Peace Corps's Shifting Sides: The Human Touch

I’ve only met Scoot from Atlanta once. It was at my brother’s wedding. He introduced himself and we shook hands. He asked where I lived, what I did; I think we even touched on some of my favorite books. And we were still shaking hands. I don’t remember much about Scoot. I remember his silver hair, his Southern charm, the long handshake and I remember that he’d been a Peace Corps volunteer.

By now we’ve all experienced a drawn-out Namibian handshake or some platonic hand-holding with the same sex. Perhaps we still find it awkward. I for one though, now feel almost insulted by a mere one-second grasp. But what is most shocking to me is not how comfortable I feel with it or how awkward it looks, but rather how these physical exchanges are interpreted in America.

In Africa I have found myself in several “compromising” physical gestures without a second thought. I frequently hold hands with Namibian males. In a crowded combi once I sat with a strange woman’s five-year-old daughter on my lap. During a long ride in a closed bakkie I slept with one learner under arm laying on my chest.

Writing it now sounds strange, creepy even. Why? It occurs to me that in America we have a tendency to see platonic touches as suspicious. A long shake comes from a pickpocket. Two men holding hands are homosexuals. Someone offering to put a strange girl on their lap in a crowded bus is a pedophile. This is sad. Perhaps I am the only on that thinks so (and this is admittedly a new perspective for me), but, to me, casting dispersions on people for inviting physical contact with another is a sign of societal decay.

We can improve ourselves as individuals, but we put our reputations on the line with a handshake one second too long. We advance our society in every way imaginable, but we look on each other with greater suspicions. It is ironic even: we pursue connecting with social network websites, but we fear connecting human flesh.

It may be that some individuals are out to harm or steal from others. But this is the overwhelming exception, not the rule. To treat it as the rule is surely absurd. And to treat people on our streets as anonymous email addresses is nothing short of inhuman.

Perhaps this is why the West seems so baffled by Africa’s slow pace of development. All developing countries come to a constant crossroads in which preservation of the traditional culture seems at odds with accepting modernity. It is my belief that as every country has developed we have sacrificed only those parts of our traditions that we cared less for. Perhaps Africans see that accepting modernity means accepting a level of distance from each other they are not willing to part with. Can you blame them?

The question then is, can this be reconciled? Can modernity be had while preserving the purity of the human touch? I believe so. And I believe it is our question to answer, not Africa’s. It is America and the West that need to ask ourselves, can we reestablish human contact and set aside our pervasive suspicions of its motives? If not, then we should at least be asking what price we ask other’s to pay in developing. And if we can only shrink the world through fiber optic cables and not through the air we breathe, then maybe Africa is better off without us.

Is setting aside our intuitive suspicions a risk? Perhaps. But just ask any African, going to bed every night and stepping outside of your house every morning is a risk you are lucky to live through each day. The bigger risk is in electing to erode our humanity in favor of so-called development. Humans can live in poverty, but we cannot live without each other.

Africa has changed me in this manner. I hope that I can bring this platonic affection back with me to America, and, in that way, do my small part to reintroduce the comfort of human contact that more meek communities throughout the world enjoy. Then you can count on passionate interactions and long handshakes from me. And Scoot from Atlanta.