Maasalaama Masr

I'm nearing the end of my painful week of goodbyes. My roommate commented that more always happens in the first and last week. This is true emotionally, mentally and literally.

I am thinking and feeling and doing more in this last week than probably a normal month here. This is saying a lot.

Last weekend was the last time I saw M. We went to a wedding hall that was super fancy and way out of his price range. I felt ridiculously out of place, but pretty fancy, esp cause I'm sure it looked like I was the fiance instead of the dumpy friend tagging along, that and foreigners are always fancy, no matter who they are.

Early in the week I met my friend F. This involved an unwanted trip to the Cairo University police station because of some punk guys who were annoying me. F insisted I "take my rights" while yelling furiously in Arabic. Evidently the conversation was something about the guys being rich and living in a villa, and F telling them she was poor and that doesn't make any difference, they're still acting wrongly. I kept saying, "there's no problem!" and finally got to say I didn't want them to go to prison or anything to happen except them to stop talking to foreigners forever (or something like that in Arabic). They promised. Everyone left intact.

F told me a conversion story of a girl who read the Song of Songs loudly in the streets and then was convinced that it was inappropriate because a man propositioned her for sex right there. She went to her roof in a rain storm to ask God for an answer and received only the call to prayer at dawn saying, "God is the greatest" three times. She became a Muslim. This led to a discussion of how a holy book could discuss sex in such detail... ya not sure the Christian theologians have a great answer for that yet, but at the same time, y shouldn't it?

After eating pizza, and chocolate cake, and ice-cream, and her offering me money in case I needed it to travel, we said our goodbyes. Sucks.

Thursday involved work goodbyes. I got a nice certificate and engraved decorative bowl. We had a nice faluca ride and I gave all my interns a hug and walked away quickly so they couldn't see the tears coming. I got quite attached to them, esp my Danish guys.

Then Thursday night involved my last night hanging out with A, my best guy friend now that M is engaged. This involved his favorite expression: "O Kirsten, you're going to hell" HAHAHHAAA, with further description of the fire that will be all over my body and how I need to fear hell. Strangely, that actually did make me think about what it would be like in hell and because I am mortal I should stop taking the joys of life so much for granted, like sitting on a bench with a friend, not surrounded by fire, but a cool breeze, that is nice.

Friday involved shopping and then goodbyes to the guys I used to work with when I was a teacher. This is A and O and T (the new friend I met through them). We went to the outdoor cafe we went to like every week at least last summer. I like this going full circle thing, the weather was perfect for it again, the same people, but we've all changed in ten months. The end of an era.

Saturday it was foreigner time. We sat in Al-Azhar park. My roommates and our guy friends. We all were here together two years ago, and we're all back. In that circle sitting in the grass perched above old Islamic Cairo I saw a glimpse of what I think Christian community should be. Sharing questions and answers, listening and talking and enjoying just being together. I will miss them all.

And as I've been nervous these last two weeks, not really sleeping, I go today to say the worst goodbye of all, my family here. Guilt inducing tears have been flowing for at least a month, and this will just be the most horrible day of my life I somehow anticipate. I want to see them, but not if they're being miserable on my account.

SO Maasalaaama Masr (goodbye Egypt) and I hope to see you again soon. I'm tired of being elbowed out of the metro, of being assessed up and down by vicious teenage girls and sketchy old men, being separated from nature or any sense of calm and quiet, but at the same time I do love you, and you are still beautiful. I will miss you.

Jerusalem

So Jerusalem, we went. The things that this city has meant are innumerable and mind-boggling. I took a five day weekend and trekked across endless unpaved desert to reach this place for about two and a half days.

Twenty four hours after departing, we arrived. After four bus rides and a five hour layover in an Israeli beach town which seemed surprisingly similar to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but with Hebrew, conversations with various Jewish young people from the 13 year old Canadian and British girls going to the mall to the helpful college graduates to the "free-spirit" on the path to self-discovery through meeting people infinitely shallower than him at bars, we arrived at the Jaffa gate to the old walled city of Jerusalem.

