Just over a week ago I was approached about leaving Nicaragua to move for some months to a continent that I have never visited: Asia. All of a sudden the different levels of being an outsider struck me.
Here in Managua I am and always will be an outsider but after more than four years I am an outsider with some understanding. Obviously I know that my language skills have improved over time and I am no longer daunted by speaking Spanish, even if it continues to be flawed, I don’t plan my sentences in advance or worry if I’m not determining the topic of conversation as I’d struggle to follow, I readily answer the telephone the most challenging of communication interfaces in a foreign language. To understand any other culture well I think it is essential you understand the language and not just the formal version but the local nuances: my Nicaraguan Spanish is certainly not there yet. I simply take satisfaction that Nicaraguans who don’t know me and speak to me for the first time, at least don’t mistake me for a North American. However proficiency in the language alone does not guarantee an understanding of another culture and place or an ability to integrate well without a lot of effort. Often I only notice I have incorporated some small aspect into my life when another outsider comes to visit and watch them react much as I did and I realise in that element I have changed the way I interact in Nicaragua. I have in mind to do some short blog posts on “Etiquette” a few comparisons of the way things are done in Nicaragua compared to the UK, we’ll see if they materialise on screen.
I still barely understand Nicaragua in a subconscious, almost effortless way which is how most of us understand our home cultures, but I do feel like to some extent it is a “known” and a “home”. I am writing this sat in Houston airport awaiting my flight back to Managua and I know if it weren’t for this possible change that I face in the coming weeks I would be about to slip easily back into my Nicaragua life as easily as I slip into my UK life when I return there to visit.
So if I put the demands of the new job aside and try not to think about the upheaval of leaving friends and colleagues in Nicaragua, the idea of spending time in Asia is interesting, even appealing, but it is also mentally exhausting. Although the work language in the Philippines would be English suddenly trying to be effective and make new relationships in a completely new culture and place is daunting. I noticed I have referred to being effective and making new relationships as two items but really they are one and the same without good relationships it is impossible to be effective, but that is a very difficult concept to truly accept and apply for performance orientated, Anglo-Saxon type cultures.
Our ability to make positive relationships depends on the details, often details we overlook and that no-one can explain to us as they are so deeply engrained it would be foolish to think any other well mannered/good person would fail to do this or know that this matters. How do you sensitively advise an outsider of an offence caused or a negative implication of an action without seeming to imply they are a bad person? And how as an outsider can we solicit that feedback in a way that allows others to advise us without judging us and without feeling a constant failure?
An extremely polite Guyanese friend came to live in my town in the UK for a number of months. On one occasion when we went to the public library together, I remember leaving and as Brits do I pushed the door open and walked through and then held the door slightly so my friend could take it from me rather than letting it bang in his face, he walked through but didn’t think to look behind and support the door for the next person. Now because I already knew this young man and that he was always extremely polite in Guyana, I was able to afterwards explain the normal British door protocol to him so as to avoid other people who didn’t know him deciding he was a bad-mannered, rude or ignorant foreigner, with the various racist tones some people add to that. Thinking about the incident afterwards and my years of living in Guyana I realised it was extremely difficult to think of any situation where I would have needed my British door cultural protocol, almost all public buildings and shops kept the doors open all the time during office hours mostly to give necessary ventilation. The only exceptions were buildings with air-conditioning (the bank) or for security reasons, in both these cases the door would be manned by a guard who opened and closed it. So it was only because I knew my friend and I knew Guyana that I avoided the inevitable, but wrong conclusion that my friend was rude. And I should add even knowing this I didn’t always handle these cultural anomalies well.
Equally there is always the temptation as the outsider to judge others actions against your own cultural norms and infer meaning or intention which may or may not exist. It is a blur of misunderstanding in so many ways so the prospect of moving again to somewhere new is daunting. It is also probably worth bearing in mind we should be gentler in our assessments of outsiders in our own culture. Living outside your home culture(s) almost forces us into a state of cultural “autism”, a difficultly in reading all the small signs those around us understand.
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