My school at night
I would often go outside after dinner to take pictures of the stars. Since there was no electricity, the bright stars contrasted profound, all-encompassing darkness around me.
I loved astrophotography. I would return to my house talking about different constellations and showing my host mom and sister the wonders my camera could capture that our eyes couldn’t.
One night, as I walked down the path to the place I wanted to photograph, a man appeared walking in the opposite direction. I was surprised I had never seen the man before- I had been there for a year and knew everyone in my small village.
We passed each other and I nodded to him. I continued walking, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he made an abrupt u-turn and was walking behind me. He suddenly reached out and slid his arm gently across my shoulders. I jumped out of the way, and shouted, “what the hell?”
The guy took off towards the village center, giggling and whooping in a drunken, sickening way.
I followed him to the safety of lights on the street, where I knew a few shops were still open, but he had disappeared in the moonlight.
“Did you see that man?” I asked them. They identified him as a laborer who had just arrived to work on a construction project for a few weeks. And then I described to the small group of shopkeepers what had happened.
They asked me what I wanted to do. I said, “just tell him to stay away from me. I don’t want to him to come near me ever again.”
The next morning, when my host mom gave me a glass of tea, she said, “so tell me about last night.” Word had traveled fast.
So, I retold the story. My host mom asked me to report him to my host father, but I declined. “Think of if it had happened to your sister, or to one of the girls you work with. You can do something to stop it.”
She was right. I told my host father what happened, even though I inexplicably felt embarrassment and shame, and he said he would take care of it.
I didn’t think much of it, until I walked past that new man’s house a few hours later on the way to the market. It was deserted. The door was ajar, the chair overturned, and all signs of life were gone. He had been fired from his job and kicked out of the village less than a day after he’d arrived.
I put off writing about this for a long time. I didn’t know what to think about it. At the time, I didn’t think he should’ve been fired for touching my shoulders once. I felt kind of bad that he had lost his job for it; I don’t think that would have happened in the US.
But, at the end of the day, it was the community’s decision what the acceptable consequence was for his behavior. And the village’s consensus is that everyone should feel safe walking down the streets, even when it’s dark out, and even if they’re a foreigner. And that if he had displayed that behavior on his very first day, it didn’t bode well.
I also put off writing this because it brings up the discussion around the fact that they care enough to immediately expel people who grope women, yet there is rampant domestic violence and sexual assault. It can be hard to reconcile those two things.
And it’s worth noting that it might have been different if I wasn’t a foreigner, a respected guest, and a representative of America, or if he had been a politician, policeman or higher-caste.
But I did come from the US Embassy, and he is a low-caste outsider, so that’s how it unfolded. While I only felt scared for a few seconds, it’s stayed with me in ways I couldn’t anticipate.
I haven’t taken a picture of the night sky since.
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