Immigration

So, last night, Bert and I went for a walk to clear our heads. It wasn't what we thought of as late at night - more like around 9.00pm-ish. Nor was it dark yet.
Apparently though, in the town we live in, that's no excuse not to be drunk on a Saturday night.

On rounding the corner, a door flew open in front of us and 6 or 7 people spilled out into the street, shouting and gesturing at each other. 2 men in the centre were going at it, hammer and tongs, one of them with a piece of wood clutched in his fist. (and there we were, about 3 metres away from walking into it...)

Luckily (we thought) there was a security guard station nearby for the local university. We ran over to tell them what was going on, and to ask them to notify the police of a domestic. One of them went to phone the police, only to discover that on a Saturday night, the police weren't answering their phone. The security guys also lamented that in other case like this where the police had picked up the phone, it took them up to three hours to respond to a call.
Great, so what you're saying is that I can live in this town relatively consequence-free? I mean, I couldn't rob a place, but if I wanted to hit someone, I could probably get away with it. Unbelievable.

Meanwhile, we can still hear the sounds of the fight going on, although the participants have migrated further down the road, and closer to our house.
The security guys went on to tell us that it was usually the immigrants of this area (I really wanted to contradict him on this, but the people in question weren't actually English-speaking). That they were always drinking and causing fights. This made me very uncomfortable, considering that Bert and I are both immigrants - the only difference being that we are English-speaking immigrants (which is not always enough to save us from racism either).

In fact, the kind of attitudes that you experience directed towards immigrants here is really unbelievable. It shocks me that I now live in a place that is so predominantly white that I'm different enough to be targeted. That even Bert is different enough.

Recently, Bert taught a lesson on debating to one of his classes, using the subject of immigration. Having talked to them about it the day before, he had an idea of which kids were already anti-immigration, and tried to take them out of their comfort-zones by asking them to argue as though they themselves were immigrants. This was met partly with flat-out refusal ("But I don't want them in my country") and partly with speeches about how immigrants were coming in and taking all the jobs - which, unfortunately, was met with applause from the other students.
This attitude is so deeply ingrained that it was impossible to even get them to stop and think about the other side of the argument.

I still don't know what happened with the fight, since in the end we just had to detour around it and go home. And apparently, according to attitudes, nobody else cares.

Dating

To be honest, I don't know where to begin this. As a blog about Baha'i marriage, it's a little arrogant of me to assume that I can offer any real insights into marriage after a month, but this blog is more of a 'learn from our mistakes' kind of exercise. I wish we could say more, but we don't yet know what will come of this ourselves. (Ostensibly, this will be written by both of us, but since I'm doing the brunt of the typing here, I'm wording it in first person for convenience.)

Rather than beginning right away with the marriage, I'm going to use this post to go further back and talk a little about dating as a Baha'i. This is something that my husband, Bert, and I were especially cautious about when deciding to date – we've both noticed that there can quite often be an undue pressure on Baha'i couples (especially young couples) towards marriage. This is something that can lead to something that my husband refers to as the 'marriage-Baha'i' phenomena.

'Marriage-Baha'i', in a nutshell, is described by Bert as the following: Two Baha'is meet. They have so much in common-Baha'i. They go out to dinner-Baha'i. They see a movie-Baha'i. He's such a spiritual person-Baha'i. She has a beautiful soul-Baha'i. They get engaged-Baha'i. They have a wedding-Baha'i. They have a divorce-Baha'i.

Don't miss the point here, though – I realise that the above sounds quite cynical, but bear with me. Yes, sharing a religion is a wonderful thing in a relationship – but it's not the be-all and end all of forming a connection with each other. Nor should it be the complete sum of your relationship. You need to have more in common with each other, shared interests, similar goals and ideals, sense of humour – you get the idea. This seems obvious, but I've actually watched people (myself included) make this mistake while dating.

Bert and I were fortunate in this aspect. We met while doing service together at a Baha'i school, and were able to get to know each other by working with each other daily. This was a great eye-opener. For one thing, by working together in such a busy environment, you end up seeing how the other reacts to frustration or high pressure situations. We didn't just see this about each other, we saw many people around us in a similar situation, and had the time to get to know each person.

About six months into our friendship, I moved halfway across the world, forcing us to continue our friendship solely through email and phone-calls. While immensely frustrating to do, in the end, I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity it afforded us to really get to know one another. Not only that, but it gave us the opportunity to get to know each other privately, without everyone looking on and making assumptions, which would have put both of us off.

Not everyone gets this opportunity, and it is difficult when you feel that your every move is scrutinised. Rather like high school, really.

Ideally, I suppose, you end up in a situation where you can get to know people in a group, or through a professional setting. If it isn't possible, the point is to try and ignore those around you who are pushing you to get a move on, or even those who gossip about you. There's always those people. The trick is not to care.