Trust, in another culture

Today, with my mother, we saw "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."  It was better than I had expected. I had expected stereotypes--of the Brits and the Indians and the relationship between them--and many of those stereotypes were played out.  But it also had a Bollywood feel to it, as well as seriousness:  it was a movie full of people in their 60s and 70s faced with how to afford to live in retirement, what to do with their lives, or both.  My mother was quite sobered by the lives played by Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and other wonderful actors.

And as my mother told me, I saw different things in the film than she did.  I saw, literally, that I'd been in exactly the same place as the actors in the movie.   I saw elements of myself, a foreigner going to work in India who tried at times to put up resistance to the sensory overload and cultural difference that India is.  It reminded me how embarrassed I am that I felt that way:  that I wasn't one of those who embraced it all with positive spirit.

One of the characters in the film laments that she never knows what to trust, or whom to trust, in India:  the waiter tells her the milk is pasteurized when she knows he's lying; the group were given airbrushed pictures of a palatial building where they would stay, which turned out to be a falling-down grand hotel.  And I remember feeling the same way.  By the middle of my second year, I was travelling with a friend from the States during the spring break and had completely hit the wall with my cynicism:  How did I know if that shawl was really cashmere?   They were all pure cashmere, supposedly, but how could they be?

And I suppose that's the question at the heart of our journey into a new culture:  Whom do you trust?  What can you trust about it?  Is the building you're trying to find really around the corner?  Does Yes mean Yes when it's said with the speaker's head moving side to side, as if saying No?  So many layers of language and culture get in the way.

I use the example of India, but I feel it keenly in my work culture now (which is French).  And I know that anyone coming to our country, the US, must feel the same way.   We're a country, after all, that only knows one language.  What can you trust?  Whom can you trust?  How do you tell the difference?  I think the answer is complex, and lies in meeting people where they are; putting oneself in the other's shoes, to the extent you can.

How do you know whom to trust, in entering any new culture, even at home? Work culture, college culture . . .  Patience, positive or optimistic attitude, watchfulness, keen observation, trying to learn the language, somehow showing this new country you value your experience there?  All of the above?   Tell me your thoughts, because it's important.

Springs of Peace

Yesterday, June 24, was the birthday of one of my sisters.  She's brilliant and beautiful and one of the most strong and generous people in this world.  I admire her so much I'm too awestruck to say it to her.

So I think she would appreciate me posting this honor of her, and in memory of Sylvia Gift Nabukeera.   Sylvia--"Sylvie" or "Gift"--was a student who graduated from Mahindra United World College of India (the international high school where I worked from 2003 - 2006).  Sylvia left on a journey last year on June 24 to go back home to Uganda.  She stopped off in Nairobi and was killed, her body found on the streets almost a month later.

Sylvia, too, was brilliant and beautiful and funny and strong.  She was always singing, and could laugh off almost anything, including a snake bite on campus and the trip to the hospital an hour away.

I was reminded of this anniversary yesterday by Sylvia's friends from MUWCI, who have started an NGO to fulfill her goal:  providing drinkable water for her village in Uganda.   They wrote a much more moving tribute to Sylvie than this one.  I was reminded that Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/ has raised $5,000 toward their goal of $20,000, a great accomplishment in one year.  

I was reminded to contribute (which I hadn't yet done, to my chagrin).   Sylvia's description of her project is moving.  If anyone could have done something about it, Sylvia could.   She was a ball of poised energy and passion.  Let's hope we can help her project succeed.

Those who've started this project--Barbara, Julianne, Rachel, Shane, and Pravina--are smart ladies who know what they're doing.  (Hell, they knew what they were doing much better than I did, even as seventeen-year-olds).  You can trust them with your money!  Please give whatever you can to help the people Sylvia cared about, to Springs of Peace http://springsofpeace.wordpress.com/about/

I didn't know I would have two anniversaries to mark yesterday, one happy and one sad.  I'm grateful for my sister's happy day.  Let's turn the sad one into as much happiness for others as we can, for Sylvia's sake.

I had a thought-provoking conversation with a good friend recently about dual citizenship.

Him:  What a strange notion, having two citizenships.  How can you have allegiance to two (or even more) countries?   What if they are countries in conflict with each other, each making demands on you, such as mandatory military service or civic service?

Me:  I get your point, but I think the majority of people with dual citizenship are born into it; they don't acquire it.   I know people with dual citizenship who are thoroughly bi-cultural and bilingual:  they've lived in both countries, have a parent from each country; speak both languages.  This is who they are.   What can you do about that?

Him:  True . . . You've had more experience with that than I have.   It's complicated:  There are people with only US citizenship, for example, who have never lived in this country.   Are they as American as someone who immigrated here and became a citizen?  (And by the way, the requirement that you have to be born in the US to become president is archaic . . .)

Me:  Yes, it's complicated.    Are you saying that countries shouldn't allow dual citizenship?

Him:   Well . . .

I don't have any answers.   I'm not sure there are answers, but it's a fascinating topic in this world where people are more mobile than ever.    What do you think?

Obsessed with pictures

This picture came from the cloister of a monastery in Italy, Monte Oliveto Maggiore, that I've been fortunate--lucky--enough to visit three times.  I noticed this sign the third time, as we were getting a tour.  It's funny:  underneath this sign was a fresco on all four sides of a courtyard, telling the story of a saint (whose name I'm embarrassed to say I can't recall at the moment).   There were paintings of battles, and worship.  The artist who finished the fresco cycle was nicknamed "Sodoma."  (I'm calling on my art-historian friends--you know who you are-- to remind me of his real name, which I think begins with an L).   Somehow Sodoma was a good enough painter to overcome his nickname.   And perhaps this order of monks had a sense of humor.  

