Jerks are Jerks Everywhere

    Jerks are jerks everywhere, and no place in the world is completely free of them. During training more than one PCV here gave us good advice about not feeling like we have to accept someone treating us badly just because we are in a different cultural setting. Up until yesterday, I had only experienced a couple of cases of someone being slightly rude to me here, and most people I've interacted with have been very kind and pleasant to talk with. Yesterday, I must have been wearing a sign on my back that said "be a jerk to me" because I encountered several obnoxious people worthy of being called jerks. I had to travel on the bus to go to the village that my bank is located in because there is no atm or bank in my village. It wasn't  a long bus ride, but I had to wait around for a long time to take the bus back to my village. Here is a list of absurd interactions I had with people yesterday during that process.


1) the guy sitting behind me on the bus putting his feet under my chair and trying to play footsy with me (seriously!)
2) a guy seeing me reading and telling me some clearly BS story about how he is trying to write a book and get it published and asking me if I had any connections in America to help him with this. (I told him I was going to be here for two years so he should find someone else).He then just kept walking by and staring at me creepily. gross.
3) A woman at the bus rank trying to marry me off to various members of her family and using the reasoning of "well, my cousin is married to a Canadian". (I lied to her and told her sorry and that I had a boyfriend in the U.S. At least she was polite about this though, and I probably wouldn't have been as annoyed if I hadn't been bothered by so many other people in the same day.)
4) A guy shouting to me through the window on the bus "Dumela, baby. I love you baby. Marry me!" when the bus was parked at a stop, and then getting onto the bus, sitting next to me, and trying to grab my arm. I uttered every rejection phrase in Setswana that I know, pushed his arm away, and he got embarrassed and left.
5) Guy number 4 had a friend who was still on the bus and was trying to hit on me and pestering me about why I wasn't into his friend. He also basically called me a prude because I wasn't into his friend to which I wanted to respond with a few choice words but refrained from doing so and just told him to leave me alone and ignored him.

   Non of these things made me feel unsafe. I was in crowds of people each time. It was just completely  irritating. I felt like I couldn't catch a break. Also, I think it was the combination of all of these incidents together in one day that made me so irritated and angry.

   I was in a bad mood when I got home yesterday. I dealt with it by writing an email to one of my friends making fun of the desperation of the people I encountered because I knew that she would also see the humor in it and that laughing about it myself would make me feel better. I then went home, did some pilates, cooked some dinner, and watched as many episodes of  "Modern Family" as possible before falling asleep. It helped.

Today is a new day.