Overfed

Whether I want it or not, I belong more to the ragtag group of immigrants in my Finnish class than to the larger culture of Lappeenranta. It's not because I have more in common with them - it is almost certain that I have more in common behaviorally with Finns than with the members of my class -   it's a result of the amount of time we spend together. Despite our differences, we've formed a small coalition for the purposes of mastering the grammatical puzzle that is the Finnish language. It's been a pleasant, edifying alliance. I've even made a couple of true friends.

This week, a classmate from Cameroon returned to us after he'd attended a conference in South Africa. When our teacher asked about his trip, he shrugged. "Scary," he said. 

"Why scary?" she asked. 

He went on to describe a situation in which a bus he'd been on was hijacked. He was held at gunpoint by men dressed as police, and all of the things he had with him were stolen. The hijackers drove the bus into the wilderness, threw the key away, and left the passengers to search for it so that they might make their way back to civilization. We listened to this story in horror, understanding to only a limited extent how much worse it could have been. "That's the kind of thing that happens in American movies," someone said. It is, unfortunately, also the kind of thing that happens in South Africa. 

We took a break. When we returned, we each found two pieces of South African candy waiting for us on our desks. The guy had thought to provide us with sugar after he'd been threatened with a gun. There is something almost unfathomable about that. To give in spite of being rightfully preoccupied with yourself is a special brand of generosity. 

One of my favorite classmates is an Ingush woman. She wears a variety of colored headscarves, slips away to pray every day at break time, and speaks Finnish without any hesitancy. Her speech is usually a bit like word salad, but she manages to convey herself well without any of the hindrances usually brought on by fear, shyness, or excessive thought.  

Telling her the details of my own life story is intensely embarrassing. She has spent much of her life in a war zone, living in a state of perpetual fear . What can I say? "I grew up in the country. I was always safe, warm, and well fed. I went to school and sang in a choir. Oh, there was that one time when my parents got divorced." Her experience reminds me that I am a soft, privileged, overnourished human being. Actually, I like to be reminded. It makes me thankful for the life I've led, yes, but it also provides me with a more complete, accurate perspective on what it means to live in the world. 

This Ingush woman seems to elicit a certain amount of sneering (though mostly of a friendly nature, if that's possible) from the Russian members of class. A very quiet, usually kindly Russian classmate once whispered to me, "L speaks terrible Russian. It's because she's from the south, in that part the country. Did you know that she and her husband don't want to find jobs?" I distinctly remember being unable to conceal my indignation. "Well," the Russian woman said after she'd seen the look of disapproval on my face, "none of us really want jobs, do we?" 

In an odd way, I felt a bit like a beloved aunt had just said something terribly catty about another of our relatives. And, as much as I hate to deploy this particular cliche, our class is very much like a family. We didn't choose each other, but we must necessarily accept and care for each other. How else will we survive?