Culture and Posture

There's a scene in the film Namesake that I kept picturing when thinking about our trip to Laos.  In the film, Indian parents return to India with their teenage children; day one and the bratty American teens are already bored and hot, whining about returning to the familiarity of pop America.  Our kids are not teens, though one is a tween, but they can be bratty about being bored.  To temper their pre-trip excitement, I was tempted to tell them how hot it would be, how bored they would be, how there would be no American food anywhere in sight, but that, yes, we expected them to behave and enjoy themselves, darn it.

Alas, my better judgment prevailed, I said nothing, and so far so good.  Aidan is fascinated with the fauna of the place, especially the tiny geckos that linger on ceiling corners, occasionally chirp, and do very well feeding on moths in the evening, at least the external ones; Micah journals in the early morning hours and reads a bit; Sommer makes us instant coffee in the mornings and sits contentedly as auntie daily braids her hair in a seemingly infinite number of patterns.  However, we've had some help.  For example, the fact that "Tom and Jerry" was in Thai mattered not at all in the boys' fascination with it for the first two days of our trip. Now, in Laos we have fewer TV options; Tom and Jerry are gone.  Fortunately, we've broken out the Scrabble Slam deck and they're new enough to the spelling game--and our 5th grade daughter is happy enough to win consistently--that they're fascinated with it.

But we're staying in a private residence, a distant relative--or not, I can't quite tell--of Sy's, and that means trying to obey house rules, trying to quick-a-minute teach young American children the faux pas of Lao culture.  (Not that we haven't been trying to teach them along the way, but in an American context the lessons means little and our teaching was admittedly haphazard.)

Here, they stumble and stumble, we scold and scold, and they get more and more bewildered by the seeming tedium of cultural rules.

Here's a rundown:

1)  True to many Asian cultures, houses are not places for shoes; take your shoes off at the door.

2) Feet in general are dirty and disrespectful; therefore, keep feet down from chairs; sprawl onto your sleeping mat on the ground head first and feet last; keep feet down from the low table when eating on the floor; don't walk over anyone or any foodstuff--walk around thtem.

3) Respect the elderly by lowering yourself in deference to them when walking near them; this means, if you're walking and their sitting, you get down to their level. 

4) Don't ever touch the head of a person whose older than you; address elders with their appropriate title, of which their are myriad, even though generic terms of grandpa, grandma, uncle and aunt are generall though to be close enough.

It seems simple enough, yet its a dizzying list of things to remember for American children:  wrestling on the sleeping mats, the boys' feet end up directly on the pillows; Aidan goes and sits on a scale intended for vegetables; Sommer walks over a bag of bananas; she also walks directly past the centenarian grandmother standing straight up; all their feet are forever up on couches; Micah picks up an abandoned flip flop and sets it (gulp) directly on a table. 

Admittedly, we're the ones who react the strongest to these slights, trying to be aware of ourselves as guests; our hosts are gracious and unperturbed.  Also, this whole culture-crossing experience is why we're here, we must remind ourselves, especially when it becomes work to ride herd.

Of course, I am not immune to these rules myself, though my transgressions seem to come from an even larger culture--and perhaps personal--issue: body control and spacial awareness.  First, the personal side: I seem genetically predisposed to a) being somewhat of a klutz; b) I have lower spatial awareness than most, running through things--and sometimes people--rather than over them.  However, my wife also attributes some of my disregard for others' space to my Americanness: I simply am thinking of my own self and space more than others', she would argue.

Thus, in the Shanghai airport, I clip someone's feet in the waiting area; thus in a Lao market I kick a bucket (not the bucket, thankfully) in one of the narrow alleys and consequentially hear Lao exclamations in the wake behind me; thus, in a trek to downtown Savannakhet to find wi-fi with my sister-in-law, we walk single file because I outpace her and she laughs as I catch my sandals on the uneven cement panels covering the streetside gutters.  I'm an American, dang it, and I've got places to go, and in a place of many people where space is at a premium, that existential orientation becomes manifest in embarrassing moments.

My wife is good at pointing these things out, and by "good" I mean that she sees my habits for what they probably are and communicates that to me directly.  It really gives one pause.  To think that the way one conducts one's body in almost every move is culturally--and perhaps also genetically--inscribed is sobering.  Not only am I learning not to put my feet up on a couch or play with flip flops at the table.  As an adult I don't find that difficult, thank heavens.  Rather, at every moment I must try to think about myself in relation to others, to reign myself in a bit as I meet or approach people, consider personal space and posture in relation to those nearby, considering especially their ages and genders.  It adds a whole new meaning to "love your neighbor as yourself" to think about ennacting that posturally in relation to others on the sidewalk, at table, in the marketplace.  It's a posture--a posture of a certain kind of love--I certainly want to learn.