Staring Contest

It’s a fact… Indians like to stare.  Maybe it’s the color of my skin, or the color of my hair, but one thing’s for sure – I get stared at everyday.

  It honestly gets kind of annoying.  I mean, I sometimes get stares in America, but that’s usually because I have something in my teeth or my hair’s standing on end or I’ve made a fool of myself somehow.  People in America don’t like to get caught staring and so they find creative ways to do so without being noticed.

  Indians seem to have no discernment on when it’s time to stop staring.  As I walk towards them they stare.  As I walk past them, they stare.  As I walk away from them, they stare (how do I know?  I feel it.  Either that, or I have eyes on the back of my head.).  Really?!  Am I that different?

  There doesn’t seem to be too much of a difference between genders on the amount of staring.  Boy, girls, men and women stare at me.  Men might have more of a tendency to stare longer, but not enough to make me uncomfortable. 

  I’ve tried staring back… or maybe it’s more like glaring back.  Either way, it doesn’t seem to intimidate them too much.  Some, yes, will lower their gaze to the ground when I look at them, but some just continue staring right back.  I get tired of staring at yet another Indian that I finally give up and let them stare at me in peace.

  I’ve tried to avoid all the stares that I can… but that doesn’t work too well.  I’ll be on the roof of our house hanging laundry, when a vehicle goes by piled with people.  Knowing the inevitableness of the ensuing stares, I quickly duck behind a pair of… socks?!  Well, that didn’t work too well.  Next time, I’ll be sure to be hanging one of my skirts when another car goes by.  But, alas!  I follow my preconceived plan, only to realize a second later, that one of our neighbors is watching me quizzically from their own rooftop.  What is that white girl doing now?  So much for that.

  Sometimes, I do give them reason to stare.  Like the time I had to run to the bathroom.  Now, that shouldn’t be good enough reason to stare, but the circumstances made it such.  The girls at the Center had to do a practical to pass their massage therapy class.  I was picked as the “dummy” for them to do their practical on while Krystle would watch and grade them.  I was freezing cold, so the girls piled blankets on me to keep me warm.  Half way through the number of girls doing the practical, I had to use the bathroom really, really bad, but being immodest, I wrapped myself in the blankets so that I could relieve my burdened bladder.  Unfortunately, the blankets fell to just above my knees, revealing my very white legs, but being in such a state of hurriedness, I didn’t care and ran outside to the waiting lavatories (which are nothing more than a hole in the ground inside a metal box).  Upon reentering the church building (where we were doing the practicals), I was told by one of the girls that a man had been staring at me.  We glanced out the door and, sure enough, he was still staring at the door.  I wouldn’t blame him for staring at me.  Here I was, wrapped in 3 blankets, baring my pale legs, running frantically from the bathroom to the church wearing flip-flops a size too small.  Quite the comical scene, to be sure.

But more often then not, I’m not doing something crazy like that.  In fact, I’m pretty much normal (some people may disagree).  But I still appear to be worthy of their stares.  Krystle says she gets stared at as well, but she has dark hair.  I have blond hair.  It’s like it’s screaming, “hey everybody!  Look at me!”  Once when Krystle, Christian and I were at market, Krystle whispered to me, “That guy’s staring at you.”  I looked at her and asked rather sarcastically, “which one?”  What’s new? 

  I don’t know if I’d ever get used to all this staring.  Maybe if I lived here long enough I wouldn’t mind if after a while.  But it’s still bothering me even after 3 ½ weeks of being here.  Oh well.  Maybe that’s just a part of the experience.