Cultural Disconnect
on Phil Bradfield (The Gambia), 20/May/2010 11:17, 34 days ago
(Written 19/05/2010 16:00, RED5, Janjanbureh)What I’ve taken to calling “cultural disconnect”, is a momentary feeling that’s very hard to describe. It’s what happens when elements of Western culture interrupt the day-to-day African-ness of my life in ways which are unexpected or which somehow don’t quite fit. The sensation is as if you’re looking at the world in a mirror when the mirror suddenly cracks, and what had seemed whole and comprehensible before blinks into something Picasso would have dismissed as “too weird”, something which on some fundamental and unsettling level just does not make sense.A couple of recent examples which have triggered this for me:·Sitting squashed into the back of asept-placecar and watching the savannah roll by... while listening to American punk rock music.·Seeing a very elegant man wearing the traditional flowing Gambian robes in purest white... with a Netto bodywarmer over the top.·Buying anyebebreakfast from abitiko, eating it, and then noticing that the piece of newspaper it was wrapped in had been torn from the Manchester Evening News.There have been others in the past, and doubtless there’ll be more to come, but they do get less frequent as you get more tuned into the . Fortunately, this feeling only lasts a few seconds, but it is a jolt when it happens. Anyone else had similar experiences on their travels?On a completely different note, you’ve been asking for pictures of me, so I’ve done my best to oblige. The photo below shows me and some of the RED staff hard at work on a Wednesday morning:Adults L-R: Jarbo, me, Mariama, Kaddy, and my fellow VSO Liz (aka Hawa). The baby is another Mariama. I should probably point out she’s not Mariama’s kid, she belongs to one of the other staff (Isatou, not pictured). Thanks to Liz and Pete for letting me have the photo.