Two Stories

Recently I had two interesting experiences that I think illustrate both a few of the many things I love about Laos and the challenges of living cross-culturally. Sorry, no pictures for this one, but don’t let that keep you from reading!

Things often don’t work out as I expect, probably because as a North American, my expectations are often very different than the culture. So when my friend Nah asked me to go visit his English class so that his students could practice conversing with a native speaker, I was expecting a small group of kids like the 3 friends I teach twice a week. Instead, he ended up taking me to a language school, and I visited 4 or 5 full classrooms of kids. It was actually really fun to have a reason to speak English with people. It was also fun, though, to see how surprised the kids were that I could understand what they said to each other before they got up the courage to ask me a question in English. The kids had the chance to ask me whatever questions they wanted. Most of them were predictable: What is your name? Where are you from? Do you have a boyfriend? (People—not just children—love that last one…I can usually count on a kindly adult older than me asking “How old are you?” and then inquiring about my marriage or relationship status.) But then there was also the question from a preteen girl, “You are very beautiful. What do you eat?” I chuckled and was about to move on to the next question when Nah informed me that the girl was waiting for an answer. I said bread, milk and sticky rice.

But the other reason I like this story is because I think it shows something really important about Lao culture: volunteerism. I am constantly impressed by how much people (especially young people) volunteer their time for the good of others or cheerfully help out their neighbors. Nah works all day at his office job, and then 3 nights a week, he teaches English to kids at this language school. He may get paid a little for it, I don’t know, but it’s probably not much. It’s the same with Mittapab, the volunteer group I work with. The ones who started the group were mostly volunteers at youth or child development centers, and now they are involved with our peace group as well as their day jobs. Many of our other volunteers are university students. As I think back to life as a student, I don’t remember myself or most other students being this genuinely interested in volunteering their time to make their community better, even at a school like EMU which really emphasizes “service learning” and even makes it a part of the curriculum.

Ok, so this next story is kind of embarrassing, but if I have learned anything in the past year, it is that the more I think I’m learning of this language and culture, the more I realize how much I still don’t know. As soon as I feel like I’m getting a handle on things, say understanding the students like in the last story, something happens to take me down a notch. Recently I went to a hair salon to get my hair cut. I went to a place where I kind of know some of the women from the Lao church I go to. I’m still not sure exactly how it happened, but it was some combination of not wanting to be rude or pushy and having a language mix-up with the words for “cut” and “straighten.”  To make a long story short, I finally walked out of there an hour and a half later, my hair having been washed twice, blown dried twice, thinned, and almost straightened (but that was immediately aborted when I realized my mistake). Ironically, after all of that, not cut, my original intention. The lesson learned? Several:

1. It’s a good idea to look in a dictionary or ask a friend about the vocabulary you might need before you go into a new situation. Motions and talking around things don’t always do the trick. The word that I thought was a more specific word for “cut” was actually the word for “straighten.”
2. I have become more passive. My mom will hate to hear this, but I’ve actually become less assertive over the past months. Assertiveness is just not a cultural value here. And I’ve realized that I don’t actually need to have things my way nearly as much as I thought—no, I didn’t get a haircut, but I’m happy with my hair and with the chat that I had with Pawn. Besides, if I spoke up every time that someone did something in a way that I thought was ridiculous, everyone would think I was ridiculous. Yet I realized today that the coping skills of going with the flow and trusting that things I don’t understand at the time will soon become clear that have usually served me well over the past year can sometimes be maladaptive. At certain points, I thought something might be amiss, but I assumed that she just did things differently than I was used to. But no, I accidentally told her I wanted my hair straightened.
3. As confirmed by other experiences as well, Lao people are unfailingly patient and gracious, even when you tell them the wrong thing and they have to do everything all over. As I was leaving, Pawn said I could come over anytime and hang out with them. For that graciousness, I am very grateful.