Someone on the internet thought I was wrong
My use of the phrase “developing world” in a chart I made led to a reaction from someone on the internet who took offense to my use of this terminology. I admit that the term “developing world” should not be used to describe one large, monolithic area, and that I should have specified that my personal experience (that is, my inspiration for making the chart) is limited to the Middle East, specifically the country of Syria.
I understand that there’s no single definition of the terms developed country or developing country, nor any internationally established convention for the designation of countries as one or the other. On the other hand, Syria is by all practical definitions (UN, World Bank, IMF) a developing country. Euphemisms aside, if one accepts a definition that I just made up, that a “developing country” in one in which the tap water is full of hepatitis and amoebas and where fresh meat is not required by law to be kept refrigerated, then Syria most certainly is one. The fact is that the food preparation and storage hygiene standards here in Syria are woefully inadequate. Person on the internet replied:
I’m aware some health problems may happen when people who are used to a certain environment move to another. It happens the other way around, too. Or even when people from a “developed country” move to another “developed country”.
Listen, this is not about cultural stereotypes, ethnocentrism, or whatever else you’ve learned in your post-colonial studies textbooks. After moving from the USA to the UK, I occasionally suffered from summertime allergies that I never had before. I figured it was due to the different vegetation and such. But I never got violently ill from drinking British tap water, or from eating raw vegetables in restaurants, or from buying rotten meat! And I certainly didn’t need to boost up my vaccines before traveling there. Nobody needs to do. You know why? Because the drinking water in so-called “developed” countries is clean to drink. The meat in “developed” countries is refrigerated to prevent. Nuts in “developed” countries are kept refrigerated to prevent stomach cancer-causing fungus from appearing.
Person on the internet continues:
But my entire problem with your post comes from the use of the term “developing world” - which is itself highly questionnable - used as a collective term embracing completely different and particular societies that may have little in common except for the fact that they’re considered “poorer” than Europe and North America. Furthermore, its use in this context reinforces a colonialist construct that categorises non-white countries and people as dirty and unhealthy, thus affirming the need for segregation from white people. It implies also that Western hygiene and general standards are superior, whereas others are “inadequate”. One may ask to whom are they inadequate, since most people in Syria, in this case, don’t get sick very easily because of their food, anyway, surely not more than people in the “West”.
Congratulations, person on the internet, seems you have read a book! Reminds me of those tortured souls at SOAS, so woefully mired in personal identity crises, blind to plain facts that didn’t fit into their preset narratives of post-colonialism. Syria is poorer than Europe and North America and does have tap water unfit to drink. What’s dirty and unhealthy in Syria are the municipal water supply systems — not the people. I’m not trying to imply that Western drinking water standards are superior — I’m explicitly stating it. No euphemisms here.
The Syrian doctors and pharmacists we’ve visited in Damascus, Aleppo and Hama all agreed, asking flat out if we’d eaten in restaurants while in Syria, specifically dishes with uncooked vegetables or herbs like taboulleh. Doing so, they’ve said, is highly inadvisable. Syrians themselves get sick from improperly cleaned or stored foods. And just look at the relative lack of refrigeration here. Compare this to Lebanon, another “developing country” by the most commonly accepted definitions, where the tap water is drinkable. Lebanese shopkeepers we met even note the lack of public sanitation in Syria. It was a joke to them. An Algerian friend of ours who had been living in Damascus a few months before we arrived, was appalled by the situation here, warning us of the health issues that had befallen her, her partner, and colleagues of theirs.
Syrians don’t need to be segregated from anyone — they need cleaner water and better food storage standards. That’s all.
