Letter 20 - Touching borders (part 1 of 2)

Dear boys,                                                                                                                          02/14/14

                I take the bus back to Niamey, carrying a large bag of guavas I purchased in Maradi on my lap. I eat approximately half of the guavas during the bumpy trip. I can buy guavas at my local international food store in Chantilly, but they are not soft and sweet like the ones I grew up eating. The bus driver has two luggage assistants who ride on the seat across from me. After they stare me up and down, they start hitting on me. This is all too familiar. I glance at them, pull my veil farther around me, shut my eyes, and pretend to fall asleep. But it takes me a while to sleep because I am scared. I shouldn’t be, but I am. Childhood fears are hard to break. Most Nigerien girls my age are now either wearing hijabis or not wearing veils at all. I’ve worn the traditional wrap-around veil my whole visit to Niger. It’s the most privacy I get without communicating that I may be a Muslim. I remember how victimized I used to feel by men’s calls and gazes as a child, and even though I’ve gotten far fewer this visit (maybe it’s just because I’m not the prime age for marriage anymore), the fear is still hard to shake.

                Just outside Niamey I call Dad to let him know I will arrive soon. After the pandemonium of people exiting the bus subsides, I make my way down the narrow steps and across the parking lot. There he is in the gateway to the bus parking, tall and broadshouldered and with his feet planted firmly, motorcycle helmet in hand. (And he wonders why I like the “bad boy” type.) At the sight of him I can feel the tightness leave my shoulderblades. I would run to him, but I want to seem culturally appropriate. A Nigerien stranger might think I was his significant other and be offended by perceived PDA. Nigerien women touch – a lot of arm and hand and shoulder touching – and men who are friends hold hands, which to me seems kind of strange but I love to see men openly showing affection when in our culture it is taboo – but otherwise, touch is limited here. Not too different from America, huh? Just with a different spin. 

Here in Niger the touch distinction between men and women stands out like a stamp across life. There is such a strange relational dynamic in this culture where newborn babies are promised as future wives to their fathers’ friends; where an elderly man is just as likely coming on to me as being friendly; where teenaged girls marry men in their thirties or forties; where I have to flirt a little to get a good deal in the marketplace. I think that’s why the romanticized “older man” type has never appealed to me. My experience of older men has often been that they either ignore me because I’m not relationship potential or attempt to manipulate me because they think I am. 

                I ride home behind Dad on the motorcycle, holding tightly to his shoulders like he taught me when I was a little girl. Dad has never been very “touchy” and didn’t like my arms around him. Maybe having an extra 100 pounds of child cling to him also made it harder to drive the motorcycle through the thick sand of Dakoro roads.  But touch is my love language, and I’ll take whatever I can get. I savor the warmth of his shoulders under my hands and the adrenaline/terror of our precarious journey through Niamey traffic. It is a rare, precious thing to be able to touch and be touched by a man who does not fear that he will seem inappropriate or look at you as a sexual object. It’s something I am so hungry for.

                Everyone is so happy to see me. Even though I’ve only been gone 5 days, I have missed these voices and faces and hugs. Even Josiah wraps me up in the big warm full-body hug I love and holds me there for longer than necessary. I sigh and tuck my head against his safe shoulder and am so thankful for the all times a touch proves its sincerity with longer-than-necessary-ness. Then all the noise starts. Sarah wants me to watch Ice Age 4 (I’ve only seen Ice Age 1, and that was 14 years ago). Ruthanna wants me to watch Brave. While I do my shower-dance under cold water (the ground must stay cool during cold season here), I can hear them arguing and slamming doors outside the bathroom. After my shower, clean and chilled, I flop down on the couch and cover my head with a pillow. Mom asks what’s wrong and I say, “My mind is just really busy and I want to rest a little.” Mom sends the girls away. Then she sits down on the couch beside me and starts asking questions.

                I don’t want to talk. I just want to process internally. I know she missed me and is curious about my trip and wishes she could have gone. I feel extremely selfish for not talking to her. But I just can’t even think of words right now. When I explain this, she nods, and then she just rubs my back. Mom has always been patient. And good about touching us. We are all much more “touchy” than Dad is, and I think it’s thanks to our Mom. 

                Psychologist Harry Harlow performed a ground-breaking study that I think of often, especially when I am sad. He separated baby monkeys from their mothers within hours of birth and placed them in cages with wire “mother” structures that had feeding bottles built into them. One group of baby monkeys had an uncovered wire mother. The other group’s mother was covered in terry cloth, making it softer. The wire-mother babies stayed away from their “mothers” unless they were hungry. The terry-cloth-mother babies spent large amounts of the day cuddling with their mothers, comparable to babies who stayed with their real-life mothers. Apparently the touchability of the mother generated affection and a sense of safety for the baby. In later experiments Harlow found that while the two groups of baby monkeys displayed the same physical development, the wire-mother babies panicked more easily and displayed far fewer social bonding behaviors later in life. If the wire-mother babies stayed with the wire-mother for more than 90 days, their social aberrancy was irreversible. In contrast, the terry-cloth-mother babies appeared to develop normal emotional bonding behaviors. Studies of premature babies demonstrate something even more profound. Premature babies who are carried skin-to-skin by parents (a practice known as kangaroo-carrying) or even in slings/full contact baby carriers by nurses have a significantly higher rate of survival than babies who remain in incubators in between being fed or cared for. The first study on kangaroo carrying demonstrated a 40% decrease in mortality for babies who were kangaroo-carried.

                People were made for touch. Touch is healing and safe and arousing. And yet touch is sometimes sacrificial. It makes you very concretely vulnerable. It forces you to go beyond your cultural and experiential conditioning. It creates emotions that make you vulnerable too. It forces you to let go of external boundaries and an external locus of control, and to place your boundaries and control in places that run deeper. It teaches you the significance of interpretation. It teaches you the limitations of interpretation too. When it’s done with righteousness and sincerity, it levels the playing field between human beings. Touch is about trust. Trust makes us healthier beings. (Which is where this letter has been going this whole time.)

This is one of the things I struggle with about conservative Christianity. Have you ever noticed how Christians touch? It reminds me of the difference between Baptists (the “Frozen Chosen” J ) and Charismatics. It seems like it’s either “Here we go with our polite and token handshake” or “Dude let’s do our token body-bump.” But where is the fearless sincerity? So much of our touching reeks of pride and fear. 

Which gets into boundaries. Yes, I believe in boundaries. Boundaries protect us and sometimes they define us. A boundary tells you and I where we live relative to each other. We come and go across it. It’s a border. When we touch in sincere love we meet there. I have borders with you, my compatriots, my brothers, whom I trust. (Recently I woke up early on a Sunday morning certain that all I wanted was to be next to Matt when he opened his eyes for the first time that day. I drove 3 hours above speed limit, called Aunt Robyn so I wouldn’t ring the doorbell, ran through the house, and darted into his room just as he turned over and opened his eyes. We lay side by side in bed talking and catching up on life until the clock said we had to get ready for church. This is unusual for most cultures, I know. But there was nothing inappropriate here, just genuine sibling love. And we can do this because we have borders.)

Thank you for touching me with borders all these years. 

Tabitha