Ode to Benbo: The Irish in Zambia

When you land in Lusaka from Ireland, a random Irish person will get you in a headlock, drag you to their house and get you sufficiently drunk to do something embarrassing - the slagging of which is the basis of your eternal friendship. The chances are you won't have to dig as deep to find a bit of banter with this Irish stranger than you might have to with another nationality. And, if craic is not to be had, you will at the very least be able to quickly trace your family trees back far enough to discover that you are related to their mother's neighbour's cousin's brother-in-law's postman.

Irish people as individuals? Great.

A few weeks on, you go to a party at that lovely individual's house where at least half of the revelers are Irish. It's easier to bypass the boring diplomatic introductions with the Irish, "Did you hear Gerry Ryan died?" "Yeah, what happened there?" A guy with an open sore on his face is blocking the drinks table. He says he is from Monaghan though he looks and sounds Hungarian. You walk away when he remarks on how slutty Irish women are. "Who's yer man from Monaghan?," you ask one of the normal people. "He told me he was from Finglas. Total wacko."

At every party, you meet another one. "What's his story?" "Chancer. Avoid." You meet them all. Dodgy, sleazy, creepy, lovely. Crazy, deaf, sullen, lovely. Shouter, spitter, mumbler, lovely. Arsehole, dickhead, bitch, lovely. Cork, Limerick, Derry, lovely. Eighty, fifty, twenty, lovely. Irish, Irish, Irish, Irish.

Irish people at parties? Minefield.

You think you have it all under control, the Irish thing, that you can just enjoy your Irishness at your own leisure and avoid the crazies. Then you are railroaded into going to an Irish event. You are in a dingy sports hall with sticky floors and buzzing lights, piss all over the seatless toilet and a bar maid who disappears with your money, leaving you with no drink and no change. Someone hands you 13 playing cards and inexplicably, in a parallel universe to the life you want to live, you are playing whist. There is a disgruntled nun in the corner because you brought your British Pakistani friend, who has an unfair advantage she says, because, "Those fellas are very good with numbers." Breda has forgotten to bring the sausage rolls and there is more tension in the room than at a traveller wedding in Tullamore. Your partner with a facial tick and knee-high socks is scowling at you because your careless whist hand has ruined their chances of winning the 7 euro prize and you look around and you think, "What the hell am I doing here?"

Irish people at an Irish event organised by an Irish committee? One flew over the cuckoo's nest.

You're definitely never ever going to one of them ever again. Organised Irish fun. Then you're in that parallel universe again and your husband becomes chairman of the committee. You're at one of those Irish events. You're trying to avoid the quick hands of the priest with his shirt open to his belly button and the bar man suggests that, as he has no drinking glasses, you should slam back half a can of tonic after which he will pour in the gin. And you're wondering, "What in the jaysis am I doing here?"

It goes dark and quiet and there is a sense of excitement when the people from Ireland, the professionals, come out onto the stage. You snigger at that look in their eyes that says, "What the fuck am I doing here?" They talk about home and they talk about then and they talk about now and just for a minute you can forget where you are. Just for a minute you're in The Abbey, you're in Bewleys Cafe, you're in Ireland. Then you remember why it's great to be Irish again.

Do You Mind if I Swear?

Isn't it brilliant the way the smoking ban has made smokers feel like they have to ask you if you mind if they smoke around you? Of course, being Irish, I say, "No! Go ahead, smoke away," even though I don't really want to wake up with hair and clothes stinking of cigarettes. The point is, smokers now seem to acknowledge that smoking may be offensive to other people.

There are a few other massively popular activities that I would like to move into the 'publicly unacceptable' box. Why, for example, is it normal to use a toothpick at a dinner table? Statistics show that dentistry is one of the professions with the highest suicide rates. Yet you seem to think I won't mind if you jam a small stick between your choppers, skewer out an piece of meat and then examine it closely before tossing the stick onto a plate. Why not just provide dental floss at the table? Let's have a real clear out while we're at it.

I'm not into chewing chewing gum either. I don't understand why it does not occur to chewers that I may not enjoy watching and listening to them smack their mouth open and shut again and again and then probably spit a mouldy lump of sticky rubber out onto the street. Even watching you spit it into a piece of paper is gross, come on. I have considered moving to Singapore where chewing gum is illegal. They know what they are at there.

But recently I have realised that something that I do incessantly might be offensive to others around me. Swearing. I love swearing. It's expressive. It's liberating. It's comical. It's definitely better than not swearing. A recent example; the Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter allegedly told a Garda that was guarding his home that he couldn't use his toilet. The Irish Independent carried the headline: 'Shatter denies refusing access to his toilet'. The Irish Sun on the same day carried the headline: 'Row over Shatter's shitter'.

