So Same, So different

Cultures are quite different. I remember the day I left Kenya for Norway as though it were yesterday. It was Sunday, 12^th August 2012 at around 10 pm when we boarded the plane off to Norway on an adventure that was to last us 10 months. As we lifted off the Jomo Kenyatta International airport, It never crossed my mind even once that I had left a different culture and was headed to a new culture; I was crossing cultures. It just felt as though I had gone to sleep and woken up in the same area and, save for the food and people, nothing was very different.

Three months later and I confess that cultures are different and Kenya is not Norway and Norway is not Kenya. I admit loudly that though we have similarities in the two cultures, the differences are very pronounced and need special mention and attention. On the surface, we are very similar people with almost very similar cultures. We share common needs and even breathe the same air. When I landed here in Norway and many weeks after that, I thought, ‘hey, Norway is not so different from Kenya after all.’ What I did not know is that I was actually interacting with the objective part of the culture which is usually similar to my native culture and which is very easy to adapt to.

Patty Lane, in her book A beginner’s guide to crossing cultures, identifies two aspects of any culture, the objective and the subjective. The objective aspect lies on the surface and is easily noticeable and is very easy to adapt to. It includes such things as clothing, food, eye contact, greetings and time consciousness. The subjective part of the culture takes time to perceive and adapt to and is the most difficult bit of culture to engage. It includes values, concepts of truth, feelings, motivations, authority roles, beliefs about gender roles and assumption. The subjective part is below the surface and it takes insight, asking questions and patiently listening keenly to find it out.

The reason for all this is because I have been nursing a serious home sickness these past couple of days that has made me ask myself deeper questions on cultural differences and what they mean to me. I have found that homes sickness is a normal reaction as I have shared with friends who are on the exchange program with me. Strikingly, we have all been experiencing, in the last few days and weeks, fits of home sickness. This is an intense feeling of really missing the home environment, the people and the culture. I now understand that this could be because we are now interacting with the part of the culture that is subjective, the big iceberg that is below the surface which has the capacity to break our Titanic ship.

Missing home

Because of this, I am motivated to take time to investigate the aspects of our culture that I find different and similar to Norwegian culture in the next many months as I live here. So keep reading this column and leave me your comments as we explore cultural differences and what they mean.