It is 8:15pm and the temperature in my room has finally dropped to 90 degrees. Earth Day or Hour or whatever it was has passed and we DID have power so I spent it sitting in front of the fan! (I'm off to the village tomorrow seeking some slightly cooler place.)
I am teaching a class on cross cultural communication and one thing we talked about is how people can see the same event and have very different perceptions of it. Or people have the same experience and interpret it very differently. Today when I arrived to teach I was almost overcome by the strong chemical/pesticide smell. The place I teach is a large school complex with several hundred students from kindergarten through high school and college. Apparently government workers had been by earlier in the day and sprayed for mosquitos for the prevention of dengue fever. They sprayed while all the kids were present. Some of the children had vomited.
Not only was I practically gagging at the odor myself, I was horrified that they had sprayed with the kids all there running around. All sorts of questions flood my mind - do they not know that the spray is poisonous? Why don't they spray in the afternoon or on a weekend? I wondered if the sprayers even take any protective measures themselves? Etc.
But I was apparently the only one who was upset. Everyone else just laughed or said that that was just the way they do it here.
I suppose so. Just like the article I read recently which said gold miners on a neighboring island sometimes rub mercury all over their skin to make them strong....
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