Please excuse the low quality on this set, they were taken with an old iphone. I wish I had taken my camera everywhere I went and that it would have always been socially acceptable to take pictures. It much easier to share a picture than to try to explain.
The night before I took the window shot, I woke up to what sounded like eire weeping and chants from the apartment below me. I tried to block it out. Fortunately, I can fall asleep in just about every scenario, so I slept through it. I got up the next morning and noticed that family had set up chairs in the parking lot projecting a eulogy slideshow on our building. Three hundred pairs of slippers in the hallway blocked the stairs to my apartment. My neighbor explained it was a Burmese funeral, but failed to mention that it would go on for the next three days. The next night I fell asleep to the sounds of foreign accents singing karaoke and electric guitar blasting from the parking lot. I really didn’t mind; it was all so interesting.
At least 200 people were there to grieve together. No matter what other obligations their friends and family had, they let it all go to be with each other for three days. I would imagine this effects ones ability to retain employment. Maybe they just used their sick days. Even so, I would have a hard time deciding to spend my sick day soaking in Georgia heat and grief. It shows their devotion to one another. It is such a contrast to American culture where people expect funerals to be brief and people to grieve in private. Losing a job for these families would be devastating on a different level than for the typical American family. Even facing greater risk these families were willing to be there for one another.
One day, I had to go to the housing office to talk to them about my mailbox. Mailboxes are a joke at Khristopher Woods. The boxes barely lock, but the real challenge is figuring out whose box is whose. The boxes either have nothing on them or multiple sets of numbers from previous owners. There is no clear system so mostly you just remember which one the landlord points to when you move in. I forgot.
Maybe the other families didn’t need a numerical system to know which was theirs, maybe it was less confusing that way for them. What I don’t understand is how the mailman puts up with it, and how the people of Khristopher Woods get their mail.
Anyways... I was in the waiting room at the housing office alone. At least I thought I was alone until a 2 year old Burmese boy popped up out of no where. He was short, chubby, and adorable. I quickly realized he had no sense of a personal bubble. He climbed up on the chair next to me and poked me. Did he? He just poked me.. That was weird. He proceeded to tug on my hair and pull on my cheeks. Ah uh. What are you doing? He speaks no english, he’s two years old, this is useless. He giggled and touched all over my arms and legs. I think I was in shock. His mom came in saw my bewildered expression with his fingers still pulling my cheek from my face. She immediately started apologizing. Withholding her laughter she said, “he does this to girls like you” pointing to my white skin, “so sorry.” I realize now I am one of the only white people that boy had ever seen. He was trying to see if I was real.
Just another day in the life of Clarkston, Georgia.
