"You're Invited"

I thought I’d skew away from my standard self-indulgent posts to comment on a practice here that I have been taking note of recently. Whenever people are eating, they invite those around them to join in. They will say, ‘you are invited’, and the others will then thankfully nod. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone actually accept this invitation, and dig into the food, but it is a mere formality to be polite. Its kind of like how we say, ‘how are you’, and the other person generally responds with, ‘I’m good, thanks’. No one actually ever says how they really feel. "Oh, I had such a crappy day…"You’d never be able to get anywhere if we actually told people ‘how we were.’

So I totally know this is a practice, and I normally am pretty good about inviting those around me to share my food, but sometimes it slips. The other day at work, being one of those days, I was called out on it. I was told that I should bring this practice back home, so my way of doing that is to post about it. I guess im latching onto this blog more than I had initially thought!
A great example of the necessity of this practice was in a taxi yesterday. After bargaining for the price for about a minute or so, and after having agreed upon a price that was 3 cedis (the currency) lower than his asking price, we were driving along and he invited me to his food. So not only had we just gotten into an argument, had he tried to rip me off big time, and I obviously sneered and rolled my eyes at him for treating me like I just walked off the plane a day earlier, he still invited me to his meal! Another example was at gym the other day. I was listening to music, running away and in my zone, when I was interrupted by Chris (the trainer), to say, "come let’s eat." I graciously declined, and began thinking a lot about this custom. I tried to picture this ever happening at gyms in Canada, and I simply could not. We are so use to an environment where people are always in their ‘zone.’ Campuses, subways, busses, streets and gyms, people are listening to headphones in their zone, and if they are not listening to headphones, they are still in their zone. When we walk around, we have strict places to go, people to meet and things to buy. We have an agenda for every aspect of our lives (or at least I do!) and we work furiously to accomplish this. The pace of life is different here, and although it takes some time to adjust to, you just have to adjust. People walk slower here, even if they have somewhere to be. And then I notice myself, speeding by people on sidewalks, even though I am in no hurry at all. Students on campus here seem way more relaxed and less…manic. Often I see obruni’s (foreigners) walking around campus with their Ipods glued to their ears, and I hate to say it but they look really foolish and out of place. They are walking around alone, madly swiveling their thumb around the dial, and I can’t help but think to myself, we ought to invite people in more often. When I think of McGill’s campus (especially during exam time…), it is the complete opposite. Pretty much everyone has white cords coming out of their heads, speeding from the library to class to get more coffee…myself included. Im not saying this is ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, but when I am so far removed from that kind of environment, its hard to not to think about alternatives. Now, I know this is the standard, ‘no hurry in Africa’ type argument, and I don’t mean to be so cliché, I swear, but the whole idea of inviting those around you to join you, got me thinking.

Alright, im off to the immigration office as i realized that my visa expires today....and i dont really want to be deported just yet.