Being a villager is not a bad thing per se. After all, some of our ancestors deep in time came from a village somewhere on the European continent. But the spirit of the village? Ugh! Yesterday afternoon I was reminded why I don't like getting familiar with villagers.C drove me to a village where I was going to meet some ladies for a seminar I am going to talk to you about next week.
As we finished early, I was offered a lift by another participant whose parents came from a nearby village. These are the questions I was asked on the way back (even when I remained silent, or tried to change subject, they kept repeating them):
-What do you do for a living?
-Do you have a lot of work?
-Are you married?
-Do you have children"
-One or two?
-Why, you don't even look married!
-When did you get married?
-How old is your elder child?
-How old were you when you got married?
-How old are you now?
-How old were you when you got married?
-Did you marry out of love?
-Are you happily married?
If it were a walking distance, I would have gotten off the car.
These are the questions that have been in my mind since yesterday:
Is it just me?
Is it my mingling with an Anglo-Saxon upbringing ?
Do I have to pick another country of choice to call home?
Shall I pretend my Greek isn't good enough to understand those questions?
How do you tell someone that they are rude, without being rude yourself?
Has anyone else come across anything like it?
4 comments:
Sorry you had to deal with this sweetie.
Some people are really a nuisance.
Hi Irene,
When I saw your blog is titled the delightful Green Greek, I decided to check it out.
Perhaps your nosy questioners have a set of questions that are ok to ask in the village, and they are being polite, according to their village ethos.
Oh, I love that you live in Greece. My husband and I enjoy Greek food, music and dancers at our local Greek festivals and our favorite restaurant.
Tell us more about your daily life; I will come back to visit.
Oh have I *ever* come across this! It's exactly the same here in southern Italy, and I find it just as rude as you do; they also get into how much did I pay for this, how much do I make, and my favorite "What about your (poor) mother back in the States? Isn't she lonely?!" Gaaaaaaah!
I try to take it in the way I hope it's intended, which is as caring curiosity, but I know a lot of it is nosiness at its core--the very foundation of village life ;) Every window has eyes (and ears!), they say!
I answer the questions I'm comfortable answering and for the rest I tell them I'm sorry, but where I'm from such things are personal, and I don't talk about them with everyone. I probably offend a few people along the way, but if they were really asking in caring curiosity and not sheer nosiness, they wouldn't be offended, would they?
And I still get plenty of gifts from my neighbors after five years here, so I think I'm doing OK :)
But I have to tell you I've had *many* a ranting session about this with people back home....
Post a Comment