I enjoyed the latter headline more, but I have to acknowledge that there are people out there who may have been offended, because some people don't like swearing. Those people should not go to Tipperary. I wasn't always as involved in expletives as I am now, but my exposure to my brothers-in-laws' language has numbed me to verbal-related offence. I had probably heard "the C word" half a dozen times before I first went to Tipperary. I was quite alarmed at first to realise that "cunt" is actually a verb in Tipp.

As accustomed to it as I am, and as much as I luxuriate in inserting a bad word here and there myself, I have noticed of late that, for some reason not everyone enjoys it. That I might have to mind my language around certain people - and I'm not talking about children. I had wondered about it and why people might not like it until I was in a shop recently and, from behind a shelf I could hear the shop keeper effing and blinding at the till. It jarred in my ears. She was just having a normal conversation but I didn't think she should be swearing and I had to ask myself why. Is it because she is in charge of the shop and it's unprofessional? Would I mind her swearing if she was at the table next to me in a pub? Would I have found it less offensive if she was a man from Tipperary?

What I realised was that I, the judger of smokers, of chewers, of teeth cleaners, probably offend people with my foul mouth too. Not everyone will appreciate my expletives. But where is the fun in that? 'You silly billy' doesn't sound as good as 'you dickhead' when someone does something ridiculous. 'Get outta town!' isn't as punchy as 'Fuck right off!' when you hear an outrageous piece of gossip from a friend. And nothing can replace, 'Shove it up your arse,' as a phrase when you need it.

So smoke your head off, blow a chewing bubble in my face and flick a chicken bone out of your mouth for all I care, because I'm busy reading about Shatter's shitter.

No Zip! Too Fat!

I was waiting in the reception of a doctor's office the other day watching a cockroach scuttle across the floor. A toddler with a bad cough was trying to escape the insect when a woman lifted up her skirt, grabbed her thighs and shouted across at the mother, "This baby is so fat! What are you feeding her?"  In Ireland, sturdy, solid, or even big are acceptable but 'fat' is an insult. However, it's actually a compliment in some cultures. Luckily for me, I'm very culturally aware - but I learned the hard way.

Standing in a two-metre-wide tailor shop in Hanoi a few years ago, I had luxuriated in picking out beautiful silk for a skirt. I took it to the tailor's desk he measured me. I wasn't overly comfortable about him shouting the measurement of the circumference of my arse across the busy shop to his assistant but I swallowed my pride. Then I spat it back up again after I showed him a picture of the skirt I wanted him to make and he started shouting, "No zip! Too Fat! Elastic!"

I thought he had made his point clearly enough at that stage but then he puffed out his cheeks and arched his arms  to demonstrate the word 'fat' to me in case I hadn't understood him,"Like Buddha! No zip!" he scolded me.

It wasn't long after that when a Vietnamese beautician whipped out a raw razor blade to try to shave my eyebrows off. I nervously declined and pleaded with her to put the razor down but obviously I hadn't understood the severity of my eyebrow situation. They were sloped at a bad angle apparently, which she demonstrated by tapping her straightened hands at a 45 degree angle across her eyes. She grumpily put the blade away and carried on using a hot glue gun to stick fake pearls to my hair. Looking in the mirror I started to see my angry-cartoon-character shaped eyebrows. She was just being factual. You're not six stone and you don't tattoo your eyebrows onto your face in perfect Ronald MacDonald arches like many Vietnamese women do. It's a matter of fact.

In Zambia, observing how fat someone is is not only a fact, but a compliment. This is because tubbiness is an in-yo-face display of wealth and health. If you are fat, you must have enough money to be eating the good stuff. And, as it turns out, it is the word 'skinny' that is offensive in Zambia. If you tell someone in Zambia that they have lost weight or look skinny, you may embarrass or insult them. This is because some people speculate that someone who has lost a lot of weight or looks very slim may have AIDS, "the thin disease". See? I'm culturally sensitive!

To be fair, I don't actually think complimenting someone on extreme weight loss has a feel good factor anywhere in the world. No one wants to be reminded that they were fatter than they are now. It is particularly hard to feel flattered when the complimeter is overly descriptive about your weight-loss, "Jesus, you must have lost six stone!" Just how fat did you think I was?

As happy as I am to have such a full understanding and appreciation of the sensitivies (or not) of discussing someone's weight across the world, sometimes, when I'm zipping up a particularly long zip, my angry sloping eyebrows get even angrier I think about that tailor in Hanoi. That fat bastard.













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