This Shit Would Never Happen In America

So there isn't really a day that goes by that I don't think to myself either out loud or in my head "that shit would never happen in America..." Then I thought that might be a neat blog about cultural exchange...let me begin.

1. In America if I if my tit is every hanging out in front of my dad/mom/brother/friend/child/random child/stranger I've never met before/ANYONE OTHER THAN MYSELF...I put that shit away ASAP! If I have a shirt that just happens to have a hole in it right where the nipple on my tit might be I would throw that shirt away...never to be seen again! Or I would at the very least wear a bra. Well not in Zambia. I feel like I could write a whole blog on boobs only in Zambia...they exhaust me...and I kind of hate them.

2. In America if I am cooking my dinner and a fucking tarantula the size of the palm of my hand comes to visit me I freak out! (Well that is a lie...1st I do the big sister thing and check to make sure brother Zachary isn't around because that could quite possibly the worst thing he would ever experience.) But here in Zambia when that happens I don't even try to kill it and I don't even scream...I just flick it off of my porch with a flip flop. The damn thing was so heavy and big that I couldn't even flick it off on my first try. Then the poor thing came back 45 minutes later only to be brutally murdered by my neighbor with her BARE FEET!

3. In America when people tell you that you are getting fat...everyone else around you drops their jaw to the floor and jabs their elbows into the side of whatever moron thought that would be a good thing to say. Well folks not in Zambia. I am constantly being told I am getting fat and everyone around just nods their head and smiles very large as if they had just told me that I had the body of Heidi Klum. So while I am trying not to cry they think they just handed me the biggest compliment ever. No mom I don't really think I am getting fat...all of my clothes still fit, and I am still running.

4. In America when your pot is dirty and black you grab some steel wool and soap and give the pot the best elbow grease you can muster and get the stupid thing clean. Well, not in Zambia. They take a little bit of water and pour it onto the dirty/sandy ground and rub the pot into the dirt and use it as their steel wool and get that pot better than new! In their defense they cook over an open fire every night so their pots are black black black at the end of every day. They actually judge me quite harshly when I wash my pots with a scrubber...a few times my neighbor has actually come over and taken my clean shiny pot out of my hands and rubbed it into the dirty ground while saying "In America soap...in Zambia dirty..." In my head "this shit would never happen in America..." on a lot of different levels like if someone stole my pot out of my own hands I would probably deck 'em.

5. In America if your neighbors are gone all day but their under 5 children are still around the house all day with no supervision you call the cops and get the children taken away from them because that shit just isn't okay. But apparently the phrase "It takes a Village to raise a child" came from Zambia or somewhere in Africa. Because when I haven't seen Patrica or Moffat all day I do not worry one bit about what Issac or Joanie are going to eat for lunch or dinner or anything like that. It is really quite a beautiful thing. It isn't like the kids are going hungry they just show up at someone else's house and get their food and then leave and go play. That shit would never happen in America.

6. Along those same lines, if you are a parent and you haven't seen your kids since breakfast and it is now 18 or 19:00 you might start to worry a little bit about where they are...not in Zambia though. No one in really gets to worried because the whole village knows who your kid is and where they are supposed to be and they always come home eventually. Again it really is beautiful and neat.

These are only 6 things but they are the first six that came to my head which means they are probably the most often thought about ones.

There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative. W. Clement Stone