2 WORLDS

2 WORLDS

I have lived with the locals for a week, meaning I didn’t meet a single foreigner for a whole week; I live with Guinean family and I work with Guinean people. I am getting used to it, not that it would be difficult, but different and language is still the problem. While making a choice coming or not to Guinea Bissau, a very strong point was Portuguese official language. As I learned some Portuguese in Portugal I wanted to learn some more here. Aha, a bit wrong. Locals speak their languages, special Ciriol and Balanta and as I found out later, level of Portuguese they speak is sometimes even lower than mine.

There is another world here, a world of foreigners. I went to visit Marieke, girl (or better madam) I met on the plane while coming here. She lives here with her very nice family. We went of a football match in “Campo Sweco” where more or less only foreigners meet and some of them also live (prices for renting a house here are above 3000$ while in the city prices are above 2000$). I must say I really liked that day. Not that local people would do any harm, but still it is so nice to meet people more or less in the same position as you are. They work for all kinds of non government institutions or language schools.

PERCEIVING PEOPLE DIFFERENTLY

As I told you in my previous post, I have had difficulties understanding colleges at work. At first because of their contestant “yes” (so they give you a feeling they understand, but they actually don’t) and secondly because the level of language (mine or theirs). As I found out they feel embarrassed not knowing things so they just simply say “yes”.

What about my perceiving of things? ;) Family I live with is very religious. They go to church every Sunday, Celestine is a teacher of catechism, they pray every day and so on. I am familiar with all these because I also had to go to church when I was I child. At first when they invited me to go to a church I kindly accepted, because I was curious how it looks like here, if it’s different or less boring than in Slovenia, but this Sunday I really didn’t felt like going. I already felt a cramp in my stomach, because I know how it is like in Slovenia with a very religious family. If you say you don’t want to go to church they get offended and start gossiping around how bed Christian you are. I really don’t want to have problems like these here, at least until they get more used to me. At the end I decided not to go. I was waiting what is going to happen. Nothing! If you want to go to church you go, if you don’t want to, you simply don’t go and no harm done. Uf, what a relief.