Seeing people

In Nancy’s Political Ecology class, we talked about different ways of “seeing the land”—how what might look like a wild untouched tangled jungle to a foreign observer might in fact be a carefully cultivated ‘garden’ of sorts to an Indonesian swidden agriculturist. Sitting at dinner last night with my neighbors and newly found friends, I wondered if the same might be true for humans, if there are literally different ways of seeing and visually processing people. The subject, in last night’s case, being me.

The evening went something like this. It started yesterday morning, when I came out of the bathroom (a separate room attached to the main house) still half-asleep in my pajamas and nearly bumped into a rather short but very friendly Indian man standing at my doorstep. “I would like to invite you for dinner, we have been meaning to have you over for a while now, but we are finally having a dinner tonight”, he said. “Ah, well, thank you,” I said back, not quite sure how to proceed. “But um…have I met you?” He looked at me in confusion and I looked back racking my brains trying to remember if I’d met this guy somewhere, and then suddenly realized. He thought I was Kara. (Keep in mind that Kara is blond with blue eyes. I don’t think I would have realized that he had me mixed up with her except that apparently everyone here thinks we look identical—I still have a slew of kids who follow me around town calling “Refilwe”, Kara’s Setswana name). “Oh well in fact Kara is actually out of town”, I explained, “and I’m her friend and houseguest who is staying here for a while, doing research”. I could see the “oops” look on his face but he quickly recovered and told me that I was welcome to come to dinner anyways, an invitation I gladly accepted as I am getting sick of my own cooking and the thought of a South Indian meal of whatever caliber sounded pretty good to me.

So Mr. Selvaraj picked me up that evening and drove me to his nearby pale blue house on the edge of town, which he shares with his colleague from an Indian government construction company for which they both work. They are currently here on a contract from the Botswana government, overseeing the construction of the new humungous shiny police station here in Kachikau. We made a bit of small talk in the car and I fumbled to explain my research for the zillionth time since I’ve gotten here.
Cut to a few hours later when we finally are served dinner (I was pretty grumpy waiting till 10pm (!!!) to eat my dinner but I quickly forgave them when it turned out they knew how to make a mean chapatti and when they bashfully explained that they had had to figure out cooking in the year that they have been here since they left their wives and children back in India). We (me, the two Indian contractors and three of their Batswana employees) eat our dinner with some awkward silences, and then over dessert, Mr. Selvaraj asks me to write down my full name with my surname. I’m pretty sure this was just a ploy to get me to write my first name too, as I’m guessing they didn’t catch it the first time (people outside the Western world have a really hard time with “Clare” for some reason, it usually comes out as “Crare” if it all), but anyways I write down my full name. Anjali Clare Gupta. With Clare underlined so they know what to call me.

I pass the paper back and Mr. Selvaraj looks down at it and then looks up at me with a look that I think defines the word astonishment. “But this”, he pronounces, “is an INDIAN name!!!” “Yes, it is,” I say, “My dad is Indian, he is from there originally. And my mom is English.”. He passes the paper over to Mr. Selvaraj’s colleague and there is what I can only describe as a Mr. Premji moment. The penny drops. Wide smiles suddenly appear on their faces and previously slightly formal guarded eyes are now shining. I’m no longer the random American girl who looks like but isn’t the other random American in Kachikau; I’m now some sort of stand-in for Mr. Selvaraj’s daughter studying in Russia whom he hasn’t seen in two years, or some small element of home packaged up in an unexpected box. Either way, they are beaming and I am now told that I must stop by anytime, anytime at all, I don’t need to be invited. And do I want to go on a game drive with them on Saturday?

But it’s still me, sitting on their couch, working my way through my bowl of custard and bananas.

I’m not quite sure what my point is, but it’s interesting how people see what they expect to see. Or maybe more accurately, don’t see what they don’t expect to see. I still don’t understand how in any universe people can think that Kara (who has been living here a YEAR!) and I could be the same person, but then again, there is a lot about people’s ways of seeing and thinking here that I have yet to grasp. I guess, really, that’s what extended field work is for…