{"id":2090,"date":"2017-11-25T07:45:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-25T07:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/new_thereporter\/2017\/11\/25\/be-civilized-or-not-be-civilized\/"},"modified":"2017-11-25T07:45:15","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T07:45:15","slug":"be-civilized-or-not-be-civilized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/2090\/","title":{"rendered":"To be \u2018civilized,\u2019 or not to be \u2018civilized\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a workshop of sorts. This guy meets a friend and hugs him with some \u201cWhere have you been all this time?\u201d To his shock the friend appeared to have encountered some dinosaur. He didn\u2019t respond to the greetings in kind or otherwise. Instead he frowns like he was just told his wife has walked out on him, and snaps, <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do that again!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do what again?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t hug me in public again!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

What! This guy must have lost a couple of screws from upstairs! They have been hugging every time they met for the past decade or so and now he doesn\u2019t like being hugged! Just like that!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, what is wrong with it? This isn\u2019t the first time I hugged you.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t do that, especially in front of foreigners.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So, that was the whole idea! There were quite a number of foreigners around.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For some reason the guy doesn\u2019t want to be hugged in their presence. No, he wasn\u2019t worried about being mistaken for being gay or something. The bombshell wasn\u2019t long in coming;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHugging in public is uncivilized.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This couldn\u2019t be happening! However strange and unrecognizable this world has become, this just couldn\u2019t be happening. \u201cThis is not the guy I know. He must be some imposter!\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

No, he was the same guy. What happened was he recently joined an NGO, after years as a civil servant, and all of a sudden gave himself the license to \u2018civilization\u2019 whatever that means.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I remember once scribbling a few thoughts about the \u2018creative\u2019 ways we eat local food. Recently, someone raised the issue that some ferenjis<\/em> find our eating by hand uncivilized. Is that so? What about licking one\u2019s fingers we see in many films! At least we don\u2019t lick our fingers!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I eat my injera<\/em> and wot<\/em> by hand and no other way. Never would many go to the extent of using knife and fork to slice through an injera<\/em> roll, dip it in the wot<\/em> and take a mouthful. That\u2019s exactly what some do.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The question of being \u2018civilized\u2019 or not has been an eternal issue.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I find quit a number of my country folk on the wrong side of the fence when it comes to such things. They find everything we do\u2019 uncivilized.\u2019 You know like \u2018civilized\u2019 is shaking hands and \u2018uncivilized\u2019 is hugging.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Take the way we greet. In days that are receding fast there were this real affectionate greetings. I mean, the person who greets you asks you not only about your health but that of your family members too; that person even asks you about how your locality was doing. Of course several minutes are squandered. But one thing we seem to have \u2018in abundance\u2019 around here is time. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Look, we all would like to be \u2018civilized.\u2019 Not because the ferenjis<\/em> wouldn\u2019t like seeing us hugging but because we have to keep pace with changing things. Someone is saying being civilized is what is in you and nothing else.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Some decades back we were in this Eastern Bloc country on some media tour. There was some twenty or so of us. On our first night we were called for some welcome dinner. The dishes were filled with chicken legs and chicken breasts. Now if we had been on home ground we would just pick one pieces and start shredding it. But this was a ferenji<\/em> country. Even though they were poor we have to act \u2018civilized!\u2019 We weren\u2019t going to have our country laughed at! \u201cLook at those primitive creatures. They are using their hands to eat the chicken!\u201d we weren\u2019t going to allow that to happen. So we pick the knives and forks and tried to slice the meat off the bones. It was a futile effort. For one thing knife and fork weren\u2019t our idea of sending your meal to the extreme corners of one\u2019s belly.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Very much uncomfortable we threw sideways glances. And then one amongst us pointed to a far corner spot. What a revelation! There, a couple of ferenjis<\/em> had the chicken parts at in the clutch of their ten fingers and they were ripping the meat with relish. It was as if we were a company of soldiers waiting for that order. With up to the second precision all of us lifted the chicken legs and breasts, and the rest, as they say, is history.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Once I remember that in a certain family quite a storm brewed because of the culinary choice of their twenty-something son. It was by accident that his elder sister discovered that he has started eating pork! And she was tipped by her brother\u2019s own friend who felt there was something very wrong with the guy. Pork!  Not only for religious reasons, but the simple fact is eating pork, generates the gasps from many Ethiopians.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean he actually eats pork!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDid you hear that she is eating pork? That girl is going to hell, no doubt about that.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For the religiously devout there is only one place for you if you eat pork, Hell!  I mean this is a society which would ask \u201cWhat does the dog stand for in hotdog!\u201d It was like asking, \u201cCouldn\u2019t they come up with a better word!\u201d Whether it comes as a suffix or a prefix, ‘dog’ is the last word most of us would like to associate with food. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Still, things are changing. Quite a number of people see eating pork as sign of joining the \u2018civilized\u2019 world. It isn\u2019t that they are impressed by its nutritional qualities; it isn\u2019t that some doctor advised them to \u201cEat pork at least three times a week.\u201d It is simply that since many foreigners using it must be one thing civilized people are supposed to do! Hmm. Ask me and I have no problem with people eating pork or food items not nicely perceived around here.  But I have to admit that when I sometimes hear the \u2018reasons\u2019 for such actions, reasons which have nothing to do with calorie and carbohydrate count, I really feel sad for those guys who are living in a fantasy world. You like pork, then go eat! The only thing is don\u2019t expect anyone to throw a second glance and exclaim; \u201cFinally he\/she has joined the civilized world.\u201d  <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have met with many who think eating raw meat is one sign that the \u2018ship of civilization\u2019 has left port and we were not on it. The whole idea of connecting culinary or similar choices with being civilized or being left behind is absurd. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have to go and have a bite or r two. Who knows, it might be that I\u2019ll settle for pork and from this time on you will be dealing with a \u2018civilized\u2019 me.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Contributed<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a workshop of sorts. This guy meets a friend and hugs him with some \u201cWhere have you been all this time?\u201d To his shock the friend appeared to have encountered some dinosaur. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"editor_plus_copied_stylings":"{}","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1946,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2090","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-touch-and-go","7":"category-uncategorized"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thereporterethiopia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}