Stop touching my boobs!

Written Thursday, 24 January 2008

 

 

I had a classic Peace Corps freak-out moment recently.

 

I knew before coming here that Africans' sense of personal space is different from Americans', and I was prepared to try to adjust.  So when I got to my village and discovered that it is no big deal for people to touch women's breasts, it wasn't a surprise.  So I've gotten used to village women grabbing my breasts to compare my size with theirs, or to pretend that they're going to have me breastfeed a baby.  I even once had a woman at the market greet me by grabbing my breast and shaking it as if she were shaking my hand.  All of which I have endured and sometimes even been able to laugh at, although it always still feels weird to be touched like that.

 

But one day about a week ago one of my younger host sisters, who likes to push boundaries with me and see what she can get away with, decided to test how far I would let her get into my personal space by grabbing my breast and massaging it.  For whatever reason, instead of being able to ignore it or laugh it off, this time I just lost it.  I screamed at her and would even have hit her (not at all in character for me) if I had not had my hands full with holding a small child upside down by its feet at that moment (the kid was enjoying it, I wasn't torturing her or anything).

 

Everyone in Peace Corps has their story of losing control and acting out of character, no longer able to keep pretending to be the perfect, tolerant volunteer.  So this was mine.  My villagers seemed surprised to see me so angry, but they seemed to understand why – I was told later that at some point in the past (when the last volunteer was here? Before the first volunteer came?) they had a meeting to sensitize the whole village about Westerners' ideas of personal space.

 

Now everything is back to normal in my village, no weirdness with my villagers over the incident.  But no one has gotten in my personal space since then either, and I hope it stays that way.