In the slightly hazy, rainy early evening we found our way to our hostels. C and I were staying on top of a fruit market at the "Palm Hostel." This place involved no keys, no towels, and no clean sheets, but free tea with mint and endless rotations of cool dormmates. C developed a fancy for an Australian reading an anthology of American literature ("The Scawlet Letta kinna drags awn a bit.") while I myself fell for the German with partially bleached dreadlocks from the moment he woke up and hit his head on the bunk above him. C and I made a pact that if either of us ended up like the thirty-year-old married couple staying in the hostel dorms, there needed to be an intervention.

So Good Friday in Jerusalem dawned on us intrepid travelers and we decided to start out with some shopping in case the Sabbath cramped our style. After that was handled we headed out to the Mt of Olives, stupid "City of David" look out platform, Garden of Gethsemane (where an African man was briskly making his way through with a cane and staff, making xs over everything while pushing pilgrims out of the way and saying, "he's still alive, he's not dead"), and the church where Jesus wept, overlooking the city.

We still had daylight and the excitement of Good Friday left and the three of us decided to do the stations of the cross in order. Cool. These stations culminate in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. On the roof the Ethiopian Orthodox are out in full force celebrating good Friday. We waited in a line wrapping around the shrine around the place where Jesus was supposedly crucified. I almost was trampled and fainted. Voices around us were unrecognizable languages with one Egyptian arabic voice and one clear English voice in the mob stating, "God damn it, I just want to see the place where Jesus died!" We finally made it to the entrance where an Orthodox black-robed priest grabbed my arm, shoved me through a doorway, another priest shoved me to my knees shouting "kiss and go! kiss and go! quickly!!" I hurried to obey, another priest pulled me from the ground and shoved me out the door muttering to the priest in front of me in line something about faith being pain. While this is probably one of my best and most hilarious Easter memories of my life, I can only imagine what might have been the effect on someone who was expecting a somber religious experience, someone who had paid their life savings to kiss that ground and pray at that site.

The next day C and I headed out of the old city, which I'd never done before. We made our way to Independence Park to lay in the sun without being heckled for the whole morning. On our way we passed "George W. Bush plaza" dedicated in his honor for his friendship towards Israel, last year. Wow. We walked around until we were lost in a very conservative Jewish neighborhood. Signs were on every shop and corner saying, "PLEASE DO NOT WEAR IMMODEST CLOTHING" and explaining in smaller print how not covering your arms, etc. was harmful for their way of life. While we're contemplating directions two nice middle aged Orthodox men ask if they can help us, one in Hebrew and then one in English. About fifteen minutes later they show up beside us again, saying they thought we might need a baby sitter to get back safely to the Old City, we deny it. Then English speaking 40ish year old Orthodox Jewish man in conservative neighborhood proceeds to ask if we can meet him sometime next week... I proceed to ask C if he was hitting on us as my hitting on radar has been totally shot by being in Egypt, she confirms it. Wow.

We make it back home and then meet my other friend and head out on the town. I splurge for a New York like piece of pizza on the point of starvation and we walk around the main entertainment street. Its mini America, complete with college-age kids singing Christian praise music, a group of performance street fighters, a woman setting up her own karaoke, and fro-yo. I like it. We watch the middle school kids, some little boys with cool hair locks framing their face, the families, and the couples go by. It still weirds me out every time I hear Hebrew because English seems to be the only language that would make sense in this context. I understand this context completely I feel, but then the language not at all, its jarring, and its frustrating to be somewhere where I understand nothing that is said and can say nothing, I forgot that. It seems like Hebrew is even more prevalent, and English less prevalent, than two years ago.

We wake up Easter morning at 5:30 with intentions of making the 6:30 Latin mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Unfortunately, because the "Armenians have something" (something meaning a chanting parade through the church), the mass was cancelled. No prob, we head up to the roof to listen to some birds and see the sun rise further over the dome. Communion is just not happening in a church for us so we purchase some supermarket "grape drink" and take it on down to the basement of the Austrian Hospice, take some of the breakfast buffet bread. Julianna breaks it and distributes, "this is my body broken for you," we drink from the grape drink bottle, "this is my blood poured out for you." Best communion ever.

