Day 77 - Another Day in Paradise

Barbados Image by gusdiaz, via Flickr

I’ve lived in some pretty far away places in cultures very different from ours: Iran while the Shah was still in power; Romania while Ceaucescu was still in power; Doha, Qatar in the BAJ days – that’s Before Al Jazeera days. Then there was Abu Dhabi, Yemen, Madagascar, Zambia, and Eritrea. But the worst case of culture shock I ever had was when I served at the post closest to home – Bridgetown, Barbados. I have yet to find any references that acknowledge why. In fact, all the resources I could find about Barbados seem to reinforce all the notions that in fact made my culture shock so strong.  You know, Barbados is part of the British Commonwealth, English is the official language, the natives are friendly. In short, life in Barbados is a series of one day after another in paradise.

That wasn’t my experience. And it took a physical fight between a local employee, Kay, and the wife of one of the Americans to learn why. Let’s look at those three factors – Barbados’ British history, their language, and the friendliness of the natives.

Factor #1: It’s a former British colony, so they are just like us, right? Wrong. Let me count the ways.

First, they drive on the left side of the road. And they stop to have a conversation in the middle of the road if they encounter someone they know coming in a car from the opposite direction.

Second, imagine this scenario: You see a woman walking down the street with a young boy whose shoe laces are loose. Do you a) ignore them, b) get the woman’s attention and point out that the child’s laces are loose, or c) get the woman’s attention and tell her to tie the boy’s shoes. The Bajan answer? C. In Barbados, one gets directly to the point with people one doesn't know, but one beats around the bush with those one knows well.  So we were always behaving too familiarly with people when we first met them by speaking indirectly and then shutting them down once we got to know them by speaking with them directly.

Third, there’s the difference between respecting privacy versus being polite. When the consular section moved into a new building where all office spaces were cubicles, we Americans observed the privacy that the cubicle walls implied by walking past the private spaces contained within them. The Bajans on the other hand invaded our privacy by barging into our cubicles to say Good morning – even if we were holding a meeting or were on the phone at the time.

Factor #2: They speak English there. But I rarely understood them.

When answering the phone in the afternoon, Bajans say, “Hello. Good night.” I felt that they were about to hang up on me, not engage in conversation.

My first day on the job, my new boss asked me to read a telegram reporting on the arrest of an American which was written by one of the local employees. My boss could hardly hide her amusement as I read that the American was arrested for uttering. Uttering what? An obscenity, a threat, a promise? Uttering, it seems, is the verb for passing counterfeit currency.

In addition to using a transitive verb as an intransitive verb, Bajans use nouns as verbs, as in, “Where did you get that bike? Did you thief (pronounced tief) it?” Or “What did you do last weekend?  Just lime around?”

And then there are the words that mean something completely different, like wife. I answered the phone for a single colleague one day. The woman on the other end told me to leave a message that his wife had called. Wife just means a woman with a relationship to a man. Then there is the word deputy or the phrase outside woman both of which mean a woman in a relationship to a man who already has a wife.

Factor #3: The paradise factor.

Everyone thinks living on a tropical island is paradise. But working on a tropical island changes the viewpoint. Just think: 12 hours of daylight, 12 hours of night, every day of the year. Those daylight hours correspond roughly to the hours spent getting ready for work, going to work, being at work, and going home from work. The rest of the time, it’s dark out.

And those friendly natives? To Bajans, there are two kinds of people – people they know and tourists. If the world consisted of just those two categories, the claim that they are friendly would be true. But there are those they don’t know who aren’t tourists, like we were. Anyone in that category gets ignored.

So there I was, with my husband and son, living on a tropical island, where everyone spoke a familiar language that led me to misunderstand about half of what I heard, and where the social conventions made me insult the people I considered my friends by treating them, they thought, as though I didn’t know them at all. And I loved every minute of it – well, once I finally caught on to what was happening.

That fight between Kay and the American woman? It happened when the American woman put her cigarette out in an ashtray she carried and then placed on Kay's desk as she reached for Kay's phone to place a phone call -- all without asking Kay's permission. The American woman was from New York, another place where people have a reputation for being direct with strangers. It as ironic that the incident led to conversation within the embassy about our different cultural perspectives. I wouldn't claim the air was cleared throughout, but the conversation did lead to some of us gaining understanding that then led to enjoying the differences instead of being baffled by them.