Aftershocks

Today's CNN article mentioned that after the Tohoku earthquake hit Japan last year, nearly 700 aftershocks were felt in various parts of Japan for months after. Obviously, this became the inspiration for the title of this post on what has been bugging me for a bit today- aftershocks of my little incident.  

Of course, I've spent a lot of time telling people what happened and at some level, people's shock and sympathy made me feel better. However, incidents like the one that happened in the last two days are common for people (especially expats) in Malawi. People get mugged, their homes get robbed and they are generally attacked for being the moneyed, elite class of people who can afford to spend the poor-man’s-monthly-salary on one good dinner in town. My Malawian friends have also noticed an increase in robberies and mugging in the last few months and most predict that this will only get worse as the Malawian economy goes to the dogs.

Personally, I can’t seem to reconcile my (by some standards) minor incident with my rather extreme reactions one day after. Tonight as I went out for dinner with friends and hung out later at the Shack (yes, Wednesday is Shack Night!) – I was conscious that I was suspicious of every Malawian in the house. At one point, a Malawian guy crept up behind my friend to surprise her and I spontaneously yelled thinking that some unknown guy was creeping up on her. Turns out that he was her friend which led to acute embarrassment but didn't reduce my fear. Maybe the fact that I was stone-cold-sober exacerbated my reaction. I forced myself to go onto the dance floor where both expats and Malawians were dancing, but still scooted away every time a Malawian came in the vicinity.

My mind tells me that such reactions are extreme and unnecessary. But I can’t help feeling that every other guy on the street is watching me and wants to snatch my purse. At our girl’s dinner tonight we were discussing how we end up feeling guilty because African women get treated terribly on a daily basis and manage to lead normal lives despite being physically and mentally abused. And here one “little” incident is enough to shake us up and make us suspicious of everyone around us.

But I guess we live in different worlds. I can’t feel guilty for being lucky enough to have a safer world. My reality is that getting attacked is not on my watch-out-for-list. I have not been taught how to deal with situations where I feel insecure all the time – day and night. And I’m not going to feel guilty for having had that privilege.