Another misplaced elbow to my back and a bump from my right side as our overfilled taxi takes a sharp turn up the mountain.  Riding in my final taxi from Maseru (the capital of Lesotho) to my home district of Thaba-Tseka.   I’m aware of how normal this all seems: a lack of personal space, a cramped, sweaty ride, a sleeping passenger draped across the back of my seat, holding someone else’s luggage in my lap.  Public transportation in Lesotho is a hard pill to swallow for those of us accustomed to personal space, electric windows and adherence to suggested capacity.  However, I’m beginning to think it’s a pill worth swallowing.  In a space where you feel more like sardines in a can, rather than paying passengers you can’t help but smash up against each other.  It’s not a sensation I’m accustomed to… we don’t do a lot of smashing into humanity in my part of the world.  We do a lot of personal space.

We are told from an early age about personal space.  Yes, some of us require more, or attempt to take up less… but the concept is there.  It’s as if we each have our own little bubble surrounding us.  If there is not a physical space, we at least need or expect our time, our thoughts, to be ours and ours alone, how dare someone play their music too loud, or speak on the phone in a public setting.

One of the biggest adjustments I have had to make is my sense of personal space.  Sitting in a taxi designed for 15 but cramming in 20, no one has more room than is exactly necessary.  We complain about the space allotted to us when traveling in coach, but how much space do we actually need.  Standing in line I expect to not brush into the person before or behind me, so when I am jostled (which ALWAYS happens), I bristle as if that person maliciously encroached on my bubble. At church I can’t move forward enough to escape the drumming by hands and feet on the back of my chair.

It’s cultural here to greet almost all you pass and to engage in conversations with curious strangers.  Regularly I am grilled “U ea kae?” or “U tsoa kae?” (Where are you going? Where are you coming from?)  and on a good day I’ll recognize it for what it is, an attempt to connect… but on a bad day I can get myself worked into a huff- ‘why does that matter to you?, it’s MY business,’ and I’ll catch myself walking around with my head down, eyes averted or answering them in a less than graceful manner.

When I was back in the states for a visit I was struck by how clean everything is: how sterile everything seemed, how much space I was given on my flights, how far apart we sit in the pews at church.  I don’t believe personal space is the problem, believe me I still enjoy some space. The problem is when our bubbles become less malleable and begin cutting us off from humanity, when a jostle, a bump, a misplaced elbow can feel more like an attack and less like a connection—that is a problem.  When our understanding of our right to privacy convinces us we have a right to treat others unkindly, that is a problem.  The experience of someone else’s humanity smashing into ours is not an inconvenience, it’s an opportunity to feel, it’s an opportunity to know.  We need to smash back, feel their humanity and feel our own.

Blessings as you crash into others and smash against humanity. Blessings as you view that elbow to the back as someone deserving of your grace rather than your reproach. Blessings as you remember we’re all human sharing space rather than bubbles avoiding one another.

Blessings Friends,

Bren