Sorry I can’t come, I am in hospital!

I have never been very good at lying. I think that I must emit some sort of glow or something when I do, which flashes a big warning signal to the world. Not that it’s really something that I aspire to be better at. I am also not good at lying because it ranks toward the top of the list of things that most Australians know they shouldn’t do. It ranks just slightly below committing mass murder, infidelity with their best friend’s wife/girlfriend and, if you believe the advertisements, spilling someone’s iced coffee!

Despite it’s high rank in Australia, I have been discovering that lying does not rank nearly as well elsewhere when it comes to inappropriate types of behaviour. I started to get suspicious this week that I was missing something vital in my interactions. Three people, over the course of three days, gave me the same excuse for why they could not keep previously arranged agreements. Their lines were all the same, “oh sorry, but I am in hospital”.

Either I am mistaken and I am just maligning people’s characters and the hospitals of Jordan are really just bursting at the seams with people with leg and throat problems, or I have just stumbled on a common culturally appropriate method for extracting oneself from unpleasant and tricky situations. It’s quiet a good line really. Even if you are suspicious of your acquaintances actions, it is difficult to lecture them on the telephone about the value of “keeping one’s promises”, when they have just told you they are lying in hospital. One lady added that the reason she hadn’t called to cancel our arrangement was because this was the first day that she has been able to speak since being admitted.

Jordanian cultural insiders, I am sure are quick to pick up the cues well before it comes to forcing the untruth. It’s only ‘cultural outsiders’, like yours truly, who miss the big teleprompter, stumbling on until usually it’s too late.

I actually think that it’s never meant to get to the point of telling the lie. Cultural insiders get enough clues along the way that they never make that embarrassing phone call to ask, “Hey where are you, I am waiting here as we had agreed?” Only to hear those now familiar words, “Oh I am sorry I can’t come because I am in hospital”.

In Malawi where we have lived for more than twelve years I am also the sucker for believing the “see you tomorrow line”. Part of my trouble is I want to believe the straight-forward answer. I am bred and inculturated to believe it. So much so that even after experiencing countless let-downs I still go on believing, which often leaves me looking bewildered while waiting by the side of the road or some other place for people who never intended on coming.

Perhaps I am challenged by this because the world from which I come is not subtle enough in this area. I am unaccustomed to nuance in simple agreements as Australians are mostly blunt and matter-of-fact as only they can be.

My solace in all of this is that I believe that my ‘hospitalised acquaintances’ were sort of being nice to me. This is because their set of inappropriate behaviours is different to mine, Their’s has shame and the avoidance of shame high at the top and lying somewhere way down the bottom.

For them uttering the blunt reply of “Ah sorry mate, I just can’t make it or I don’t want to do it” is to be avoided at all cost. This would be about as unpleasant for them as it would be for me telling Mother Teresa (if she were still alive and did door to door collection for the poor) that I had just given at the office, when really I hadn’t.