Off to the bus. This time we think we've got it down, we know what we're doing, then get slammed with a surprise 94.5 sheckel border crossing tax. I have 1.5 sheckels at this point. Luckily between J and C they can get me out of the country. We angrily mutter about this ridiculousness until the IDF border patrol woman raises the gate and we step into Egypt, greeted by an old wrinkly man drinking tea and saying, "welcome to Egypt." O we missed it! However, after waiting an hour I get through passport control and C and J are cut in line by some rich diplomat, at which time I try to chat up the border patrol to get my girls through. It didn't really work. We finally get on the bus, perfect timing, we're cool so we take the back seat, and get slammed by another 35 pounds border tax, which somehow only two of us had to pay, which we also had barely enough for between the three of us. About half way through the ride we are awakened by the smell and feel of burning sand in our lungs. I wrap my new Kufaya around my face to block out the sandstorm that has somehow ended up occurring inside the bus.

O Egypt.

Since I've come back I have talked to several Egyptians about Jerusalem, this holy city for everyone. Reactions have gone from, "you are so lucky you could go" to "I want to drop a nuclear bomb on that whole country because I'm a psychopathic person" to "we need dialogue between cultures, we don't know each other. Jewish women dress like Muslim women?"

I still can't quite grasp the concept of Israel. This country seems like it should be a theme park. How can there be a state really based on a religion like this? So late? How long can this last? There's this constant tension bearing down, like a tangible hard plastic bubble. When will it finally crack? In what way? What will be lost when it does crack? Is there any other way?

Stuff White People Like

So in case you haven't seen this website, take a look.

I am devoting this post to stuff white people like.

White people like being surrounded by non-white people.

Although being the only white person in the room, in the office, in the house, in the town might make white people a little uncomfortable (after all, minority status isn't really what they're used to), being able to tell other white people in the rare occasion that they come in contact, that they spend most of their time surrounded by non-white people is well worth any awkwardness and feeling out of place.

For example, when white people gather at a dinner party in Egypt, the white community evaluates each white person present on a point system of being surrounded by non-white people.

Being in another country at the moment + 1 point

Number of months you have been there + 1 point each

Multiply points by percentage of non-white people in area where you live

Multiply points by percentage of non-white people in your place of employment / study

Language study +10 points

Studying something in English + 5 points

Working teaching English +5 points

Working not teaching English +10 points

Working for a native company / organization +20 points

Multiply points by distance in kilometers from the next major white people area

Level of language proficiency in native language (Beg +1 point, Int + 5 points, Adv +10 points)

Living with white people = 0 points

Living with non-white people = 5 points

Number of non-white friends + 1 for each friend

Living with people from host country = 10 points

Living with people from host country who don't speak English = 20 points.


Its painfully clear to any group of white people together, the hierarchy of coolness based on this point system. Unfortunately non-white people can't really compete in this system, sorry. You should take encouragement from the fact that you are automatically adding a point to any white person's record just by hanging around.

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Other stuff white people like....

White people like gender ambiguous language. Well maybe not all white people, but I definitely do. Have you ever noticed that in English you can say, "I'm meeting a friend" and leave it at that. Friend means friend, and no one knows, unless they ask, their gender, but no one would ask because that's just weird.

In Egyptian Arabic, every single verb and noun seems to have a masculine and feminine form. Add this to a society that looks very discouragingly on interaction between people of the opposite sex, and its almost impossible to utter an honest sentence without having either hellfire or prayers for your soul called down on you. This makes me worry for hours how I can avoid the extreme concern and prayers for my soul from my Egyptian family, who see my spending time with an Egyptian boy as probably the worst sin I could commit, while still avoiding lying to them, which I see as a much worse sin I could commit. Its a lot of unneeded stress that English and American culture have easily disposed of.

I imagine that Egyptian Arabic has developed this way because of Egyptian parents' needing to know who their children were spending time with. Gender relations are something so central to proper Muslim behavior, that language must have preserved this importance, or the importance must have preserved the language to reflect it. If no one cared if the friend was male or female, then gender ambiguity would be fine in language. Because everyone seemingly cares every minute of every day which males and females are together, gender ambiguity cannot stand.

This sucks.

New Life

The weather has unexpectedly taken a leap into the 90s (farenheit) and it leaves me remembering summer, when I first got here, thinking of the "circle of life" as my roommate put it, things coming back to the beginning, working in cycles.

For example, M, my best friend here, is getting married. I have been with him through his tears and heart ache and depressive episodes over this girl, since they had just broken up right before I arrived in Cairo this time, and now he got her back! It was like the happiest day of my life to hear this, it restored my faith in miracles and happy endings, but that means there's no space in Egyptian culture, and probably universally, for another girl that he's close to. I have gotten to have him in my life for this brief cycle, but now its over, and we all move on to the next cycles.

