“For a woman to starve to death is a small matter,
But for her to lose her chastity is a great calamity”
This is written on a postcard that I brought from Ghana. It is part of a series of postcards produced to support national tourism. And it portrays a woman sitting by some baskets, hands crossed over her lap.
How can this be? How can people be so different, think so differently? How can we be at peace when we are traveling, learning and sharing other cultures, coming across things that hurt and disgust? How do we stop our judging and accept? Or even: should we? Should we accept something that feels like a punch in the stomach, should we fight for change? What is our reach, how fair is our understanding, how fair is our point of view? How fair is our interference?
I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to any question. Open mindedness brings me a degree of exposure that is scary and irreversible. The only thing I know is that in my world, the world that I create in my imagination, this postcard doesn’t exist. Instead, there is another postcard that says:
“For a woman to lose her chastity is a small matter,
But for her to starve to death is a great calamity.”
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