Tales of Africa, Turkish Delegations, and Apple Picking

I felt the familiar twinge of cultural readjustment this week. On Wednesday, I went out for my first row since being back in the States. It was a beautiful morning for getting back on the water, but reappearing in the boathouse meant plenty of the standard questions about my summer. It's never easy to sum up all the wonder of a new cultural experience in the 15 seconds people actually pay attention after asking: "Wow, Africa...how was that?" Do you just feed into what they want to hear and answer: "Great...yeah, I saw a lot of animals. The people are really friendly."? Or, do you assume that they only asked you a broad question because they don't know enough details to ask you something more specific? I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, so I would briefly try to describe the HIV education I had been involved in.

But then, after I mentioned Botswana's high HIV rates, someone asked me something along the lines of: "So is there just a complete sense of hopelessness there?"

Hopelessness? I can just see him picturing Africa not as the vibrant mix of culture, music, and languages that it is, but as this desolate wasteland populated by skin-and-bones people crawling with flies--the images you see on the "Save the Children" ads. This may exist in other parts of the continent, but it is not what I saw this summer in Botswana, nor anywhere else in Southern Africa. I'm sure I encountered people with HIV this summer--shook their hands, sat next to them in a taxi van. And what I can say about "hopelessness" is that I didn't see any of it. People are living their lives, and they are friendly and happy (or at least acting like it), even if they have HIV. Granted, Botswana is doing better economically than most places in Africa, and can offer free anti-retroviral drugs for those who need them as a result of its mineral wealth. I'm sure this has had an impact on how optimistic people are about dealing with the epidemic. But even in Mozambique--another place with high HIV rates, and higher poverty levels--HIV is not destroying people's desire to enjoy life. Remember, even when you have HIV, you look perfectly healthy for years before complications of AIDS set in. If you had HIV, would you just want to sit around depressed for ten years because you knew you'd eventually die a pretty miserable death? I hope not. There's no reason people living in a different hemisphere should look at it any differently. So no, in spite of colonization, having imported political-economic structures placed upon them, wars, and the ravages of infectious disease, the people of Africa do not share a collective sense of hopelessness. I would call that resilience.

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On a happier note, I will look back on this week as a highlight of my Turkish-speaking career. I spoke with the Turkish Prime Minister--in Turkish! The UN General Assembly was meeting this week in New York, and PM Tayyip Erdogan decided to come down to Princeton afterward to give a speech on Turkey's new foreign relations priorities. I was quite possibly the first person to pick up a ticket to the event when they became available last week, and also managed to swing getting a ticket to the reception following the speech. The speech was fantastic, and I had no idea the Prime Minister had such a sense of humor!

When discussing the importance of not just having international conventions and laws, but putting them into practice (not verbatim, nor translated word-for-word):
"In Turkey, we have a saying: You cannot feel the sweet taste of honey in your mouth just by saying the name of honey. You have to eat the honey to taste it!"

When discussing how Turkey understands other countries suffering from terrorism:
"Someone who falls off the roof understands another who falls off the roof. Nasreddin Hoca falls off the roof and breaks his leg, and says: 'Do not find a doctor; find someone else who has fallen off a roof!'"

At the reception, I met up with my classmate and friend, Aytug, who is a Turkish government employee, and will return to Ankara when he finishes his masters. He was determined to have me meet the PM, and after we had patiently waited several minutes to have the chance to speak to PM Erdogan, Aytug moved right up to introduce himself, as well as his "American friend who speaks Turkish" (that would be me). Mr. Erdogan shook my hand, and asked me (in Turkish--he doesn't speak English) how long I had stayed in Turkey. My response was just one sentence, and not a topic of any great weight, but it was grammatically correct, and beautifully delivered--I told him I'd studied in Ankara for 8 months in 2004. He smiled, and then he had to leave--Aytug had made his move just in time.

I'm still waiting on more pictures from the photographer, but here's one that made the online article, and the speech itself (with translation) on YouTube:





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More fall fun: this weekend, I went apple-picking! Lena, Maria Elena, Andrew and I went out to Terhune Orchards and ate apples in many forms: apple cider with our macaroni lunch; apples off the tree as we walked through the orchards; caramel apples after the picking was over. Some fun pics from the day: