I left my lodge early in
the morning. It was Sunday at 7:30am, but shoeshine man already took his seat
and waited for customers. Every morning, I was busy to walk to the office and
passed by him, but I approached him to have my shoes cleaned this time.
“Good morning!”
I said hello to him in
English because using Swahili is my inconvenient
truth. I gave words of blessing to him that he began working so early even
on Sunday, but he did not seem to understand me. Instead, I asked how much it
was to polish the shoes. He said, “Five
hundred!” 500 Tanzania Shilling equaled to 30 cents. I sat on the chair,
then, he hurriedly took out many different sizes of flip-flops and tried to
find the most suitable one for me. I changed my feet, and passed my shoes to
him. Since my shoes were black, he took out black shoe polish and began
polishing it single-mindedly.
His work reminded me of my
time in the military. When I was a military recruit, I used to polish combat
boots really hard every night. When a drillmaster detected at least one dirty
combat boots, he knocked over the boot rack out of anger and ordered recruits to
clean them again whole night until he became satisfied. The combat boots
should be bling-bling, like a glittered with star in the night sky. You may wonder
what is the relationship between dirt on the combat boots and the battle?
Recruits would have to roll in mud next day, and the shoes would get dirty again a
few hours later. Should the combat boots function as nightglow so that
soldiers can walk so easily in the darkness? It was all about establishing
military discipline. 각잡힌 군대! Because the victory from the battle lies in
soldiers’ habitual mental attitude. If that mindset relaxes, you must be
defeated in the war. So I was bordering on obsession with making everything
perpendicular, 90 degrees of blanket, 90 degrees of folding laundry, 90 degrees
of walking (직각보행)… When
I entered some training center for receiving moral education, all drillmasters sang with unity, “발 굴려어~~~!!!”
(Roll feet!) So I had to roll my feet continuously
until I found the seat, and I had to sit 90 degrees upright during the whole
session.
That was an inconvenient truth. I had to maintain a
permanent state of tension to prepare for defense by rolling my feet and making
my life at an angle of 90°. When I indulged in memories, a shoeblack just
finished his job. My shoes were so shiny, and it looked almost new. I paid him
500 TZS and said, “See you next time!”
As soon as turning on my
heel, I felt bad for him. He just earned 500 TZS, but it was only 30 cents. In
the afternoon, I bought Wali Nyama for lunch. It was 2,500 TZS. He would have
to polish shoes 5 times to have this lunch. ‘Has
he met other customers? Does he have enough money to buy some food?’ I
stared at my blameless shoes. Oh… the tip of my shoes has already got some
dirt. I flipped a speck of dust off. Faced with an inconvenient truth, I slowly ate them all. I am so lucky man who
never catches typhoid. I have always liked to eat local food since I was in
Sierra Leone, but I am invulnerable to eat any kind of food. Some foreigners
here do not enjoy eating local food, or they are too sensitive to eat new food
and get typhoid, so they take the trouble to do cooking or buy food at the
hotel restaurant. Morning hamburger was 6,000 TZS, and Chinese food was more
than 15,000 TZS in the fancy restaurant. I could save my money thanks to my
durable body, but it was still an inconvenient
truth that I did not still understand what Swahili said in the local
restaurant menu.
I came back to the office
and finished up the report. I was using my laptop, MacBook Air. It was a small
sized laptop that I have been using almost 2 years. Many people in the U.S.
were using this computer, so I thought I was one of many users. But I am not a
normal person here. The MacBook that has a bitten apple logo is unprecedented
in kind in Africa, so people feel novel and usually ask me how much it is. Beside
my laptop, my Samsung Galaxy S III that I have been using for more than 2 years
is ardently charged. Around my wrist, my G-Shock watch is ticking away the
seconds silently. I look like a rich, every inch of me. I came here for health
in Africa, but now I breathe exotic fumes to them. Over several days, I had
seriously thought whether I should put them in the luggage and get some old
phone and old laptop in Sierra Leone. But once in a blue moon, I found Sierra
Leoneans who was using the newest phone, Samsung Galaxy S5, so I just decided
to use my stuff. Because it is me who use those. People also ask me how much my
phone is, and how much does it cost to live in South Korea or in the U.S.
Once upon a time, there was
a sketch, “불편한 진실” in the popular show Gag Concert in South Korea.
Comedians raised a laugh by catching some inconvenient truths that happen around
us all the time but cannot be blurted out for shame. But my situation is not
for a gag; I really must be extremely careful about saying that. It is a
sensitive issue, so I could have suppressed this inconvenient truth. But saying nothing would become more an inconvenient truth, so I am saying the
fact.
Is helping people easy or
hard? Through World Vision, many people sponsor a kid in Africa by donating $35
every month, but let’s look around us. You can see starving homeless people
just right in front of you within 10 seconds. Who will you help? People who are
almost dying of hunger around you or a poor child who has no money to attend
the school in other parts of the world? 등잔 밑이 어둡다… Why am I here by taking multiple-hour of airplane
without knowing anything about people’s life here? How much am I helpful to
them with what sort of qualification? There is also enormous number of refugees
in Baltimore, the place I had recently stayed, but I did nothing for them and
came to Africa. Many friends who have not been to Africa vaguely think and tell
me that it must be really cool and incredible for me to be here. That is
another inconvenient truth to me.
Where on earth is Chulwoo Park going? I do not know the answer yet. This is
just irony.
‘이기적인 세상 속에서 나눔과 베품은 정말이지 어려운 문제인 것 같다. 난 얼마나 남들을 위하고 사랑하는지 모르겠다. 나의 얼만큼을 버려내야 사람들을 진정으로 생각한다고 말할 수 있는지도 모르겠다.’
I said Korean sentences in
my blog for the first time. Because writing in second language, English, is
also my inconvenient truth…
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