"worm" blood

I know, it sounds gross and if all were as it seems then it might be indeed. This highly descriptive phrase appeared in a paper that I read yesterday. The exact quote was, "Often we say that Macedonians and Serbs are people with “worm” blood, because of their temperament." Balkan people are pretty unique, so I did not readily dismiss the idea that she meant exactly what she said, but after some dialogue with other students, I gathered the real intent was "warm" blooded, not worm blood. The student continued, "Slovenians are cold, Bosnians careless and Croatians prudent."

This all came about as I am getting hammered by my students. Each day they have a reading assignment and a response paper is due. Yesterday and today they are reading various chapters of my doctoral thesis as two of those six chapters directly relate to our Biblical Theology of Missions class.

They hate my thesis. They simply hate it. They hate the way that I drew conclusions, made sweeping remarks, and steadily lumped them together into a geographical melting pot that had consistent themes running, regardless of ethnicity, sub-country, culture or language. Today when we were talking about it class, I saw why they have had war after war after war here for a thousand years. When I tried to give them a bit of contrast with the rest of the world to show them how small a section of the world we are actually referring to here (New York city was my example, with 140 plus ethnic groups and over 110 languages spoken there daily, it is a really diverse place), they were unable to see that the entire world has almost infinite layers of sub-cultures and groups within groups, in levels of complexity that make the Balkans look absolutely simple in comparison. No they were insistent, the Balkans are the most ethnically diverse place on earth and no outsider could ever possibly understand it. Well, no arguing with that last point.

Fortunately I have thick skin and appreciated the fact that I had pricked their ire . . . because it empowered them to respond in kind. And they fired off paragraph after paragraph of their true feelings about westerners, Americans in particular. Now that was incredibly painful and hysterically funny, and occasionally powerfully insightful. Americans are truly ugly when let out of their pen . . . and the students weren't shy in letting me hear about some of their capers.

We are insensitive, offer advice constantly but never take any, use money like a weapon, are superior in our attitudes to a fault, arrogance unchecked, Westerners are platonic dualists to the end, imperialists, "prove me wrong" wrong attitudes, can't learn foreign languages, most westerners have low self-esteem, . . . and on and on I could quoting their observations about us westerners. But many of you would be quick to point out that not all westerners are like this. And we agree. The Balkan students quickly did the dirty deed they are accusing me of . . . lumping them all together. Perhaps Macedonians and Serbs have worm blood after all.