Travel should be a learning experience, not just spectacle
I recently sent a holiday greeting to distant friends in which I mentioned how grateful I am to have wonderful memories of living in other countries with very different cultures. One response included a note that the writer and her husband had visited 80 countries. That got me to thinking that I had never actually counted the number of countries I had visited, or considered this number significant. So I set myself to counting.
Problems arose. Should I consider equally a country where I lived for two years, like Ethiopia, along with a country I simply passed through getting to someplace else? I don’t think so. What about countries where I have spent hours changing planes, places like Hong Kong; Sofia, Bulgaria; or Johannesburg, South Africa? No, they don’t count either. And then there are Zanzibar and Tanganyika, which were separate countries when I visited them but soon after joined to form Tanzania? Yes, I will count them as two.
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My final count is 41 countries visited. Big deal! I have concluded that that fact alone means very little. Anybody with enough money, time and inclination can do that, and more.
The bottom line, I think, is what I have learned from these experiences. Some of these experiences in different cultures have changed me. For that to happen, I had to spend time – sometimes weeks and months – completely away from any contact with other Americans. I had to experience the 90% of another culture that is hidden beneath the surface.
We radically individualistic Americans are generally unaware that our bold speaking out may offend our collectivist hosts in a different culture. We may miss cues and omit certain forms of respect or deference. The list goes on of how we may be culturally ignorant.
We Americans tend to be very much oblivious when suddenly confronted with a different culture. We are so much better at speaking than listening. We tend to offend and not even know it.
Years ago, I was traveling alone in Peru and had joined a group of British travelers for dinner in a restaurant. Suddenly the peaceful quiet of our modest conversation was interrupted by loud, raucous talking. “Americans,” my new friends commented. “What can you do?”
Unfortunately, in my experience, tourist companies often avoid the real issues of cultural differences. They assume, I expect correctly, that most American tourists would prefer to be entertained seeing different clothing and dances, the 10% of cultural differences that are visible, and would rather avoid anything that might challenge their sense of how life should be lived. Most tours, even the best, keep American tourists in a bubble, looking out on the natives, but not getting to significant differences in ways of thinking.
While living in India, I needed to learn how to eat everything, including rice and sauces with fingers of my right hand. There is a clear cultural distinction in both Africa and Asia; only the right hand is used for eating.
It wasn’t until my seventh visit to India, that I took a tour to places I had not visited, with an American company. It was an excellent tour with some rather strange occurrences. One tour member would not eat anything with spices, which is like going to Italy and not eating pasta. And in all our meals on the tour, including the special “home visit,” we were given knives and forks, with never any mention of eating with our hands. Nobody else seemed to notice or care about what we were missing.
Obtaining “cultural intelligence” can be messy and challenging, but, to me, it is the most important point of visiting other countries – not counting countries visited!
