Culture Shock

Before the lecture at the local university, we had a hour long debate about whether to divide the audience into groups to allow for a more intimate question and answer portion.It was an interesting exercise in cross cultural collaboration as the debate went on longer than it should have because people began debating against points that were never raised but were expressed in English that was misunderstood. One exasperated participant simply called for a vote to divide the house to get it over and done with, in itself an act that would be seen as impatient by cultures that would have preferred a consensus based decision. In the end, it was much ado about nothing as the questions came pouring in despite the huge lecture hall setting.

Prior to my assignment, I talked to several Filipino IBM colleagues who had been deployed before and they all warned me about the inevitable clash that occurs between cultures. I was warned about West and East usually grouping themselves together and against each other. Yet at the end of our assignment, we were all giving ourselves a pat on the back for being such a harmonious team. It was not that none of us ever felt tension, but it was because we all had the maturity to step outside our comfort zones. I saw the willingness of everyone, despite the obvious discomfort painted on their faces, to stretch themselves just a little more in order to understand more. Also, we all held deep respect for each other. There was no cultural superiority on the part of those who spoke English as a first language; if it all, they actually acknowledged that most of the team actually spoke not just two, but even more languages. In all, there were 28 languages spoken in the team of 14.

Cool Mahesh, dancing

Time

One key cultural difference was the attitude to time. Tanzania was notorious for its relaxed attitude towards time and the Tanzanians themselves jokingly refer to it as "Tanzanian time." My Mexican colleague and I promptly announced we had our own versions of Mexican and Filipino time! It was amusing, and somewhat painful, to observe some of my colleagues fidgeting when we were made to wait a few minutes for an appointment. When our bus took a supposedly shorter road to Tanga but encountered a roadblock because a bridge was washed over, some started asking the driver what the matter was and began standing and walking around to see what was going on. But there were also some who just remained in their seats reading or sleeping. In this situation, I felt there was not much I could do to change things, not knowing what was going on and not knowing how to speak Swahili anyway, so I remained calm and kept on reading.

Those who know me think I am a patient person, but even my Filipino patience was tested when it came to ordering food. We began joking about ordering for dinner right after lunch because it normally took about two hours for our food to arrive!

Yet gradually, what irritated us at the beginnng became a running joke and eventually a part of how we did things. If we wanted things done at a certain time, we just did it much earlier. If we did not get things at the time we wanted, we shrugged it off and learned to say Hakuna Matata! We also learned to admonish each other pole, pole - slowly, slowly. One Tanga businessman who emigrated from Ireland 28 years ago, summed it up nicely for us when we quoted the following proverbs. According to him, in Swahili, they believe everything resolves itself according to its own time.

"Haraka, haraka, haina baraka." Hurry, hurry has no blessings.

To run is not necessarily to arrive.

Telenovelas

One of the most amazing things for me was to find Filipino telenovelas being broadcasted on Tanzanian TV. I kept being asked about the characters on TV. One tout who was selling me bracelets started asking whether Rachel was alive when I told him I was Filipino. I felt embarrassed not knowing who Rachel was and on which telenovela she was starring in. The general manager at the hotel in Arusha told me about how crazy everyone was about Mara Clara. He said I would have made a killing if I had brought DVDs of all the episodes because they all have to follow the series every day to find out what was going on. He said they were so popular because the themes they showed were all the same issues they faced in their own families: sons being ungrateful to fathers, sibling rivalry, struggling to make ends meet, and so on. I told him a cliche but that was so appropriate given the moment: "We all look different, but we really are all the same."

Native Tongue

We had a wonderful dinner one evening at the Raskazone Swimming Club.

Phil asked us to express our thoughts about Tanzania in our own mother tongues. As we spoke one by one, it was amazing how everyone listened in rapt attention even though we did not understand the languages. It was beautiful to hear each language. It was clear that everyone spoke from the heart when speaking in his native tongue. We spoke about how beautiful the land was and how warm the people were. We spoke about our personal hopes and dreams and how the program can help us achieve our goals. I suddenly realized how all these emotions and meanings were normally lost in translation as we struggled to articulate in another language what was first spoken by the heart in our mother tongues.

Expressing our souls in our mother tongues

Birthday

On Christian's birthday, we surprised him with a birthday cake and the entire hotel staff came out to sing happy birthday. We then had another beautiful cultural moment when we each sang Happy Birthday in our native languages. Some were amazed it was all based on the same tune.

A few days later, Christian kept the theme running by asking each of us to greet his wife back home in Germany in our own languages.

Maligayang bati, Christian!

Language Barrier

Some of my colleagues had real difficulty with English because they did not use it as often in their home countries. One confided to me how she felt she was not able to show her true abilities because English acted as a barrier. But we all conspired to push her and make her learn more so that by the end of the assignment, she had to deliver the final report to a packed conference room in English and she did it very well.

Globalization is a reality. We speak of cross-cultural collaboration all the time. In IBM, I feel it and experience it everyday as I routinely go on conference calls with colleagues from the US, Costa Rica, Hungary, India and so on. Yet it was still an absolutely different experience to be immersed in another country for five weeks and to work with 14 colleagues from 12 different countries speaking 28 languages. I had my share of discomfort, especially in the first few days. Being an introvert, I sometimes felt a need to retreat to my room and be away from the international chatter for a while. I sometimes had a hard time squeezing my questions in during our interviews because some of my colleagues were simply naturally assertive and gregarious. Yet I, too, learned to settle in because I always felt the respect from my colleagues. In the end, I felt we came out with a superior output precisely because of the differences in our backgrounds and approaches.

Isma, singing La Bamba