What to do, what to do?

[digifan]

Whatever you decide to do, you've earned my respect man.

[swedguy]

After a sleepless night and lots of thinking, I've come to a decision.

Before I received the email from the contact in Sri Lanka, I was set to go. I had been down at the vaccination place, and was scheduled to start getting shots today and I would be done with them in 2 weeks.

But after I read through the email from her with what was expected from me, I got a bad feeling. The first directions I received were OK, you greet people by putting your palms together, you wear pants or sarong in public, men and women don't hold hands or hug in public and stuff like that. Nothing strange with that, it's their culture and I adapt.
But my last instructions had:

"The community that you will be working with in Valaichenai are predominantly Muslim"
"No talking or any contact with women, unless they are immediate family"
.....and things like that.

What I would be working with had changed to teaching young people English and Internet. To me, that is not prioritized work.
I would have no problem to go do emergency work like rebuild homes, roads, electricity (I'm an electrician from the beginning) and everything else that is needed. That's prioritized.
So I would drop everything, sell off some stuff to get backup capital and turn over my company to someone else just to go teach Internet to people? If I would like to do it, I might as well do it in a year. But rush down to do it? Nah.

Plus I don't share Muslim's view on women and I don't want to sound judgemental but they lack basic view on human rights. If I lived their for half a year, there had to be times when I might've looked at a woman for too long. What would happen then? Should I only talk to men for half a year? That's just couple of things that has come to mind.
I wouldn't mind it if I would help rebuilding, it would be for a good cause.

When I did some research about the area I found abductions, shootings, civilian massacres and bombings. Most of it was before the Tamil Tiger reached a ceasefire with the government (2002), but there has also been such activities as late as October 2004.

I would over look all of it if it would be for rebuilding or other emergency help. But for non-prioritized work all the negative things adds up to a no-go.

It's sad to admit it, but I will not go

[GeorgeTH]

Originally Posted by swedguy

"The community that you will be working with in Valaichenai are predominantly Muslim"
"No talking or any contact with women, unless they are immediate family"
.....and things like that.
[...]
Plus I don't share Muslim's view on women and I don't want to sound judgemental but they lack basic view on human rights.

Gosh, what picture of a muslim society do they try to paint?

From all my experience (I've been to Marocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afganistan, Indonesia, Malaysia - all muslim countries!) it's hardly anywhere as conservative anymore as this sounds! O.k., there are differences to our western behaviour, rules, like they try to portrait, still apply to a degree with elderly women, specially once they are married (depending on their husband), but "no talking or any contact to women" - bloody bullshit! As long as it is in public, and there's no inappropriate behaviour envolved (like intimate touching or hugging), you can talk with a woman. Just don't go with her any place out of public view (your/her room, secluded beach, etc.).
I had a nice girl/woman in Sumatra openly flirt with me, and exactly these 'rules' made me step back and be a lot more reserved than I would be otherwise. She had a good sense of humour and was well educated and informed (she had a university degree) - and exactly that's the point: simply through television and the unfortunate dominance of Hollywood productions the muslim view gets softened...
Now that I live in Australia and have a few friends with Indonesian wifes I know better: I could have been a lot more open to the situation, specially since the interest was actually mutual.