Tag: culture shock

Culture Shock: Bumpy Reentry and Moral Dilemmas

Living in a small apartment with big windows in a tepid climate, until sunset on most days the only electricity I use is running the fridge.

Weather report predictions are usually way off. In Oman it was warm and humid for 9 months, drizzly and humid for 3 months and there was always plenty of warning about storms. Here, every day is a chance for an unannounced rainstorm or unexpected heat wave.

Amazing how everything is set up for people who are at least lower middle class. I got an e-mail which assumed I could print a document, sign it, scan it and send it as pdf within 10 minutes, as if it was normal for every person to have a multi-function printer at home.

I love my grocery store because it has all the daily requirements (Peeps, yellow mustard, frozen pretzels, crab cakes and fresh juices) but it is small. There is everything you need (chips, tea towels, flower bouquets, apple pie, mops) but with a limited selection so you don’t feel overwhelmed. But one item they don’t have is… matches. In fact, none of the stores have them so I had to order from an on-line store and have matches sent to me. Coming from a place in which many people smoked so matches and lighters were available everywhere, it is odd to buy matches by mail.

I was looking forward to being invisible in the States, i.e., wearing clothes that lots of other people were wearing, in particular sundresses! I have a collection of six brightly colored, floral, cotton sundresses and always felt like a parrot amongst sleek, tuxedoed penguins in Oman. But when I left my new apartment in a cotton candy pink dress with magenta flowers, I soon realized that there was not one other person in the neighborhood in anything similar. Day after day, store after store, I kept looking for a soulmate but after several weeks I have to concede defeat.

Moral dilemmas

People looking at their phone while waiting for crosswalks on the way home from work are so focused that they don’t notice when the ‘walk’ sign lights up. I start walking, hoping that their peripheral vision will alert them to motion, but once I crossed a street, glanced back and saw all ten people had not moved. Should I make a verbal comment? I am tempted to bark “ten-hut, forward march,” but that might be a bit muchish.

My wallet now has a coin pouch, so I decided to keep quarters in it and use them for parking meters about to expire. One day I came upon a parking policeperson giving a ticket to the first car in a line of six vehicles. I walked to the second parking meter and started slotting in quarters. She saw what I was doing and quickly briskly to the third car. I was just behind her and dropped in a quarter but she had already taken a photo of license plate and said, “They are getting a ticket.” So, I moved quickly to the last three cars and dropped quarters. She was scowling and I walked on wondering what would happen if the owner showed up and saw the ticket on the windshield when there was time left on the meter. Drama!

The post office near where I live has no postcard stamps, so I put on full price stamps. No problem. But then the main post office for the area also had no post card stamps and I had a buy a full sheet of full-price stamps to get the 2 stamps I needed for postcards. Complain? Stop writing postcards?

New book – Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions

I am happy to announce that my 4th book, Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions, has been accepted for publication at Palgrave Macmillan. I am very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers who gave positive and helpful comments.

This book outlines strategies for current or soon-to-be business professionals, government employees, anthropologists, researchers and teachers to communicate, study and work effectively on the Arabian Peninsula. Using first-person accounts, as well as scholarly research from the fields of anthropology, history, literature, political science and travel writing, this text gives clear advice so long- and short-term visitors can create successful interactions with people from Arabian Peninsula societies. By discussing how the practicalities of work and research intersect with cultural norms, this book fills the gap between guides aimed at the casual tourists and academic texts on narrowly defined topics.

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Leaving and Learning

Presentation – “Windguru and Other Gurus: Fishing off the Coast of Dhofar, Oman”

Culture Shock – (Not) Being Under Observation

Predator Anthropologists, Anthropologist Predators: Anthropological Metaphors in Popular Movies

 

Culture Shock: The Basics

(photo by M. A. Al Awaid)

It is interesting after studying and discussing culture shock for so long to be in the throes of it myself. I knew it would be challenging moving back to the States, but I didn’t know how and in which ways it would be difficult. I keep telling myself it’s like body-surfing, don’t fight the wave, give up and roll with it. Some highlights of my adjustment so far:

* toddler brain – at a certain level of exhaustion and being over-whelmed, your usual cerebral safety features give up and you start saying everything you think, like a small child. I sat next to a woman on the metro who had a small fan and said, “you have a fan!” I found myself wanting to do this constantly for the first few days whenever I saw something unusual for me: telling people that they had a dog or were wearing fun sunglasses. When I went to the laundry room, there was a man with bright orange shoes and I had to tell myself over and over, “don’t say ‘you have orange shoes’!”

* odd choices – I went to a few grocery stores when I first moved in and when I eventually organized my kitchen shelves, I realized I had bought 5 different kinds of artichoke spreads. No basics like pasta, rice, honey or vinegar but I have enough artichokes for 25 people.

* simple things seem impossible – doing my first Uber ride felt like falling off a cliff – using my microwave is harder than figuring out Ancient Greek…

* transference – sometimes you do what feels right, only to realize that it’s not ok in the culture where you now are. I got into an elevator and stood with my back to the side wall, staring at the other two people as I had learned to do, got out of the elevator and realized that I had done it completely wrong! In USA, you stand facing the elevator door and don’t look at anyone. Sigh! I spent days obsessively cleaning my countertop and wondering where to get something to cover the sink drain before I realizing that hordes of bugs would not descend if there was a stray crumb laying around.

* relearning to trust – given that certain cultures value a person who is always in control, I had to learn that in asking strangers for simple information such as directions, it was a 50/50 chance of getting the right answer as sometimes people would not have the information but not want to say “I don’t know.” In the states, usually people will be up-front (I certainly am!) when they don’t know, so you can usually trust what you are told.

