Lebanese Chicken and Semantic Fields

Yesterday my hosts asked me whether I was open to cooking a meal before departing from Mexico: this is course like asking a pig whether it would like to roll in mud, or a kid whether it wanted to visit the candy store. It was clear to me that I was going to have to overcome two challenges: since I am living with fellow monks I was sure that the kitchen would be missing key tools of the trade or that the ones available would be sub-standard. I was not disappointed; the peeler was indeed rubbish, as my blisters this morning prove. I also expected to have to improvise as far as ingredients were concerned, and again, it was so: there is an overabundance of limes here, but lemons are almost impossible to come by. And the vegetable section was selling something which looked like large green animal ears, but I was told they were cactus leaves and you could grill them. Even I stuck with red beet and almond salad, Lebanese chicken and fruit salad (hence the blisters).

But what I did not reckon with was the linguistic challenge involved in making this meal. I have been living here for almost four weeks now and my Spanish, while faulty, has allowed me to go out with friends, participate in international leaders’ meetings, play UNO with little kids and facilitate consulting sessions; but trying to head up a cooking crew for a 19 person meal was an unexpected challenge. How do you say “peel”, “simmer”, “chop into cubes”, “bite-size chunks” in Spanish? What’s a bowl, strainer, blender, lemon squeezer in your wonderful language? My friends were very gracious, but even so it proved a surprising and somewhat humbling experience, trying to explain (sometimes better, sometimes worse) what needed to be done: so no wonder the apples got hacked, not chopped, and the chicken got basted in garlic paste more slowly than it otherwise would. All par for the course!

But once it was all over and the meal eaten (to general satisfaction, I understand, except for the lack of a nicely chilled Pinot Blanc) I had to think how often such things happen to us: we think we know the “language”, but somehow we totally miss what is going on. I remember my first weeks in the PhD programme, after more than twenty years away from academia. I was sure people were speaking German, yet I had no idea what they were talking about: different semantic field. Friends assure me the first weeks, maybe months, of marriage are like that: you thought you were marrying someone from the same country, but communication seems strangely difficult: different semantic field, maybe also different planet!? And of course when we enter the religious sphere, the same holds true. Most of us are not used to the language, symbols, culture so pervasive in churches, monasteries, religious communities, and we feel totally out of our depth, disorientated, frustrated.

The temptation in all those situations is of course to bolt: get me out of here, back into my comfort zone! Get me a sous-chef who can speak German, let me drop my PhD and return to what I am at ease with; let me run from this relationship and hang out with my friends from Mars; let’s leave this religious nuts to themselves and go back to suburbia! But of course the exposure to this new world, this new semantic field or culture, is what makes growth possible. The learning zone, so educationalists tell us, it outside the comfort zone, and just short of the panic zone. So now I know how to squeeze a lime the Mexican way and have learned that a cooking pot is called “olla” in Spanish. Maybe next time you are tempted to flee a learning experience, be it academic, relational or religious, remember Lebanese chicken!

Just Tacos and Sombreros?

I have now been in Mexico for a month, and just about each of my preconceived notions has been shattered: surely there is a mañana spirit somewhere, but surely not in Monterrey, a city founded by Jews and still known as the most intense place this side of the Panama canal. If Taco Bell was the only “Mexican food” you have ever tasted, then you know as much about the food here as those who have sung Edelweiss know about Austrian music: the cooking here is rich, varied, colourful- simply fantastic. I had also been warned about the heat but even that was- well, not quite a disappointment- but at least a pleasant surprise: 35 degrees max, and that mostly dry.

Monterrey is a large city- Vienna is my benchmark, so everything with more than 2 million inhabitants is big, and Monterrey has 3 million. It is surrounded by mountains which gives you pleasant views from just about everywhere. It is also wealthy, with lots of industry (steel, brewing, service), so you could miss the fact that 40% of Mexico’s 111 million population needs to survive on 2 dollars a day. The other week I had a chance to go to Acapulco, which meant I flew over Mexico City, or the D.F. (Federal District), as they call it. Twenty three million people in one urban area; this is the most extreme case of what constitutes one of the issues of Mexico, namely a highly urbanized society with 77% living in cities.

I loved Acapulco: it is a beautiful bay on the Pacific Ocean which had seen it’s heyday in the 80s when lots of Americans chose it as their holiday destination. Now it is a bit like the Brighton of Mexico, mainly visited by Mexicans, charming in its dishevelled beauty. Since I was hosted by friends, I got to see the “Mexican side” of the city. The bay, especially once you go out by boat, is simply spectacular. While cruising and singing a friend pointed out to me Carlos Slim’s home: he is the world’s richest man and his wealth equals about 8% of Mexico’s gross domestic product. In other words inequality is enormous, so that Mexico is the 28^th most unequal country with a Gini coefficient of 48.2.

