Moving from the Western world, in which one could say I was a mildly successful, into a foreign culture and really getting to understand the culture I find myself in, has been quite a challenge.
Fortunately I learn quickly in the “understanding department”.
Please don’t talk to me in Samoan or expect me to learn it sorry, I’ve got slow ears and a bad memory for words. I failed Maori at Teacher Training College but got reassessed “up” to 50% because of my empathy for things Maori and my cultural understanding was very strong. I was lucky to get 35% in French at school, and my most enjoyable subject at school was Latin in which I received 6% in the end of year exam but knew all about Roman history and understood the intricacies of their culture.
I’ve been here in Samoa now off and on several months and I still only remember half a dozen words, no matter how much I try. For two weeks now, I’ve been trying to memorise the phrase “Luatalo Too Taro Faamolemole” which as far as I can gather from those around me is the best translation for the phrase “Please speak English”. I need this phrase all the time, but I still need to refer to my diary when I want to use it.
In October last year, the locals tried to teach me the Samoan words for Thank you (Faafetai). OK, now please trust me, this is entirely true . . . it took me six weeks to learn it and memorise it. No kidding. And I really tried hard to learn it too!
The bottom line is that for some reason I have a problem with other languages. It’s probably some form of Aphasia, a fuzzy connection between my ears and the interpretation part of my brain. Whatever the case, it just means that I can’t learn languages easily.
But I compensate. I can connect with the heart. I love to understand things, so while the language is just gibberish to me, when I ask questions and “suss” things out about who is who and what they are doing and saying, and more importantly WHY they do things a certain way, I find myself understanding the culture quite easily.
I’ve observed a difference in the way different people engage with a new culture. It ranges from an arrogant English colonialism on one extreme (where the natives all need help to become more cultured, and sophisticated) to a New Age self-denegrating worship of the Samoan way (because they are the people of the land here, and they have all the answers to our Western world’s problems).
I’ll talk more about this in time, but the Samoan people too, respond to the Palagi in different ways, just as Palagi engage with Samoans differently. Sure, there are patterns of behaviour that are common to the culture, but you have different people here with different values, who respond in different ways.
I recently placed an advert for a blogger to help set up the content of a new inbound tourism portal. Written by a Palagi, for Palagi in New Zealand, it generated the following response from one Samoan blogger:
So this organisation doesn’t actually realise there are Samoan bloggers and journalists too?? Rude…..talk about ethnocentric…
Ouch!
Like I posted recently, some Samoans are just downright rude. This one was. I felt like saying to them “Well if you’re Samoan and you’re already blogging about Samoa then you don’t need an all expenses paid trip to see and learn the culture and then blog about it to the rest of the world, do you? Or are you just peeved that you can’t get something free off a Palagi?”
But of course returning rudeness on rudeness doesn’t achieve good things, so I politely explained that the target market was Palagi and apologised for any misunderstanding.
Most of the time though they eventually warm to you, but often you’ve got to put up with the BS first.*
It’s not just Palagi though. They also do it to their own quite a bit. The Samoan version of the tall poppy syndrome is to knock their own race, especially when embarrassed in front of a Palagi. When talking about rubbish on the streets (Samoa is really quite a dirty place – I’ll share more about this too in time) Samoans will knock their own saying something like “Yes, I don’t know why they do that!” or “True, it’s not good eh? Samoans are so lazy!” then when you are gone or out of sight they will just throw their own rubbish into the road or drains.
They tell a story about a pot of crabs. A Samoan crab will climb to the top and try to get out. The others will pull him back. However a Palagi crab will reach down and pull his mates out.
While some Samoans do what they can to make life difficult for Palagi, there are others who are real angels. I was chatting to a Samoan guy I met at the recent Tides tourism event. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap but as I do, just said “Hi!” and shared a few ideas, observations and thoughts with him. He was interested in what I was saying, asked a few questions and led me on a little. After an hour or so I gently turned the conversation around to him and I found out that he was in fact a senior leader in the community, an MP actually. I quickly checked mentally that I hadn’t said anything too obnoxious or offensive and apologised to him in case I did. He assured me that I hadn’t and he was either right or he let me off graciously!
We have got on fine since and have spent lots of time together with his wife and family building a lovely friendship. He has offered to help with a few official things and in time it is quite possible that we’ll be doing business together. So not all Samoans are obnoxious at the start of a relationship.
The other thing is that defining what a culture stands for is also a challenge. Culture changes and isn’t something black and white. As a Christian I view New Zealand as a country in decline. I see the country changing from honouring the Judeo-Christian values contained within the Treaty of Waitangi, and the stripping away the rich pedigree of Judeo-Christian values inherent within New Zealand life to the late 50s. The Americanisation, commercialisation and increase in self-centred thought and practice (a worldwide phenomena of course) means that the culture is now different to what it used to be. Others with different value systems certainly look at the changes as progress, after all the change is what they are seeking.
The same thing is happening in Samoa, albeit a little smaller scale. Modern dress codes and disrespect of the elders are two challenges to this culture.
I’ve noticed that the Samoan culture is a flexible little beast. It’s defined quite clearly in some ways, but in others it is dangerously open. Without getting too heavy on this one, the Samoan people as a whole worship their culture. As Palagi we do this too, so don’t get all huffety about this when I say it about Samoa, PLEASE! When you worship something man-made, the tendency is to tweak it to your own ends. Thus while in one village it is prohibited to swim in the river or sea and the shop is closed on a Sunday, it’s perfectly OK for the Chief to sell lollies and things out the back of the shop from his home.
In the rural villages, I get different stories about what the culture actually says and means and is, from different people and different villages. A lot of discussion occurs within the leaders themselves about how to do things in the correct way. This is very important here, but it’s certainly not well defined like an Oxford dictionary definition of a given English word.
The key point of this post is that when learning a culture, we have to remember that people are all different and it is dangerous to label others – whatever culture you are in or learning.
* As a footnote, I don’t think its fair for a guy who has sold up his family home, gone to enormous lengths to engage with, understand and live in a foreign culture just to receive abuse like this, but hey, who said life is fair? This blogger probably just misunderstood the advert and is a little too trigger happy with the pen keyboard. Bloggers are like that sometimes eh? Maybe they should put a 24 hour delay on our posts so that we can sleep on it before we charge off and make fools of ourselves?
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