* rethinking safety – Before I never worried about personal safety or my possessions; I would walk out of my office and leave my purse, phone, wallet, sometimes even cash on my desk. I would leave my purse in the grocery cart and wander over to another aisle. So I had to keep reminding myself to zip my purse, be aware of surroundings etc. But I was glad to see that within my big apartment building, there is a lovely ethos of trust. Deliveries are left willy-nilly by the front door (cartons of soda, Taco John’s, bags of fresh vegetables, Target boxes, etc.) but I have never had anything stolen, or heard of something that went missing.

* getting upset at odd moments – I stood in the drinks aisle and started at the cases of Mountain Dew; no research guys means no need for Mountain Dew in my fridge. For the first time in 19 years, it’s only diet Coke and seltzer water. I picked up a box of Liptons then put it back, no need for tea or sugar.

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Leaving and Learning

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Being Safe and Secure

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Deciding to Hire Expat Workers (part 1 of 4)

Culture Shock: The Parable of the Boxes

(photo by M. A. Al Awaid)

This is the first in a series of short essays about the shock of moving back to the states from Oman, with musing about how (writ large) the two cultures work.

When I realized I had to leave Oman, I talked to a man (X) I had known for years who helped me get through everyday life. X had a wide range of friends and acquaintances with various jobs so when I needed work done, I talked to X and he brought someone to my house, e.g. a plumber when the pipes were clogged with algae, an AC repairman, a man to repaint the walls, a man to charge the gas cylinders, etc.

I asked X if he knew someone who worked at a shipping company and of course he did. A few days later X came with supplies and we put together 4 boxes. After I had filled them, X came with the shipping company representative and a worker. I explained that I wanted door-to-door service as the boxes were mainly full of books and too heavy for me to lift.

The worker set each box on a scale; the rep calculated the weight total/ cost on his phone, gave me a price and I paid him in cash. Then I tipped the worker who carried the boxes to the truck and handed everyone a bottle of water.

Business concluded without any paperwork, although the rep did send X a photo of the bill of lading a few days later, and the whole basis of the transaction was my trust in X.

When I arrived at my apartment building in the States, I was amazed that, despite the fact that I had paid for door-to-door delivery, the 4 boxes had been stacked (2 on top of 2) in the 10-foot space between the (unlocked) door to the street and the (locked) door into the building. The apartment building had a large trolley (like bellhops have) for general use, but the space between the doors was at an incline; the trolley would not stay still while I tried to load the boxes unless I found something heavy to brace it with. The bigger problem was that I could not lift the lower boxes up onto the trolley.

I was 3 days in country, jet-lagged and at a loss. I had no one to help me and there was no way I could pick up 35 kilos of books to set up on the trolley. At least I could take the 2 boxes that were on top (resting on the other 2) as I could push them down and onto the trolley but I needed help holding it still.

There was no one in lobby, so I walked out onto the sidewalk. A young woman was walking towards me so I put my arms in front of me, palms up and asked, “Could you please help me?” She agreed so I asked her to hold the trolley in place while I pushed the 2 top boxes onto it. I pushed the boxes into my apartment, pushed them off the trolley and onto the floor, then went back to the lobby.

If I was in Oman, I would have just called X and asked for help, paid him and given him a bottle of water as I had for many years. But in the States, there was no one to call. I had no idea what I could do – asking a stranger to brace the trolley for a moment was one thing, asking them to pick up very heavy boxes was another.

I maneuvered the trolley next to the boxes and stared at them, trying to think of a solution. A man walked in from the street door, saw me, asked, “Do you need those on the trolley?” and before I could respond, he set his backpack on the ground and walked over. I sputtered thanks as he lifted each box up, then held the building door open for me. Problem solved.

As I pushed the boxes to my apartment, I thought – this is a perfect example of the difference between Oman and the States. In the States, all sorts of small public actions are easy. If I saw someone weaker than me struggling to lift something, of course I would immediately help. Strangers, especially in a city with so many transients as Boston, hold the elevator door and do general courtesies. There are endless repetitions of “please,” “thank you,” “no problem,” and “go ahead.”

In Oman, you can’t trust on that kind of minor help; people don’t hold doors open or pick up something you dropped. There is no chit-chat in the elevator.

I call this marble theory: people have only so much time/ energy/ bandwidth to give others and in Oman most of those “marbles” are given to family, so there are few left over for people you don’t know unless you see someone in great distress.

Several times I was with the research guys at a beach when someone got their car stuck nearby. “Aren’t you going to go help them?” I would ask the first few times this happened. “No, we are close to people [meaning: a town]” or “No, if they need something, they will come and ask” I was told. But when I got stuck in sand miles from anywhere, the three cars that came by all stopped. The first driver was a man with his family. He saw me, drove about two blocks on, stopped, all the passengers got out of the car, then he drove back to help me.

I stood as he tied the tow rope on, then I looked down the road at the group of women and children huddled by the side of the road in the heat. When the next car stopped, that man insisted on driving my car out of the sand, so I took some boxes of cookies over to where the women were waiting. They smiled and greeted me; standing in hot sun for 10 minutes while their relative pulled my car out of sand was nothing to complain about.

Neither way of life is better. If I approached a door with my hands full in Oman, there was zero chance of someone opening it, but there were other compensations such as being able to send all my possessions across the world without filling in forms, signing paperwork or sending e-mails. In the States, I can trust that strangers will perform simple acts of kindness, but mailing a small package involves pressing button after button on the touch-screen at the post office and a signature.

Reflections on Ethnographic Work: Ending and Beginning

Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures

Foodways: Cultures, Food Selfishness and “Could I Have a Little Bite?”

Teaching: Reflections on Culture Shocks