Volunteer Stories: Jade Patterson
My name is Jade and I am a Monsterologist. It is an occupation which never fails to raise an eyebrow. Why monsters? people inquire. Why not? My whole life I have been followed by monsters. Or perhaps they have followed me. As a child, amateur Monsterologist, I curiously tried to lure monsters under my bed or into my closet with a crafty trail of sweets, Hansel and Gretel style. This was to the horror of my sister who had the misfortune of sharing my attic bedroom. As I grew older, I rattled monsters’ cages by rifling through pages of books. Five years down the line of University Education, and I am – to the amusement and bafflement of my friends and family – a qualified Master of Monsters.
From monsters, I have learned more about society than I would have thought humanly possible. Shedding light on monsters reveals light to emanate from the monsters themselves. Not all monsters have gleaming claws and gaping jaws. The monsters you really should fear are those whose human faces mask the absurd depths of inhumanity within. Those which – if you look too closely – are a little too like our own reflections. One of the most common misconceptions about monsters is that they are unnatural, unreal. On the contrary, monsters are created by nature; playful variations on the norm. ‘Monsters’ are natural, it is humans which bestow upon their unnatural and terrifying status. In this sense, monsters are not only real, but our own creations.
I have tracked monsters to some of the darkest corners of the globe. My time in Ethiopia taught me how little prepared I was to become one…
Heads turn. Fingers point. Mothers whisper. Children shout. What kind of monster in their midst? Nothing more terrifying than me, British volunteer, ambling along in my raincoat. I fall into the open grave of their widened eyes. I am a monster with a name. Ferenge. White person. Luckily, no one screams or protectively snatches their child from my path. Their reaction is born from novelty, not from terror. Yet the feeling of Otherness clings to me with the stubbornness of a shadow. Am I different because I’m a monster, or am I a monster because I’m different?
‘Monsterification’ is quintessentially human. It is a process which has twisted a Saturn’s Ring around the globe ever since the first baby opened its eyes and realized its mother was not itself. The cries of ‘Ferenge’ chirruped by children are not malevolent. Yet the more I think about it, the more the ‘Not-like-me’ instinct we feel when faced with difference explains the crisis of the modern world. How can people shrug off the shoeless children who plead to sell them chewing gum? Not-like-me. Why doesn’t the plight of AIDS orphans in Ethiopia inspire people in the Western world to act? Not-like-me. This is the true tragedy of the human experience. We think our ‘Not-like-me’ attitude can in some way protect us from the struggles, even horrors, of our globe. What we don’t realize is that we shield ourselves not in cotton wool, but in shards of the broken world which surrounds us. In saying or even thinking, however subconsciously, ‘Not-like-me’, we create Them and Us. Quite simply, we create monsters.
Nietzche famously claimed, ‘He who fights monsters must take care lest he thereby become a monster’. His words have never rung more true. Let us not fight monsters; let us unmake them, and remake ourselves. Let’s stop living in parallel worlds which barely touch, like different shades of a rainbow. We should combine the different hues, like a prism lifted to reveal a uniform, dazzling light.
So I find, when I see suffering in the beautifully vibrant city of Addis Ababa, a new definition of Monstrosity. Monstrosity not of difference, but of indifference. When our capacity to see stops striking us blind, when we acknowledge ‘Like-me’, we become positive agents of change. We consolidate our core of humanity.
Like all good monster stories, I want to conclude with a Goldilocks-warning. Next time you recoil from the monster’s clawprints still fresh in the soil, take heed. Stop, place your own hands in the fragile indentations. It may not be ‘too big’ or ‘too small’, but ‘Just right’.
