Men in Lopit...

My Mom asked me a while back what the men were like in Lopit, because I never write about them on here.

The truth is, we deal very little with the men in the village—it’s cultural, and we don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.

But, we do get the pleasure of interacting with some of the school teachers and pastors, who speak decent English. The men on our team don’t know how blessed they are, to be constantly communicating with the male population, because a lot of the guys speak at least some English from their time out in the camps, and that adds about a thousand new dimensions to a conversation.

Anyway, some school bigwigs came up to have tea the other day, and I quite enjoyed our conversation.

We learned our skin color is a topic of conversation among the Lopit. The headmaster informed me that we’d all gotten very, very white. And this, he said, was because it was getting cold. Yes, purely a matter of temperature. When it’s hot, we turn red (not tan—red). When it’s cold, we turn white. Very, very interesting.

The truth is, when we came back from Nbi—which happened to be in dry/hot season—almost all of us had enjoyed some time at the Coast, where we’d happily taken in the sun. But I can’t blame them for their reasoning. And they’re firmly decided in it, so I doubt we’ll be convincing them otherwise any time soon.

Also, our hair sparks conversation. Jen has the most beautiful hair of all. Kim was telling me about a time when she was talking with M. about Jen, and he was having trouble recalling who she was. Then he remembered—“Oh, the one with the beautiful hair!” Interestingly, M. is actually blind. Or nearly so. Thus, even more stunning that he remembers Jen by her long dark locks. My hair, meanwhile, is very curly and very strange. And Mark says if it’s not kept, “Oh, oh—that one is very bad.” Thank you, Mark.

They took the opportunity to scold me about my name, which is generally thought to a man’s name, which makes them very upset. And I don’t mean Andi, which would be understandable. I mean Andrea. I can only imagine that some French NGO worker named Andre sealed my fate in this. Whoever he is, I don’t like him.

I didn’t feel so bad, however, when they stopped all conversation, got pretty serious and turned to us with a question that has obviously been bothering them for a long time—was “Hillary” a man or a woman’s name? They’d long been wondering about this Hillary Clinton character they hear about on BBC.

See, so much fun, in just one tea meeting with some Lopit men. The guys are so lucky.