The hotel I was staying in also hosted twenty or so “federales” i.e. state police, men armed to the teeth and specially dispatched to fight the “narcos”, the drug lords. We were warned not to leave the property, and the news of that weekend made it clear why: five policemen had been gunned down and two people’s heads were delivered in plastic bags with special notes from the drug barons. Acapulco is not alone: Monterrey has seen people being kidnapped, mugged, shot and savagely slaughtered, all in broad daylight- not to speak of the infamous border city of Juarez. All this has made people fearful, nervous and some of them wonder whether the fight that the president has gotten himself into is worth it.

Last week I went out for dinner with a friend, and we had the famous “cabrito” (grilled goat)- simply delicious. He is deeply concerned about the political situation in the country. But when we talked it became clear that he saw no hope for change: the political system seems to be a closed and impenetrable shop and the average Mexican sees no other way to influence society. When I asked him about the Third Sector he was not sure what I was referring to. Upon further research I found out that Mexico has the smallest non-profit sector of any Latin American country: it employs 0.4% of all employees, compared to 2.2% in Brazil and 12.6% in the Netherlands. In other words, for historic and cultural reasons which I would not dare to explain, Civil Society is poorly developed. As a result events like the recent kidnappings leave people totally helpless, unable to exercise political, economic or moral influence toward change. Consequently you watch, powerless, while you eat hot food and while the sun sets over the beautiful mountains. Surely there is another way…

Workers of the World, Unite!

I have entered my flight confirmation number into the terminal, it has scanned my passport, asked me for a million details (it stopped just short of enquiring about my shoe size), and then a message flashes up: “We cannot issue your boarding pass- please see an attendant”. So I try to get the attention of a middle-aged lady behind the counter, and she jumps up, shouting “Gladly! I am needed. I have a job!” I am slightly taken aback by so much customer attention, so after getting my boarding pass sorted out I ask her why she was so glad to help. Her reply was unequivocal: “These terminals are there to make us redundant, but so far they have not fully succeeded. I am thankful to have a job”.

Her sentiment is by no means unique, especially in the Detroit area, which is where I am checking in. The car industry has taken a serious hit, so the state’s unemployment figure is around 15%, compared to 9% for the rest of the country. And that is not even the full picture: in a recent Gallup study underemployment in the United States was more like 18%, which means that one in five Americans does not have as much work or the type of work he or she would like. That is pretty steep. A friend of mine is not just out of work- after paying his mortgage for the past 15 years, he had to stop because of unemployment. Since the house prices in his part of the state plummeted, the value of his house is now less than what he still owes. In other words, he has paid his mortgage for nothing, and the bank now owns his house.

So here I am, on sabbatical, free to not work for four months, at least not working for pay, yet I become keenly aware of the privilege of having a job, one that not only pays the bills but that also brings satisfaction. I realize that efficiency is not all it is cracked up to be: so what if check-in is that little bit slower, but I actually talk to somebody rather than a machine, and somebody has a job? My brothers in the Philippines don’t have a washing machine. Instead a lady comes in once a week to do the laundry; I am not sure it is cheaper, but it provides a job and feeds a family. So should I make my purchases more often at the corner shop rather than at Walmart, so the little Indian can keep his job?

At least in Europe we have all drunk deeply from the Marxist ideology which claims that work is evil and that the slavery of work needs to be abolished. Indeed some jobs are not worthy of that name and should be eliminated; but surely the abolition of all work for the sake of more leisure is idiotic. Not only does it not make economic sense, it potentially also robs people of their dignity and vocation. During my four years in Belfast I met many people who had grown up in families which were on the dole, receiving social benefits, for most of their lives; the effect on them was most often disastrous: nothing got them out of bed, nor were they forced to look beyond themselves or serve anybody else.

I know people in many walks of life who take great pride in their work; some are academics, others shoe shines. Yet not every job will in the end turn out to be a vocation, a calling. Protecting lives makes some people ready to risk their lives every day, but packing groceries might not. But the adage of Martin Luther King still holds true: “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live”. So even if we don’t have a job which gives us a sense of meaning and purpose, even if we don’t have a job at all, we all need something beyond ourselves which makes us ready to risk and sacrifice. If it is not the people we work for or the cause we serve, what is it going to be? So if we can’t identify with my flight attendant’s reaction, maybe it is time we looked for a vocation.