I was struck by this sign, reminding the monks to practice silence and respect and observance.  It was odd to think that monks needed reminding, as if they were young schoolboys in short pants, to be quiet and not run around the courtyard making loud noises and defacing the art.    We had just sung for these monks, the time I took this picture, and it was hard to believe that they could be anything but respectful and observant of the rules of the sacred place they walked about every day.

I'm going through a phase of looking back at the pictures I've taken in the last nine years, since I lived overseas; I'm frenetically trying to decide which ones to print and even more difficult, which ones to put on the walls of my little apartment.   They all seem worthy.    Maybe it's a way of dealing with the unbearable richness of the experience.   At fifty, I feel overwhelmed by memories.   Suddenly it's apparent that I have lived, and have managed somehow to accumulate lots of pictures.  

Silenzio e rispetto reminds me to look at the art and to try to be patient:  not to worry that I won't remember it all at the same time; that it will take many trips around the cloister to examine all the details, and that all the single details don't necessarily matter.  It's the whole story that matters.  

I don't know if the monks actually pay attention as they are admonished to practice Silenzio e rispetto.  I don't know how many years the sign has been there--probably a lot, since the S in rispetto has been re-painted.   They must see the sign fifty times a day, and don't take note of it consciously anymore.   But it called out to me, and still does.

It's time to write again

What topic shall it be?

Despite this blog's title--What's it like, coming back to your country after being away?--I'm feeling very domestic.  I'm not talking cooking; I'm talking about things happening in the US.

So President Obama said today he believes marriage between same-sex couples should be legal.   My home state, North Carolina, strongly disagreed.   Yet in the last election, NC elected a Democratic governor who's female.

So why aren't people's votes consistent?  or why aren't their general political beliefs consistent within themselves?

Who are all these men?

When I look at the television images of the protesters in Tahrir Square, and now in Tehran and in other countries, all I see is testosterone.

And this bothers me: it bothers me that there are few, if any, women in these protests, and it also bothers me (that is, makes me embarrassed) that I am bringing such a Western-feminist perspective to those images. After all, according to an NBC news report this evening, the major organizer for the Egyptian protests was a woman. She coordinated the online and texting campaign, albeit inside, not outside.

I know that women in societies throughout the Middle East and South Asia, and no doubt other parts of the world, are the family members who stay home. It's cultural, perhaps religious, often socio-economic, and happens in the US in some communities as well. I also know that many of these same women are highly educated and bring their own contributions to the cause: if they weren't at home taking care of the children, preparing meals, sending their kids to school, their husbands couldn't be on the streets protesting. Maybe there’s a whole network of women texting and calling, to get their men to the right places. I suspect there is some complexity behind the scenes that I can’t see.

But at a gut level I am bothered by those images. Maybe they remind me of the discomfort I felt during the three years I was in India, the annoyance, the vague sense not so much of fear but of foreignness, of difference, of being (figuratively) overpowered by crowds of men everywhere. Men wearing white or light-green shirts and dark pants, all looking roughly the same age, would race their motorbikes or bicycles in a swarm through any intersection in Pune as the light went from red to green. I felt trapped, in a completely irrational way (these men weren't after me at all) by those hordes of men, often young men, whether they were on motorbikes or walking down the streets or staring at me as if they'd never seen a woman before. Often, I was numbed by the thought of how many thousands of miles I would have to travel in order not to experience crowds of staring men everywhere.

And they often seemed not to be " doing" anything. This, of course, is a Western or even American perspective: that we always have to be doing something; that it's not okay to hang around outside for hours, or visit the shop your friend owns and talk to him all afternoon while he’s working. What I wondered and still wonder as I watch these protests is: how do these thousands of men have time to spend two or three or ten or eighteen days, or however long it takes, in the streets protesting? And who are they? Are they all unemployed? If they work, will they have a job to return to? And if there are mainly men in the streets, is the revolution only about men’s problems?

It’s entirely possible that I haven’t watched the right news sources to answer these questions, but I have not heard answers. On the one hand, I’m amazed, happy, dumbfounded at the success of Egypt’s revolution: can we Americans imagine that happening in the States? On the Mall in Washington, mass protests even at their most earnest never last more than a day (not in my memory, anyway). Who would stay in the streets for eighteen days in this country?

On the other hand, I find the gender element of the Egypt story, and all the Middle-East revolution stories, missing.

What do you think?

This blog will open on Sunday, Feb 13th, 2011. Stay tuned.

I've been called "Amy-ji," "Guru-ma," "Miss Amy," "Ma'am," "Amy Madam," and "Madame Garrou." These names represent cultures blending, unabashed gestures of affection blended with respect, even at their most formal. I like them all, and I would never have heard them without all of you from Nepal, Tibet, India, France, and the American South.

What's it like, coming home to your country after being away? This is a topic so many of us have experienced, whether on a week's short trip outside the US, or from living outside our countries for years. I open this blog to explore the notion of leaving, and coming home; of being a foreigner and a native, or something in between. I don't have the answers, but I'll post some musings, articles, pictures, and questions, and I'd like to hear yours.