Having been in
Norway for half a year now, i would rather expect myself to have gotten used to
the culture and to have fully adapted. So it was a rather rude shock this
weekend when i noticed a brief but quite educative cultural difference. We had
gone on a trip to the vasfjelletkarpellet, a
retreat center in Trondheim for an
inspiration weekend together with 20 students mostly drawn from NTNU,
the Norwegian university of Science and Technology. We had a lovely
time of Bible study, reflections, playing games in the snow and making lunch in
the snow.
Later in the
afternoon, I tugged along with some other friends as we went skiing. On a side
note, I really do enjoy skiing and is one of those things i will dearly miss.
One of the ladies at the retreat decided to join us on the trip. She is from
Belgium but staying in Norway presently. We were left behind with her as the
rest of the people were quite fast in skiing. She decided to play in the snow
and my natural instinct was to take care of her by just skiing near the place
where she was playing. When we got tired, we headed back to the
retreat center where we engaged in an animated discussion on women, men
and culture.
What I later
realized as we chatted was that my instinct of taking care of her may
not have gone down well with her as she thought I was looking down on her and
not treating her as an equal. Further discussion revealed that we had different
concepts of what it means to take care of a lady. We managed to reach an
understanding on this but i could not help but notice how seemingly innocent actions
can be misconstrued to mean other things especially when we look at
them through the eyes of our culture. Was I to do the same thing I
did to her in Kenya, it would have been very much perfectly acceptable to
most ladies. But now, in a different culture, well, it means something else.
I have noted a
few actions like helping a lady carry her luggage are most times deemed as
not treating her as your equal even when done in good faith. Again, seeing a
female visitor off to the Bus stop is something i have rarely seen here. Most
of the time, everyone parts at the door. So now I am left with a difficult
conundrum to solve: How do I act within the parameters of treating ladies as
equals and at the same time be eager to help whenever necessary
without seemingly appearing chauvinistic?
