’ ‘So white women take the pill as well!’ said the oldest sister, the nurse. ‘Yes, most of my friends do… why would we not?’ I asked, naïve enough. ‘Well,’ was her answer, ‘I thought the pill was meant to make us African women infertile.’

I am still glad I didn’t know back then what I know now, and that I was able to answer that question in full honesty. After that trip I went on to study anthropology, and I learned about the secret sterilization programs that have taken place in many countries in Asia, Africa and South America in the name of international health care and aid programs (and even in the USA itself, mainly on the black population). Still, I thought, that was in the past, and although it’s understandable that rumors about it are still going around, we can safely assume that health programs these days do just what they are supposed to do instead of carrying out a secret political agenda. And so from then on I would make a conscious effort when traveling of convincing people to trust international health care programs and use the medication against malaria and AIDS that they provide.

Unfortunately, I was naïve again: in its urge to kill Osama Bin Laden, the USA has set up a fake vaccination program to capture his children’s DNA. As the author of the piece writes; ‘People's faith in their doctors is critical to the ability to provide health care, and it's unconscionable that the United States would use the single most delicate health issue in the Muslim world as its cover. […] People believe in their medical care. They want to be healthy, and they want more than anything to have healthy children. Accordingly, they believe in their doctors and nurses. And it's the duty of health-care professionals -- and governments -- to return and protect this trust. It is not acceptable to weaponize health, to use Christopher Albon's brilliant turn of phrase. But it's clear -- and interesting -- that doing so is remarkably easy. In a world where social cohesion is eroding rapidly, people still trust their health-care providers.’ It may be clear from my story that this trust people have in their health-care providers is not blind, and may have taken a long time to grow. Stories like this can break that trust in a minute – especially if they cannot be dispelled as a myth by an honest 20-year old backpacker.

Black doll, white doll - not just an experiment

In the 1950s, in a racially segregated US, psychologist Kenneth Clark performed an experiment with black kids. He wanted to measure the impact of racism on their self-image. They had to choose between a black doll and a white doll. Now, 50 years later, someone repeated the experiment. The video below (in English) is of that experiment, with some footage from the original test. It’s an excerpt from a short documentary called ‘A Girl Like Me’ by Kiri Davis (which you can watch here).

So it has come to this

I’m getting older (oh yes!), and with getting older comes realizing I am a lot more like my parents than I thought I was. I say ‘uh huh’ during conversations, exactly like my mother does when she’s listening to someone, and I catch myself making remarks about my husband’s after-shave exactly like my father does about my mother’s perfume. All in all it’s not so bad, but apparently it’s not just my parents who’ve managed to impress their behavior on me. I realized this last week when I called out a student’s name in class.

“But I wasn’t even doing anything!” she exclaimed.

“And that is EXACTLY the problem,” I heard myself say.

I’m also becoming my teachers.

Mijn soort mensen

Als docent maatschappijleer is de kans groot dat je hier en daar in een politiek-getinte discussie verzeild raakt. Soms met vreemden, en soms met collega’s. Zo ook op een bepaalde dag een aantal weken geleden, toen een collega en ik het oneens waren over de juiste aanpak van de PVV. Zij meende dat deze partij de heersende onvrede in de samenleving een gezicht gaf, en daarom serieus genomen diende te worden, ik vond dat sommige mensen soms best eens te horen mogen krijgen dat wat zij willen (een blank, gristelijk Nederland) niet (meer) tot de mogelijkheden behoort. Die woorden ontlokten een ware tirade. Ik had makkelijk praten, ik kwam natuurlijk nooit met ‘echte allochtonen’ in aanraking, ik was geen oud vrouwtje dat met angst en beven langs een groep opgeschoten Marokkaanse jongens moet lopen op mijn dagelijkse wandelingetje. Met als klapper: ‘Ik ken jouw soort mensen. Jullie hebben een grote mond over gemengde scholen, maar als je zelf kinderen krijgt weet je niet hoe snel je daar een goede, witte school voor moet vinden.’

Waarop een ander opmerkte dat mijn collega één essentiële factor scheen te vergeten: als Walid en ik ooit kinderen krijgen, zijn dat zelf allochtonen. Bingo!

Joop

Dagelijks wandelingetje door de buurt.Ineens staat er een reiger voor m’n neus. ‘Niet schrikken, hij doet niks’ klinkt er van rechts. Een oude Amsterdamse met bruingeverfde haren, twee gouden tanden en bladderende roze nagellak hangt uit het raam op de begane grond. ‘Dat is Joop. Hij komt elke dag even eten. Ik voer ‘m al vier jaar. Die andere twee zijn z’n kleintjes.’

Ze lacht me toe en roept dag schatje tegen een langslopende hond. De wandelaar die aan de hond vastzit, groet terug, waarop ze zegt ja, jij bent ook een schatje hoor! Ze gaat verder over Joop.

‘Mijn man, die is nu al vier jaar dood, die ging elke dag vissen in het Flevopark. En die vogel, met die oranje bek daar, die stond dan altijd naast em. Elke dag. Op een gegeven moment liep ie achter m’n man aan naar huis. Die had alzheimers, dus toen ie zei “Joop staat voor de deur” dacht ik “wie is dat? Ik ken he-le-maal geen Joop!” Maar dit is ‘m dus. Nou komt ie elke dag eten, hij klopt op ’t raam met z’n bekkie en dan krijgt ie kippevleugeltjes. ‘s Ochtends een keer en ’s middags.’

Naast haar staat een bord met stukjes vlees. ‘Ja, ’t kost me klauwen met geld, maar ik zeg altijd maar, ik heb nog nooit een kissie met een brandkast erachter gezien, toch?! En zo is m’n man er toch ook nog een beetje bij.’