Coping with culture

My old mate Mbise was encouraging me to attend the funeral of a local resident who I had no real association with and I wasn’t keen because I had other activities to attend to, but not wanting to offend culturally, I questioned him about the necessity of my attendance.

Mbise’s main reason was that if you don’t attend other people’s funerals, people would not attend yours!

The thought had never occurred to me and because I had attended many Tanzanian funerals, I wanted to understand the cultural reasons behind the local funeral rites.

The wake for the usual funeral that I attended lasted five days [not that I was there for five days] but attendees might bring money or food to help the bereaved family feed the attendees during the wake. Sometimes, the attendees have killed the bereaved family’s house cow, which may well be the only asset they have, leaves them even worse off than before the death!

So from my un-cultural point of view large numbers at a funeral is not a priority.

Understanding another culture does not come easily. I respected the culture when I attended the funerals and participated as appropriately as I could. The differences to my own culture and not great except for the segregation of males and females and the ‘paying of respects’ by filing past to view the corpse. The youth are responsible for filling the grave, whereas in my culture the task is done by the undertaker – or rather the digger driver.  

Tourists enjoy the beautiful, supple, hand-manipulating, dancing girls twirling in front of them performing their traditional dance, but there is outrage at the idea that the Swaziland king will choose one of them for his umpteenth wife. Accepted as tradition in Swaziland but condemned elsewhere.

Likewise there were gasps when the Shah of Persia divorced his second wife, Soraya, because she could not bear children and married the beautiful Farah, who could. A traditional requirement in Persia/Iran, was not condoned in the west.

In most cultures mothers are revered and terms such as Earth Mother, Mother Earth and Mother Nature show their importance within English speaking countries – linguistically those terms may not fit other languages, for example, Mother Nature is Mungu, God.  Despite the pedestal on which mothers are supposed to sit, women generally have varyingly less rights than males. The severity of their lack of rights depends most usually on culture.

There was a recent image of an Afghan woman convicted of adultery receiving one hundred lashes from a judge. The onlookers were all men.

Closely united to culture in many cases is religion – fervent or otherwise. Historically, religion has been the cause of issues between cultures and lessons have not been learned. 

There are pockets of most cultures settled throughout the world, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. True integration has occurred and sometimes not. Friction festers and sometimes not.  

Often there has been no attempt to learn the local language, which is another excuse for resentment, so dialogue seldom occurs. Dialogue and language difficulties increases the possibility of offence being taken by one side or the other, which seems counterproductive because how can one side relate effectively with the other if truth cannot be expressed for political reasons? 

The humanitarian crisis of untold numbers of displaced persons crossing into Europe has governments acting cautiously because politicians first gauge the attitude of their constituents to ensure re-election.

As with anything to do with humanitarianism, there are those willing to assist, those unwilling and those opposed - most have valid arguments to support their case. There are the apathetic as well.

You can never understand what people are going through unless you stand in their shoes, and I wonder how I would act in a similar situation – easy enough to say but doing is a different thing.

In my youth we talked about a possible, hypothetical invasion and I bravely thought that with my rifle I could go bush and defend myself – probably killing off the entire invading force! The impractical confidence of youth!

The fate of refugees anywhere rests with governments rather than that world body who’s Security Council is constrained by vetoes.

NGOs and others work tirelessly with refugees in the hope of positive outcomes and in the end successful settlement relies on the goodwill of the hosts and the attitude of the people resettled. There is nothing easy about the process where somehow a semblance of order must be achieved and the most deserving have preference above others.

I’m thankful I’m not a refugee and just as thankful that it is not my role to make those life changing decisions on their behalf.

Empathy costs nothing but is always valued.