I have seen my baby Egyptian niece come from in my friend's womb to alien like tiny creature to fat baby that makes noises and facial expressions (she can say dada, but that isn't a word here so they try to pretend its tata, which means gramma), all with me as part of her life, part of her family. All of this is one of the most miraculous things I have ever experienced. Today she was baptized.

I have never seen anything like Coptic baptism. Last night the women of the family planned their outfits, hair, and make-up. This morning they woke up early and in a flurry of color and hair curlers, they prepared themselves amid (loving) shouts of, "why do you care how you look, you're not the mother" and "I want a BLACK shirt, why aren't you listening to me!" We made it the monastery and there were probably over a hundred babies there, all with multiple family members, crowding the baptism room, the church hall, the church, the patio, and overflowing through the monastery. The largest concentration was outside the door and windows of the baptismal chamber. The grandfather of our baby (father refused to come) politely worked his way to the table to get a ticket. He clutched and waved that ticket until he could shove his way into the sacred room through the mob. We made our way in for a little bit, it was stiflingly hot today and church officials kicked us out, so I walked around the monastery with my 16 year old sister.

We came back into the hall to see a shouting/screaming match arise after someone being trampled near the door to the baptismal chamber. My sister almost makes her way inside the chamber when her father pokes his head out the door for her. "I'm coming" she yells, and bravely pushes her way to the front. She doesn't make it, eventually, being too sweet, she just bounces off the crowd. This crowd reminds me of what someone wise observed about Egypt, that lines don't work because the society is always worried that there won't be enough, so they fight to get there's first, as fast as possible, in case whatever it is runs out. Its like they are all subconsciously conditioned to worry that maybe the priest will get tired and stop baptizing. We have to be first. Then my little Egyptian sister, after not making it through this crowd, spends the rest of the day disappointed saying, "I want to see [her]! I should've gone to school instead, school is better than this." But then, the baby and its mother and grandfather and grandmother all emerge, baby in her huge white dress and bonnet, cranky and tired. The dresses and some freakin adorable mini priest outfits are popping up everywhere (only to be put on after the priest dunks them in water three times) and small family groups cluster everywhere for pictures.

Baptism, all these babies in white dresses, surrounded by their families, is the craziest picture of new life and hope, but a clear one. My cycle here is drawing to an end and these babies I hope are all beginning their walk of faith. Will she remember me if I come back in a couple years? If Idon't? Will her family show her pictures and talk about me? Will she vaguely recollect how I smell or sang to her in English or pretended she was flying or took pictures of her? Probably not. I hope I get to see more of her life somehow.

Beni Suef

I just had one of the best weekends and best vacations of my life. Now, you might say this is strange considering I'm living in Egypt, and considering all travel books and resources will inform you that the only reason to be in Beni Suef is to be en route to somewhere more interesting, but this weekend feels like the first adventure I've had in a long time. It was also the first time I've felt completely taken care of and relaxed in that knowledge since I came to this country. Independence has its joys, but dependence does as well, especially when you've been running on independence for months.

My roommate J and I discovered that to get to Beni Suef to visit our friends we could catch a bus from Moneeb, the end of the Giza metro line. We get there and find a bus station, which evidently is not what we want, we walk up and down a line of about 50 microbuses yelling at us and finally find out we need to walk all the way down the street to the station under the bridge. We get there and ask about tickets from a smart-ass ticket man who tells us tickets are 7, except for us its 10. I guess at least he's honest that he's overcharging the foreigner, but then, in response to our inquiries as to why, he answers the Egyptian equivalent of "because I said so," multiple times. Ick. 2 hours later, after finally paying the foreigner price and waiting for the bus to fill up, we make our way to Beni Suef, past green field after green field that J is begging to roll in, trucks stacked full of garlic and water buffalo.

We disembark one stop too early at the Beni Suef zoo and the guys come pick us up. We head to the best restaurant in town, and then the club on the Nile (where the taxi driver argues with our friend M about him wanting to be dropped off in front of a hospital). We sit next to the Nile and look across at the green fields and the monastery where we're gonna be staying, and we just sit and talk for hours, far away from all our stressers.

