sarcasm and inculturation

Inculturation means so many things. Remembering to throw your toilet paper into a trash can instead of flushing it down the toilet where it will threaten the entire central American septic system… Getting used to geckos crawling around your walls and appreciating the fact that they eat the mosquitoes… Learning to love rice and beans for every other meal… All of these things I’m totally adapted to. However, there is one aspect of Belizean culture that I just can’t seem to get used to. Belizean people are, for the most part, totally unable to “get” sarcastic humor. I remember sitting at the Mt. Carmel orientation last year while they explained all of the little things we needed to be aware of as we attempted to communicate with our students. For example, when Belizeans say “Right now” it means, “in a minute”. Every teacher has the following conversation with their student in the first week of school. For example, say you’re giving a test and you tell your students to hand it in.
“Right now, miss”. They say.
“Yes, Right now.” You reply.
Their heads are still bent down, scribbling answers.
“Right now, hand it in” you command in your best “I’m-fresh-out-of-college-but-trying-to-be-a-scary-strict-teacher voice”. The kids look up at you and say again,
“Miss, right now I will hand it in”.
Then you remember what they told you about the phrase. After a year in Belize, I honestly can’t use the phrase “right now” correctly anymore— I get mixed up in both the U.S. and Belize, always confusing the meaning.

Anyways, while Fr. Mark was explaining these linguistical challenges that sometimes makes you realize that although English words are being used, you’re just not speaking the same language! After this explanation, he added almost as an afterthought, “and they just don’t get sarcasm here, so be careful using it with your students”. This rocked my world. No sarcasm? I had briefly considered N.E.T. ministries and quickly decided that it wasn’t for me because you commit to no sarcasm with your teammates for a whole year and it’s not like my life is one long SNL sketch, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to communicate with people if sarcasm wasn’t an option. However, now I see that it was part of God’s plan for me that I find other means of getting my point across because I’m spending my second year in a country full of people who all to often completely misunderstand what I’m saying. But please, allow me to illustrate what I’m talking about.

Every Tuesday evening we have a meeting with the Lay Ministers of San Pedro Roman Catholic Church. Now, I’ve talked about this truly extraordinary group of San Pedranos who take such good care of their church and the four girls who are volunteering with them for the year. However, they are Belizean and therefore of the four of us, I’m always the one who ends up saying something inappropriate by accident. I think I already described my first foux pas of the evening: we were all saying evening prayer and Ali made some sort of mistake at which point I said, “oh, sorry folks, she’s not really Catholic”. As soon as the words escaped Ali shot me a Look, because all of the lay ministers were staring at her with the look of, “Imposter!” on their faces. They totally thought I was serious and that they had been duped into bringing a non-Catholic missionary to their town. Whoops. Finally, one of the lay ministers, Claudio, let’s out an awkward, “ha… ha…ha…” and I’m saved. Sort of.

Do I learn my lesson though? Well, I try to filter things but sometimes they just come out. A couple weeks later we’re at another meeting discussing the problem that has arisen as a result of a priest being gone from San Pedro for too long and we, consequentially, have run out of the Holy Eucharist. There’s only a handful of hosts left in the tabernacle, not enough for another Sunday. Now, there are two ways to get to San Pedro: water taxi and plane. People frequently use the two airlines, Tropic and Maya, to ship important cargo to the island. The lay ministers were saying that at some point, someone would have to fly to Belize City and pick up more consecrated hosts. I said, “yeah, or else we can just have them put the consecrated hosts in a box marked, ‘Jesus’ and send it on Maya Air”. All of the lay ministers turned and stared at me. Claudio finally says quietly, “no, Alison, we can’t do that”. Now, it’s bad enough that I was taken seriously there. The story gets worse—Dinorah was telling this story to some teachers in Benque and laughing about how my joke flopped, and one of the teachers there thought I was serious too!

Don’t worry, the Lay Minister’s meetings aren’t just about scandalizing the locals, we’ve been teaching them a few things too. The best skill they’ve learned from us is totally the “not it” game. Last year, all important decisions made by Mt. Carmel High School teachers were decided by the “not it” game. This is how you play. Anytime something is suggested that you don’t want to do, you simply touch your nose as fast as you can. The last person to touch their nose is “it”. For example, if there was a class that needed a substitute teacher, the secretary would walk into the teacher’s lounge where we were all hard at work lesson planning, grading and eating biscuits. Lillian would say, “who can teach…” and before she even finished her sentence we’d all have our fingers on our noses. So, at one Lay Minister’s meeting they were asking who wanted to lead Evening Prayer. Us four girls had our fingers on our noses in a flash and the lay ministers were slightly confused by this. We explained this decision-making process to them and they all played too. Imagine, four gringas and a handful of middle-aged Belizean adults all trying to touch our noses the fastest. All of us, that is, except Abel my favorite fisherman who was sitting there asking, “why are you all touching your noses? I don’t understand”. Such fun.

I have a special prayer intention for you prayer-warriors. One of my students from last year has decided to enter R.C.I.A. in Benque. I know that the pressure on her will be huge, so please keep her in your prayers! Anne, the campus minister in Benque, has something like 25 students in her R.C.I.A. program, so pray for them all!