Neighbours

Most Singaporeans, esp the guys, should be familiar with the flashing green man on TV, accompanied by mobilization code words that sound as cryptic as Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream flavors. Your heart leaps a bit whenever you don’t recognize any of them. And thank God my generation has never fought a war. I hear it’s dirty business.

Good riddance though if you’re a Latvian soldier in the late 20th century. Latvia (like the other 2 Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania) has an unenviable geography of being sandwiched like a pawn between Nazi Germany and Soviet USSR. So the Latvian solder gets sucked into fighting losing battles against their aggressors, and incorporated into the victors’ armies engaged in charmless wars embroiled in pathetic excuses for invasion.

After decades of Soviet oppression, it’s small wonder that Latvians hate Russia openly and intensely after their independence in 1991, though apparently not Germany these days since Latvia’s now part of EU and NATO. For example, the mother of our B&B host Diga hates Russia to the core for reasons too many to list, and not just because the Soviets got her husband Siberia-bound to shiver there for a few years. He came back a changed and broken man, a contributing factor to a dysfunctional family.


Freedom Monument in Riga, capital of Latvia

So, who your neighbours are matter, especially if they’re aspiring empire builders. I’m glad Singapore’s neighbours are generally friendly – the kind that occasionally rambles about cutting off water-supply, or sends us a yearly dose of haze from over-smoking. If that flashing green man on TV really mobilizes me, I know it’s usually not to fight a real war against marauding neighbours. And if the whole world really listens to Jesus about loving his neighbour as himself (Mark 12:31), the Ministers for Defence all over will need to start buying presents instead of missiles this Christmas.