Enjoying dinner with friends
from India
Christmas joy for us is visiting friends and family. Today, our African born niece (not my niece by USA standards but by African ones), cooked a African dinner, with a little touch of India and Middle East added for some local friends, friends from Gay Mills and our friend Kranthi from India and her daughter and son-in-law that live in the Twin Cities. I believe we had five or six cultures represented in the food and drink we shared at dinner.
When I was young my Lebanese grandfather lived with us and my mother had an instinctive sense of Middle Eastern hospitality. In the Middle Eastern tradition welcoming people into your tent or house and giving them food and drink is natural and expected. My Sierra Leone African born niece has a similar sense of hospitality. In both the Middle Eastern and African culture there is little sense of the individualism that runs rampant in the USA but a real sense of belonging to a community where everyone is expected to help and share with each other.
Actually the same sense of sharing community is true in Central and South America, even with the poorest of the poor in Haiti. The one government official we talked to in Haiti was in charge of keeping relations with Haitians that were living in other countries. Since Haiti has been so devastated by Western forces many people depend on the little money sent them by family and friend overseas. Even my niece from Sierra Leone who is struggling financially right now sends some of the little she has to her family in Free Town, Sierra Leone so her brothers and sisters can attend school.
One of the politicians running for President says he does not want to give poor persons food and basics but give them an opportunity for a decent job with decent pay. This sounds great but at the same time officials are cutting money for education, decent housing and health care needed for an opportunity to get a good job. Also they give big tax breaks and subsidies to corporation to send jobs overseas. Buying in America has become extremely difficult.
There has been a rash of homicides in Milwaukee these first six days of the New Year. Instead of looking at the root cause of this violence politicians and the police chief keep telling us the “homicides are not random and not connected”. Random means they are not connected events so if they are not random it means they are connected. Logic and grammar does not seem to be a strong point of politicians. But without a shared sense of community such double talk seems to go unheard.
To return to what my friend from Haiti wrote in his Christmas greetings: “We are all neighbors” or as some religions teach: “We are all brothers and sisters”.
The USA has a lot to offer the rest of the world but has more to learn about sense of community and how we are all connected.
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