Next we head to a youth meeting at the new, beautiful, gigantic church. Youth meaning our age. We face the wall with everyone as they pray, they sing chanting hymns while we try to read the hymnal in arabic, and then we come to a bible lesson and then the real lesson, the title is "sexual culture." I'm excited. The woman presenting really mostly just describes child development through adolescence. There is a brief detour into sex changes and homosexuality and people who feel like they were born the wrong gender. Evidently all these things are the same problem, and the fault of parents who don't indoctrinate their children with quite enough gender stereotypes. And now that the newest science has discovered that homosexuality is a mental disease... Wow, so I did not agree with most of what was being said (with the exception of giving ur adolescent children some privacy is a good idea), but it was freakin interesting, and I loved how these women were free to challenge the authority and discuss these issues at this meeting. They voted to continue the sexual culture topic and I really want to go back.

Then we got to look around the new cathedral. Its half built, with only stained glass windows and the dome in place, but standing in the middle of it in the dark was beautiful, and exciting. Maybe partly because this amazing church is in the process of being built, and maybe because I was in this half built church in this random Egyptian town with good friends.

We then made our way to the monastery where we were staying. We are driving literally through the middle of nowhere where our taxi driver is telling our friend about how he loves a Christian girl but her church father told her that she needs to move to America to marry him. Then we get out, M asks taxi driver to wait (and God preserve you, you are honey!), we go in, finally get the father to approve a room for us, and we find our room with a balcony overlooking green fields, crickets, palm trees swaying in the breeze, and lit up mosques in the distance. The most beautiful sight I've seen in a long time. I sit for probably an hour writing and just taking it in. I sleep as close to the window as possible to hear the crickets. Unfortunately that meant that when the deafening dawn prayer was called throughout all of Beni Suef, I was definitely awake, although so was J. Evidently this is why M wears ear plugs every night.

In the morning I spent some more time on the balcony, this time watching the farmers and their donkey carts and buffaloes go by. J and I head out for a walk, we walk down through the fields and buffaloes and farmers and donkey carts, and mudbrick farming sheds, the sound of birds having replaced the crickets. I can breath real air here, and people here seem much more polite here, they don't stare and they don't yell at us, even though foreigners are completely non-existent in Beni Suef (except for M and his two colleagues, due to aforementioned lack of travel destinations). After coming back to observe the sniper tower and mote that give this monastery a sort of fortress feel, we have a nice breakfast, pay, and head out to the middle school where M teaches. The kids all rush to greet him and we as the visitors are treated to tea and a sit in the school admin office. We also get to observe a collection of posters, art, a ribbon dancing ceremony, and a talent show, on this, special visitor day. We get to see first graders do a skit about stealing money from parents, a skit about women being able to work alongside men, a story reading, and a collection of English songs. My personal favorite was when ten kids with monkey pictures on their chests stand in front of their class as the whole group sings, "ten little monkeys jumbing on the bed, one fell of and bumb-ed his head" in heavy Egyptian accent. I'm a little tea pot was a close second.

We head off for Kosheri and then concluded our wonderful time waiting in the bus station. After being told at the office the bus for Cairo will be leaving in ten minutes, twice (we all know what ten minutes means in Egypt: anytime today) we meet some people headed there too. After a while we've been waiting and we don't see our fellow Cairo passengers. We head over to the office and ask again when the bus is leaving. The same guy who told us ten minutes now looks at us seriously and tells us no buses are going to Cairo today. We all question how he can tell us this after he said ten minutes not so long ago, he acts like he has no idea what we're talking about. He asks random other people, they all confirm no buses to Cairo today. Now, we are in Beni Suef, there is really nothing here as we acknowledge, and Cairo is nearby. Where the heck are buses going if not Cairo? So M tries to look angry and tell them he's very angry and will never ride a bus again! Unfortunately M just emanates pacifism and goodwill, and anger just does not really work for him. So we find a shared taxi and make it back to wait on a bridge, catch another taxi, and find our way to see our fam in Maasara, where I listen to the fears and jealousies of a 16 year old girl trapped in an unfair society (as are all societies), nursing a love interest for a man she hasn't seen in eight months and has been rejected by her parents, and feeling alone. I wish I could help, but even I am leaving, and even I am not around all the time.

