- A Russia DJ named Dima
Maybe ten years ago, the project I worked for had a driver named Dima. Dima was a rockstar. He was exceptional in every way. Sure, he could pilot you unscathed through bad traffic and worse roads, but that was the least of his talents. Dima could jumpstart a car without cables.[i] Dima could courteously repel local police harassing our office for bribes. Dima could get our visas in record time, find the best rate to change money legally, and in a pinch, put on a suit and represent the project in coordination meetings.[ii] Dima could put together a powerpoint presentation and unclog the drain in the office kitchen.
And Dima could predict the weather. He always knew what kind of clothes we’d need the next day, if rain or snow or sleet was coming. Approximate temperature, cloud cover, the works. It was uncanny. He was almost always right.
One day, after discovering we were due for snow, I asked Dima what his secret was. Had he grown up on a farm? Did he have rheumatism? He grinned and told me. Yahoo Weather. He checked it every night so he could help the office make plans; he considered it to be part of his job as a driver.
People are people. We exoticize them to our peril – and their harm.
Dima was our driver. Orientalizing him didn’t do much harm. But what if he’d been a mom in a community we worked with? A doctor we were training? What damage would we have done by underestimating his computer skills?
“Orientalising”, you don’t have to be in the development industry to make that mistake. There is a Benghali who lives down the road that used to be the temple drummer in a Hari Khrishna temple in Calcutta. Now, now he is a cleaner for the local council. He owns a house up the street from me, is building a shed, landscaping the garden. And yet, I, who should bloody well know better, completely underestimated him, his history and his capability. Broken English does not mean ignorant, or unskilled or, more to the point “unsavvy”.
I always remember how badly my old boss used to treat the dish-pig (dishwasher) in the restaurant I worked at at Uni. He was a Chinese political refugee. And he had been an award winning film maker. He was more intelligent, nuanced and educated in his right finger than my silly restaurant boss and all the staff put together.
You never know someones history, and capability, and we are all fools when we make ill informed (and frankly racist) assumptions otherwise.
[…] Shaikh wrote a great blog post about Predicting the Weather. Of course, it was not really about the weather, it was about underestimating […]