I’m finally all packed, and in about an hour will leave for the airport. I feel like I’m forgetting multiple really important things, but can’t think of what. I have my toothbrush, my passports, socks… I’ll have a roughly 6 hour flight to Doha, a 7ish hour layover there, and then another flight of about 6 hours. In just about 24 hours, I’ll be in Dar es Salaam!
I’m getting really curious about how I’ll react to Tanzanian culture. Some sort of culture shock is inevitable, which is good. Going somewhere without a culture shock would be boring – that’s part of what makes travel so exciting.
I spent the summer in the US, and have had about a week here in Sweden before going to Tanzania. In many ways, Sweden is my “home;” I was a resident for 20 years, my parents live here, all my schooling until college was in Sweden. Nonetheless, I’ve definitely been experiencing some culture shock since getting back. It started in JFK as I was waiting in line to get my boarding pass for the flights to Reykjavik and Stockholm. The family ahead of me was Swedish. Several times, the father absentmindedly rammed his suitcase into my backpack, which I’d placed on the floor. In Keflavik airport, the cashier at the store where I got a croissant barely made eye-contact. At the baggage claim in Arlanda (Stockholm airport), an announcement on the loudspeakers informed us that our luggage would be delayed as they couldn’t open the hatch in the airplane. There was some grumbling among people travelling together, but that’s it; when the baggage finally came and I was struggling to simultaneously pull my two nearly 50lbs duffel bags off the carousel, a few hundred people watched me and no one made the slightest gesture to help.
I’ve flown across the Atlantic a good 25 times by now (my mom is American so we’d spend every summer with her family in Maryland, and now I go to college in Iowa), and have had similar experiences in multiple airports. On a predominantly American as opposed to Scandinavian flight, these scenarios would almost certainly have been very different. Any accidental nudge would have been acknowledged with an “excuse me” or “I’m sorry.” In stores, you’re given a smile if not a “have a good day.” There’s invariably someone who will take a delay as an excuse to make some comment that bonds the flight as a group caught in a mutually inconvenient, but unavoidable and somewhat humorous situation. In the US I can haul around way more than I can possibly carry on my own because I can more or less count on people helping me – whether that’s getting a ride from Wal Mart to campus in Grinnell, or help with moving wheel-less bags through a New York subway (even back in the good old days when you could have two bags of 64kgs each).
I know that there is a dramatic difference in how people act in Sweden and the US. I’ve always known that. Nonetheless, every time I switch countries, I’m surprised by people’s behavior. I’d like to think my reactions have gotten somewhat more nuanced over the years, but on the whole, they tend to remain pretty stable. When I go to Sweden, I’m horrified by how rude and selfish people are. When I go to the US, I’m appalled at how shallow and impersonal everyone seems. At the same time, I love how independent and no-nonsense Swedes are, and by how friendly and open Americans are. I’m not really a foreigner in either Sweden or the US, yet experience culture shock in both. I guess it isn’t the culture itself that is as important as the change from one to another. Tanzania will be a huge change. On the other hand, I’ll be expecting to feel out of place there, whereas I’m always taken slightly by surprise at how weird it feels to arrive in Sweden or the US (since by the time I leave either, I feel entirely at home there). I wonder if the fact that Tanzania is so vastly different from anywhere I’ve ever been will in a sense make it easier to adjust to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment