Funny little stories

• In Kenya the girls had to wash the floors of the school every day. One morning an other teacher and I waited outside for the girls to finish with cleaning up. The teacher asked me, if I had had to wash floors at school when I was a school girl. I told her that in Finland children don't need to clean up at school and that we have special cleaning ladies who do all the cleaning. She looked at me and her jaw basically dropped down. Then she asked the question: "How did you learn how to wash the floors then?!!" I was tempted to answer (jokingly) "Well, I didn't", but then thought that it might have been too much for her.
  

• In Tanzania it was very important for the adult students to get to know me personally. The typical questions asked concerned about family and religion. Once a student asked if I was married or not. I told her that I am not married. The student next to her then asked if I had children. Before I had time to answer, the student who asked about my marital status, poked the student who asked about kids and whispered (loudly): "She can't have children: she is not married!"
  

• This gives a good idea about how unaware of different ways of living some people were. In Tanzania and Kenya all the people belong to some tribe. Many times when people were asking questions about me and Finland, I also got to answer the questions "What is your tribe?" and "How many tribes are there in Finland?". The first time someone asked about my tribe I didn't get a word out of my mouth because I couldn't believe my ears: "I must have heard something wrong!" Then I got used to the question and was quite enjoying breaking the news for the africans about the "tribeless" Europe. Their faces were worth seeing indeed.

• When I was teaching in Kenya, I also took the chance to tell about the "nightless night" and the "dayless day" above the arctic circle in Lappland. Of course, the students were amazed of that story (and about many other stories about Finland as well). I was asked two different questions that I didn't expect to hear: "Do everybody just stay inside all the time when it is dark?" and "How do you then know when it is time to go to sleep or to wake up?". This was when I understood how important role the sun actually plays in people's lives near equator. They don't live by the clock, they live by the sun.

• As everybody knows, HIV is very common on Africa. Teaching about HIV and how to avoid getting it is one of the important aims of school. There was a poster on the wall in the corridor next to my room, which had a picture of a family. The text in the poster made me breathe in quite deeply. It said: "Protect your wife and your children. Use condom every time you have sex." That's how it is in Africa (or at least in Kenya); it is ok for the man to have sex outside marriage. Just don't bring HIV home and you'll be just fine. This was one of the moments when I really had to use all the cultural understanding I had: I have to accept the way the local people live, even if I don't agree with them.