Second Sense

19:45 12 August 2008

I’d been wanting to do this for a while but hadn’t the time. I should be studying Russian, but I would rather write this:

Touch

Initially, I felt that touch was going to be the most difficult of the senses to write about. Thinking about the differences between touch sensations in one part of the world vice another is a very difficult and convoluted thing to discuss. The more I thought about it, however, the more I realized that the subtle differences in our habitual actions and the way we touch and interact with each other are often highly showing of the culture as a whole.

In a book about cultural adjustment, Peace Corps told us that we would be expected to do new actions and perform old actions in different ways. These actions are difficult for us at first, but are regarded as natural and fluid for people raised in the host culture. Probably the first among these actions I noticed and then became accustomed to, was the shoes-off rule. I was aware of this before I arrived in country and brought slippers, but I was amazed with the fluidity and nonchalance with which my host family took them off when going inside. They hardly even stop walking to kick them off, and have done it so many times that their shoes always land neatly by the frame of the door. The design of the house, with the eating and cooking areas outside and two separate sleeping areas means that I am constantly taking on an off my shoes.

At first, this was an awkward ordeal where I would come to a complete stop, remove my shoes one by one and then proceed forward. While I wouldn’t say that I do it thoughtlessly yet, I have now achieved the muscle memory and grace with which to be able to both remove my shoes effortlessly in motion with my walking and also to be able to step backwards and into them when leaving the house without stopping my forward momentum. I find it fascinating simultaneously how easy and how difficult this transition was.

There are a lot of little things like that that required adjustment. The first night I arrived, I was given tea (of course) and offered the sugar bowl. I took the spoon from the sugar bowl, ladled the sugar into my mug, and then after replacing the spoon to the sugar dish, noticed I had no spoon of my own with which to stir. Instead, I elected to use the fork that was in front of me thinking this would be the appropriate thing to do. This elicited a host of “What are you doing, crazy American?” looks from my family. I quickly learned that it was entirely appropriate and expected to use the spoon from the sugar bowl to stir your tea, and then replace it. In America, this would be criticized for contaminating the sugar with tea, but here the attitude is that the sugar is used at every meal for tea and why waste effort to clean extra spoons for everyone.

The collectivist culture here also shows through in many ways. There are always serving dishes heaped with food, but rarely are there serving utensils, the way to get the food onto your individual plate is to use your fork, whether or not you have used it yet. Similarly, it is perfectly acceptable to pick at the serving dish; nobody minds that your fork travels from your mouth and to the communal food and back again. The same applies to your plate, what is yours is not necessarily yours and sampling each others food is the normal way of life. It’s very different from the individualistic, contaminant free, ultra-personalized, way of life stateside.

Personal space here is also different. I remember the Seinfeld episode about “close-talkers” and while it’s never been uncomfortable to me (outside of the necessity of marshrutkas), there definitely are different concepts about your bubble of personal space or its absence, especially in same-sex interactions. Male or female friends touching each other or holding hands in ways that would be regarded as intimate in America are seen as completely normal here- though the topic of homosexuality is extremely taboo. Also, while not directly tactile, the personal questions that are asked here reflect the difference in both physical and emotional personal space. It is normal for complete strangers to ask “What’s your income?”, “Who are your parents?”, “Exactly where do you live?”, “Are you married?”, and this one is followed inevitably by the “Why are you not married?”, “When are you getting married?”, and of course, “Would you like to meet my daughter?”

Tactile sensation differences are not wildly different in Kyrgyzstan, but many reflect on the differences in cultures. Collectivist culture and the sense of shared versus individual space along with other cultural norms and their expectations have led to a lot of differences in action on my part. These are often the most subtle, but also most important differences to notice about culture.