And so, this weekend was a ridiculously lovely balance between independent adventure and allowing myself to be dependent on others. It was great to be on the easy end of that situation, and it was great to see where my friend spends his life and has somehow fit himself into the most unlikely of places as a beloved member of the community. It makes me feel hopeful.

MABRUUUK!!!!

My Egyptian best friend is getting MARRIED!!! This is a big deal for Egypt! He's not even thirty yet, and he's getting married THIS SUMMER!!! To the love of his life, after a long, tragic love affair! O my heart cannot hold this much happiness! Just when I was getting jaded and cynical....something as AMAZING and joyful as this happens.

Colonialism

I think I have finally found a word for a collection of uglinesses I find around me. Colonialism.

Supposedly the UK declared Egypt’s independence in 1922. Egypt didn’t even get to declare it itself. And Wikipedia says, “British influence, however, continued to dominate Egypt's political life and fostered fiscal, administrative, and governmental reforms.”

As my roommate started talking about this "colonialism" concept the other day I started to thinking and since then I’ve been feeling sicker and sicker about it all to the extent that I even want to leave this country just to stop being a part of it. But it still has a hold on the world, no matter which part of it I sit in. And while I’m seeing it so clearly here from where I’m sitting, which makes me exceedingly uncomfortable, maybe my uncomfortable situation here is making colonialism a tad bit uncomfortable as well. I hope so.

Every word that I utter in Arabic seems to be fighting a little for the home team, every conversation in English seems to be another point for the colonial power. My friend told me that people here respect foreigners more than they respect each other. He told me this because I was complaining about how no matter how stupid and poor and young and ugly and inexperienced and unskilled I am I will always be pampered and paid attention to and catered to, just because I’m a foreigner. I have been more and more happy about the fact that I can speak English to so many people, but then I’m getting more and more sick to hear the stories of my friends who say that they can’t get a job without good English, and they can’t get English without money, and this is for a job that pays an average 800 Egyptian pounds / month. If you want the real good jobs, you’re gonna need flawless English, the kind that comes from private foreign schools (American, Canadian, British) for your whole life (=uber rich). And as A reminded us, there are millions of people with flawless native English in the world, those with any flaws need not apply.

My roommate J works in a world of people who have learned English, but at the expense of their Arabic. The top of society is being trained to be dysfunctional and illiterate in their own language. Oftentimes they are dysfunctional in Arabic and English, in a kind of limbo between the two languages, this is the system. Me and two of my roommates have procured jobs here which are expressly for foreigners. Foreigners here are paid more and respected more in the work place. With absolute abysmal Arabic and no qualifications or knowledge of me beyond my foreigner status I’ve been asked to work in marketing a few times. This preferential treatment makes a little more sense in a country like America where I am the WASP majority. Here though, we are very much the minority, and yet, we walk in a room and we’re automatically important. We are an accessory for our friends to show off, kinda like a designer bag, foreigners classy. It will be an adjustment to go back to the U.S. where I am frumpy and normal.

People just ask us questions, we are assumed to be knowledgeable on any subject, even as scrubby just out of college kids on an extended year of travelling. Where is the justice? This world has been set up for us by our ancestors. They wanted a world where they were always able to feel smart and have an easy time navigating and ordering people around wherever they went. Heck who doesn’t? It’s easy, and I’m not gonna lie, if I felt only the utter inferiority and stupidity that comes with being in a strange country with a strange language and never felt the trust in my abilities and respect of my status that comes with being a foreigner here, I might not have made it so long.

But this superiority is cheap, it rings so hollow and painful. You can almost hear it in the voices of the men yelling at you: “Talk to me! Why won’t you talk to me?!” “F*** you!” It’s not just a sexual thing, it’s a fascination with the exotic and maybe a subconscious way to bring you back down to the level you should be at, an anger at the unjust distribution of power. I see it in the way that the police and security service here let the foreigners get away with whatever they want with a smile, while harrassing their Egyptian friends. I hear it in ex-pats telling me that Egyptians are just lazy and unreliable. I hear it in my friend F explaining to me that Egyptian are actually envious of the U.S. because it took all the power and beauty and morality even, and left Egypt with nothing. There's a hopeless sense here among so many, a sense that leaving the country or leaving the culture is the only way to move up in life. Some reject these ideas, some chase them vigorously, but Colonialism is living.