Roots
Cultural acclimatization
By Marifi Jara
QUELIMANE, Mozambique—Many years ago, it was a foreigner friend who first stirred in me thoughts about our “gun culture” in the Philippines. He commented how he found it disturbing, quite menacing actually in the beginning and somehow amusing later on, to see security guards carrying guns – big guns at that. This scene, he said, was particularly disconcerting in commercial establishments that are supposedly marketed as fun, kiddy places such as McDonalds and Jollibee.
I’ve really taken that for granted, but seeing it from a different perspective, indeed it was strange looking at a life-size statue of the perennially-smiling Ronald or a big figure of the happy bee standing side by side with a guard brandishing some big weapon. What does that teach our children? I wonder, would a guard actually use his weapon to stop robbers who might hold up the fastfood place during the busy hours when there would surely be children around?
It is a false sense of security to think that having a violent weapon at hand will increase the chances of deterring violence. And we do know that, for why else do we have a gun ban policy during election season? We do understand that banning the gun will lower the risk of violence. Now how about a permanent ban policy?
Speaking of guns, an interesting piece of trivia: the flag of Mozambique is the only one in the world with a gun emblem – an AK-47 at that! It’s a relatively new flag, having been adopted only in 1983, and the gun is intended to symbolize continued defense and vigilance to protect the country’s still young independence. There have been initiatives to change the flag design – into one without the gun – but the powers that be here would like to keep things as they are.
Anyway, going back to my friend, he still lives in the Philippines and while he has acclimatized himself with commonly seeing guns around, the stance against it remains firm.
*****
I know it’s a bit belated but this being my first piece for 2010, allow me to send out a cheerful New Year greeting! No, I haven’t been devoured by a lion here in the African continent if you are thinking that, as one of my colleagues in The PUNCH teased.
The past few weeks have just been a bit of a whirl, even if travelling within practically the same time zone is not so disorienting and making a journey from one season to another isn’t so daunting. Our body temperature, aided by the right clothes, adapts more easily than our body clock. And so it was without any health hassle that we survived a trip from the humid summer here to the cold snowy winter in the Netherlands for the Christmas and New Year holidays then back again to the heat here. On the flight out, I was almost sure I would get sick after crossing over from one extreme season to another within a 24-hour span. But everything has been well. What is more tricky really is acclimatizing, or re-acclimatizing, from one culture to another.
It could be as simple as crossing the road, for example. It means switching the wits on full alert again in a place where car drivers feel a misguided sense of privilege after walking around in a society where the hierarchy of rights on the road is: pedestrians first, bicyclists next, then the motorized vehicles last. There is such politeness and civility in cars stopping to let people on foot through. In contrast, at the capital city here, you still have to look right and left even when the walk sign is on green. And right here in the small city of Quelimane, some drivers have no care about the dust they leave behind for pedestrians to inhale as they speed out on the un-cemented roads.
Guns, road manners. Culture is a collective mindset. It would take a people to change a certain way of life, but individuals can prompt the difference and a new way of thinking.
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