Much more than an answer

I was looking for Gate F-8 at the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam on my way to Tanzania, the journey to my second year teaching at Stefano Moshi Memorial University College. On the 8-hour flight from Detroit in a seat built for someone taller than six feet, my head slanted by the neck pillow, my tray dangerously close to my boobs, I dozed enough to make me drowsy and weary. In the airport I schlepped two laptops and a back pack through moving electric walkways that ended with an automated voice that said, “Mind your step! Mind your step!” I leaped off one and leaped onto another. I followed arrows with signs that said F-H, past shops with displays of tulip bulbs, Van Gogh memorabilia, and leather briefcases. I knew that after I found Gate F-8, I would cross another 4,000 miles in an equally uncomfortable 8-hour flight to Tanzania.

Then I found myself in a room with luggage carousels. Some part of my cerebral cortex or latex or whatever up there was slowly grinding knew that this was the end, and there was no turning back. But most of my brain slept in fog. I slogged toward a group of airport personnel visiting in and around a glass booth. I put down the two laptops and said to the men in uniform, “Can you tell me where Gate F-8 is?”

One of the men spoke. “Good morning!”

And then I remembered how the rest of the world has a civility that we in the States do not have, or no longer have. While we walk up to the bank teller and say, “Can you deposit my check?”, while we yell into the drive-through speaker, “I want a Big Mac and a large fry!”, while we ask the store clerk, “Does this blouse come in shiny gold?” the rest of the world begins by saying, “Hello, how are you?”

In Tanzania, this civility is multiplied times twenty. The first 100 words I learned were greetings. One greets an elder by saying, “Shikamoo.” Otherwise, there’s, “How are you? How is the day? How is the morning? How did you wake up? How’s yourself? Any problems? Any problems with your family? How’s your home? Your mother? Your father? Your children? Your work? Are you okay? How are you since I last saw you? How are you since the day before yesterday? How are things? What else?”

Then I learned the responses: fine (nzuri), okay (mzima, poa), peaceful (salama), very peaceful (salama kabisa), clean (safi). (I can’t explain “clean” as a response.)
When I first became aware of the necessity of greetings in Tanzania, I had to practice deep breathing and counting to ten. But store clerks are much friendlier if you first greet them. People on the bus are much friendlier. The stranger on the road who is about to show you where to find the Mbuyuni bus will be friendlier if you first greet her.

These greetings would not help me get a loaf of bread or roll of toilet paper. They would not tell me whether this bus went to Rombo or Mwika. I felt I was just doing a little dance to please someone before I was allowed to ask for what I wanted.
The irony, I eventually learned, was that these greetings forced me to recognize that the store clerk was a human being, as well as the postal clerk and the stranger on the road. They had feelings, problems, mothers and fathers, and they had lived yesterday, live today. They breathed, they woke up, they slept. Even if the answers always started out positive, the truth could emerge in the next three greetings at which time I would learn that the clerk had a headache or his mother had just died.
In the two months I had been in the States, all of that civility disappeared in a snap without my notice. In the Schipol Airport, I only felt weary and lost with more hours of weariness to follow. So when I passed the group of airport officials, I was only thinking they could give me an answer, not that they were human. And when the one official said, “Good morning!” in a cheerful voice, my weariness was released like air from a stretched balloon. I laughed and replied in kind. The men said, “Where are you from?” I told them America. They said, “Yes, we can!” For the life of me, I had no clue what they were talking about until I remembered Obama’s campaign slogan.

Then I tried the question again. Yes, they knew where F-8 was: go out these doors, go upstairs, enter the big doors and walk through the entire airport. But by the time I’d gotten this news, I was buoyed enough by their good cheer and the gentler reminder of how to be a human.