ALLISON CROSS

Of the many challenges I’ve encountered while living in Sub-Saharan Africa, navigating the subtleties of local culture and mannerisms has been the most difficult. While I was prepared for the humidity, the insects, the noise, the poverty, the chaos and the traffic, it’s difficult to anticipate understated social customs that penetrate all aspects of everyday life.

One of these subtleties is indirectness in conversation. Sierra Leoneans are often hesitant to ask for exactly what they need or give a definitive answer to a direct question. Instead they subtly infer what they might want, avoiding saying it outright, sometimes refusing to give an answer at all. It can take eight or nine follow up questions to get the information you’re looking for.

This used to frustrate me immensely. The journalists I work with will visit government ministers for interviews and fail to reveal the real purpose of the interview until 20 minutes into the encounter. I sought to change the way they did this, but soon rethought the idea. I began to notice the indirectness in many exchanges among locals and had to chalk it up to local custom. Getting to know people takes time, but it is certainly worth the effort.

Picking your nose and fondling your crotch aren’t taboo in this country. I had a meeting with a journalist in Bo – a very talented and polite young man who dresses impeccably – and his finger was stuck up one nostril, digging around aimlessly, for the majority of our conversation. Young men often walk down the street holding their crotches. Why? I’m still not sure.

Touching other people freely isn’t unusual either. While it’s sometimes a harmless touch on the arm or back, I know a few people who’ve been grabbed on the street on far more sensitive areas of their bodies. The copy editor at my newspaper actually got up from her seat in the office and wiped my noise for me when I had a cold last week. I wasn’t all that sure how to respond. I managed to stammer out a "thank you."

Boys and young men often hold hands or walk with their arms around one another. It’s shocking for me to see, given the fact that homosexuality in Sierra Leone is illegal and extremely taboo. But it’s normal and the accepted way for young men to show friendly affection for one another. In Canada, where gay people are accepted, it’s extremely taboo for heterosexual men to hold hands and embrace one another.

In many ways, Sierra Leoneans are extremely polite. When someone gets in a shared taxi, it’s common for he or she to greet everyone else inside the vehicle. The children in this country don’t have the attitude acquired by so many snotty North American children by the age of six or seven. A collection of six or so kids, ranging in age from three to twelve, greet me every day when I get home. Some of the girls will meet me at the top the hill and link their arms in mine, and we’ll walk down to my house together.

Almost everywhere I go, I’m offered a place to sit. I used to refuse, trying to be polite in my own way (and show that I didn’t need to sit down just because I was a woman) but soon realized it was better just to take a seat.

You always greet people with a handshake, whether they are new acquaintances or old friends. If someone thinks their hand is too dirty for you to shake, they’ll offer you their wrist.

If it’s raining, it’s not uncommon for a dozen strangers to cram themselves on the front porch of a house during a downpour, whether they know the owner of that house or not. I told a local friend here that you just don’t do that in Canada. If you did, the owners might call the police or most likely, feel very uncomfortable about it.

She was puzzled.

“Then how do you make new friends?” she asked.

The social grace I’ve struggled with the most is cell phone etiquette. Everyone here has a cell phone and they are the primary method of communication, as very few people have email. In Canada, if you call someone three times in a row and they don’t pick up, you generally assume they are away from the phone or don’t want to pick it up. But a Sierra Leonean will just keep calling and will wonder the next day if your cell phone is broken. They always answer their phones, even if they are in the middle of something very important. I've never successfully communicated that I just wasn't in the mood to talk.