An American who had recently moved to Java told me that she was baffled by the behavior of Indonesians. She and her husband had asked an Indonesian colleague to come over for supper one night, and he never showed up. He hadn’t even had the courtesy to tell them he couldn’t make it. They simply could not understand his rudeness.
It had never occurred to these newcomers that Indonesians might not follow the same rules of hospitality Americans do. In our area of Java, people do not invite their neighbors over for supper on the spur of the moment. Instead, they nearly always have a reason for the get-together. They entertain when they have something to celebrate – a birthday, a baptism, a wedding anniversary or some other happy event. Many people are included in the invitation, and an RSPV is not required.
Never assume that people in other cultures see things as we do. Sometimes it can lead to costly errors.. Take, for example, the time a European funding agency decided to support a university in North Sumatra in its development efforts by donating the facilities they felt the university needed. There were plenty of classroom buildings, offices, and dormitories. What the university lacked, the Europeans decided, was a decent kitchen for the university cafeteria. The cooks were forced to cook outdoors over wood fires, and they really needed better facilities. The sponsors therefore designed a gorgeous modern stainless steel kitchen and had it installed next to the mess hall.
Several years later the donors returned to North Sumatra on a follow-up visit. When they toured the university, they were dismayed to discover that the modern stainless steel kitchen they had provided was still sitting there empty. The Batak cooks hadn’t even begun to use it! When asked what was wrong, the cooks explained that they were much more comfortable working the way they knew best – outdoors, cooking over open fires.
As David G. Myers says, “We perceive the world not as it is, but as we are.” When we are dealing with people of another culture, one of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume they see things the way we do. Attitudes, beliefs, norms, and values, after all, vary greatly from culture to culture. It is those hidden aspects of culture that catch us unaware and cause the greatest cross-cultural shipwrecks.
In Light for the Journey, I have included several light-hearted anecdotes and stories of things that went wrong for me in other cultures because I assumed they saw things as I did. Think back on your own cross-cultural experiences, either in your own culture or someone else’s. Have you ever run into the proverbial iceberg because you assumed people from another culture saw things as you did? What happened?
It had never occurred to these newcomers that Indonesians might not follow the same rules of hospitality Americans do. In our area of Java, people do not invite their neighbors over for supper on the spur of the moment. Instead, they nearly always have a reason for the get-together. They entertain when they have something to celebrate – a birthday, a baptism, a wedding anniversary or some other happy event. Many people are included in the invitation, and an RSPV is not required.
Never assume that people in other cultures see things as we do. Sometimes it can lead to costly errors.. Take, for example, the time a European funding agency decided to support a university in North Sumatra in its development efforts by donating the facilities they felt the university needed. There were plenty of classroom buildings, offices, and dormitories. What the university lacked, the Europeans decided, was a decent kitchen for the university cafeteria. The cooks were forced to cook outdoors over wood fires, and they really needed better facilities. The sponsors therefore designed a gorgeous modern stainless steel kitchen and had it installed next to the mess hall.
Several years later the donors returned to North Sumatra on a follow-up visit. When they toured the university, they were dismayed to discover that the modern stainless steel kitchen they had provided was still sitting there empty. The Batak cooks hadn’t even begun to use it! When asked what was wrong, the cooks explained that they were much more comfortable working the way they knew best – outdoors, cooking over open fires.
As David G. Myers says, “We perceive the world not as it is, but as we are.” When we are dealing with people of another culture, one of the biggest mistakes we can make is to assume they see things the way we do. Attitudes, beliefs, norms, and values, after all, vary greatly from culture to culture. It is those hidden aspects of culture that catch us unaware and cause the greatest cross-cultural shipwrecks.
In Light for the Journey, I have included several light-hearted anecdotes and stories of things that went wrong for me in other cultures because I assumed they saw things as I did. Think back on your own cross-cultural experiences, either in your own culture or someone else’s. Have you ever run into the proverbial iceberg because you assumed people from another culture saw things as you did? What happened?