Priorities
Since you can’t take photos on the streets of Bulawayo, here’s the view from the MCC office.
I stayed with a Zimbabwean family in a rural village for a few days last month, and in casual conversation the mother asked me what percentage of Canadians had AIDS, and I realized I couldn’t answer. As a person who considers myself fairly well read this was a bit embarrassing.
I said I knew it was very low, but couldn’t give her any more than that. (It’s 0.3-0.4 per cent according to UNAIDS in case you’re wondering.) In Zimbabwe it’s 14-15 per cent, and it’s even higher in Mtshabezi where I was staying due to the high numbers of miners migrating to the area. Several people I asked gave me estimates that were close to these numbers.
And while waiting in the car one afternoon I got into a conversation about employment and when I was asked what the unemployment rate was in Canada I actually had no idea. I couldn’t remember the last time I heard the numbers. I’m sure the fact that I understand little about economics has something to do with that, but I also think that unemployment is less of a preoccupation for Canadians. (For the record, unemployment was 7.2% in April in Canada.)
Sure the economy feels bad at home, and there are lots of people without jobs. But compared to the 70-75 per cent of people who are out of work there, anything under 10 per cent sounds trivial. (I think the numbers here are actually a bit of a misrepresentation since there are many people who live off subsistence farming or other informal jobs, who are officially counted as unemployed.)
While living in Zambia and Zimbabwe the questions I was asked, and the fact that I couldn’t answer them, proved to me that the priorities and concerns there are pretty different than those in Canada. Sometimes the questions you ask say more about where you come from than about where you are. (Please don’t take this as me saying Canada has no problems, we have plenty. Many of them are just different.)
I’ve also been asked repeatedly what the staple food is in Canada, and I still don’t have a good answer for that. Unlike Zimbabwe, where a mealie-meal paste called sadza is eaten with most meals, Canadians don’t have one food, we eat every day. Although I did say wheat since we tend to eat a lot of it, just in different forms.
Over the course of three months it became clear to me that our life experiences, and our daily worries alter the way we see the world—obviously. And the questions we ask of other cultures say a lot about where we come from and where our priorities lie. As someone who asks questions for a living I wonder what mine say about me.
That tall building way in the back is the apartment where I was staying.
emily ruth adventures 