One of the things that is difficult to explain is the difficulty many autistic people have understanding things that "neurotypical" people comprehend instinctively: social rules, social cues, facial expressions, unspoken meanings. We eventually learn, but it takes us longer. Think of us as strangers in a strange land.
That might be why I love being in strange lands, far from home. It feels normal to me, but a more interesting form of normal.
When I joined Peace Corps in 1980, I moved to the West African nation of Togo and fell in love with the people and culture. But it took several months for that love to really take hold. I was infatuated instantly, but then fell into a dark place, because, as usual, I found myself very much alone, despite my best efforts.
And then an "aha!" moment. I learned a simple rule of local behavior--a social rule that Togolese understood automatically but that I and most foreigners were oblivious to.
It is a perfect analogy to an autistic person's life before trial, error, and painful missteps teach us the rules everybody else knows.
Here's an excerpt from my book, My So-Called Disorder: Autism, Exploding Trucks, and the Big Daddy of Rock and Roll:
I am determined to make friends.
During our training, a departing second year volunteer dispensed some good advice. She encouraged us to seek out important people in the village and do our best to make friends with them.
“These people will really help you when the time comes that you need some help. So, when you meet them, invite them to visit. And be ready for them. Have some beer or soft drinks and some snacks.”
I try. I have just finished three years where I was more alone than I ever have been or ever will be, but suddenly I am Monsieur Sociabilité. I walk through town like the stranger in an old western. Eyes follow me everywhere. Babies see my bizarre skin tone and hair and burst into inconsolable shrieks of terror. I shake many, many hands. I ask about people’s jobs, wives, homes, and children. I buy rounds of beer and pamprankou—a fermented drink made from raffia trees that smells to me like Cheerios left too long in a bowl of milk but that has advantages beyond the gentle buzz it provides.
“Ça fait bien pisser!” says the elder Mr. Dando, with a happy smile.
The remark is as befuddling to me as when Terri showed me her contraceptives. I smile, nod, and finish my calabash, confused but at least confident in the knowledge that I will “piss well” tonight.
Lots of people introduce themselves to me. Lots of people accept my offers of drinks. I like to watch them pour a drop for the ancestors before taking their first sip. I learn the pleasure of sodabi, the homemade gin distilled from palm wine.
The two villagers who are friendliest to me are the Dando brothers. Both Dandos have children in the school where I will teach. One of the Dandos is the “catechist”—the man who guides the Catholic congregation through Sunday services when a visiting priest isn’t available to say an actual mass. I will learn that in addition to being a devout Catholic, he is a firm believer in the local gods. He gives me some hope when he asks if I speak the local language. I tell him no. “You’ll learn it. When you play with the girls, they will teach you!” I listen with interest. Maybe the future government minister was wrong about the girls. I invite both Dandos to my house. “How about Sunday, after mass?” I ask the catechist.
“I will come!” he responds dynamically.
I prepare for the visit. I buy soft drinks and beer, peanuts and cookies, and even a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label Scotch whisky, which, like Quaker Oats and Marlboros, is available tax free everywhere in Togo, including Death is Better.
I wait. He never comes. I crack open the bottle of Scotch and follow a shot with a slug of warm beer from the bottle.
This sad scenario repeats itself a dozen times. I invite various teachers and “fonctionnaires.” Ils ne viennent pas. I invite the Dandos again and again. They don’t come.
In Seattle I had been alone for a reason. I invited no one. Here I am doing everything I can to be more sociable. The foreign language and culture somehow free me to do so. I am becoming a new person, but with the same old result.
Even the teachers at my school don’t visit. They are friendly at work, but aside from my school director (friend of the future minister) they never come by, despite my invitations, and even the director only stops once or twice to say hello and check on me. So even though I am learning to reach out to people, it is not working. It’s like the pretty young woman I invited to the basketball game, but 100 times over, and makes no sense to me.
I decide to finish the school year and go home. In letters home I call Death is Better “Better Off Dead.”
Then one day some newly minted teachers are assigned to our school. I see them congregating with the other young teachers in front of a house on the main road where several teachers live. I decide to make one last effort to be friendly with my colleagues.
One of the new teachers is an excitable man named Dadjo. Dadjo has an almond shaped face, facial scars, and heavy duty black-framed, Bo Diddley-style glasses. He shakes my hand with gusto and snaps my middle finger as he lets go.
“And do you all hang out with Monsieur Pita?” Dadjo asks the other teachers.
A quiet, polite teacher who has been around since the start of the year shakes his head and gazes at me.
“Mr. Peter likes to stay by himself.”
This pisses me off. How can he say that after all the efforts I’ve made, for the first time in my life, to meet people? How can he say this after I’ve waited, time and again, for him and others to respond to my invitations.
“I like to stay by myself!” I repeat, nearly hissing. “That’s not true. I invite you to my house all the time! You never come!”
I think these are the first angry words I speak in Africa—but I’ve had it.
The professor looks as befuddled as I feel, and a bit sad at being so maligned.
“I come to your house every day,” he responds, shaking his head. “The front door is always closed.”
And then I see it—a vision of startling clarity—how so many doors in the village are wide open so much of the day, with only beads or a sheet of light cloth to keep out the hot sun and flies.
How visitors approach those open doors clapping their hands to get the attention of people inside.
And how I, like any good American, go home every day and shut and lock my front door.
I understand, for the first time, that I simply haven’t known or understood a cardinal rule of Togolese sociability.
I return home and leave my front door open. All afternoon and evening I am besieged by visitors. The teachers. My neighbors. Children from school. The Dandos. Dadjo.
And it is like that every day for the remaining two and a half years I live in Death is Better.
After learning about autism and the difficulty many autistic people have understanding neurotypical social rules, social cues and facial cues, I see this as a nearly perfect parable. My inability to understand how the social world works has had definite consequences. I failed with girls in college not because I didn’t care, and not because I didn’t want to be with them, and not even because they didn’t want to be with me. Each of the young women I’ve described here obviously did, at least for a time. I just didn’t understand the rules. I didn’t understand how things work.
But little by little I am learning, not only the rules in Africa, which are new for me, but the general rules of sociability, which are more universal—and Africa and its people will be a huge part of that education.
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