Who Says Staring is Rude??

Now Back to this staring thing.   Today me and John (a volunteer) went out to sit on a field to study while we waited for our one-on-one language interview to begin.  Not even 10 minutes went by before we were surrounded by about 16 people...from age 2 to age 50!  At first there were just two little boys who came to watch us study...and then there were two more kids.  I just stuck my head in my book and tried to focus and when I looked up again like 30 seconds later, we were surrounded by mama's, babies, and teenagers...JUST STARING!  They weren't even really talking, just looking.  After a while, me and John were able to put together a few sentences and make the group laugh at our terrible grammar skills.  About a half hour later, John left for his interview and told Caitie (another volunteer) where I was sitting so that I wouldn't have to endure the pain of being stared at alone.  She couldn't see me sitting down so when she saw the group of people clustered around something, she yelled, "Dametreea, you in there?"  I yelled back and then she came to sit down, just laughing her little heart out.  I couldn't help but laugh too.  All I could think was, "This is my life right now."  Even me just staring into a book is interesting to them.  Oh how I feel for the celebrities in America.  To live this way for the rest of your life would be pure torture.  It's okay for now because it's to be expected, but if I had to wake up to this for the rest of all of my human existence, I'm sure I would be crazy by now.  One of these days, I'm just going to stare back.  I'm pretty resilient so we'll see who wins that staring contest.  :)

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea






(Written on 5/24/12 at 11:24p)