Forever a Foreigner

I was sitting in my kitchen the other night in Cambodia, staring at my bathroom door, and it occurred to me: the bathroom, of course, has a three-inch threshold. You have to step over that to get in. This detail of architecture is so ubiquitous I never stopped to think about it before. Every bathroom here is like this, as a matter of course. But in America, do they have that? I tried hard to remember. No, no they don’t.

The bathroom is not a place you might think to find culture shock, but it really, really is. This small room that we use every day, without really even thinking about it, is precisely the kind of place that can undermine the fundamental beliefs you have held since you were a child about how human beings do things. Embarrassing mistakes can be made by the cross-cultural traveler in using this space, made worse by the fact that natives don’t even think about explaining the uses of this room, or how one maintains its cleanliness. Why should they? Even toddlers know!

In Cambodia, bathrooms are wet rooms, tiled from floor to ceiling. This isn’t a room for comfort or decoration. In the Cambodian language it is literally called the “water room”. There’s no separation between fixtures; the toilet, sink, and shower are all crammed in together in the same rectangle of space. A bathtub is unheard of, but there may be a bucket with a dipper for dipper baths. Everything inside can be expected to get wet, and indeed, the floor inside might not ever get completely dry. If the floor gets muddy, you grab the sprayer (a fixture in every bathroom, since this country agrees with many others in the toilet paper vs. bidet discussion), and spray the offending dirt down the drain. In this sort of space, you would of course, never put outlets or switches on the inside. You will find these outside the bathroom. Any items of clothing you may wish to keep dry during your visit may be hung from hooks on the wall. A rug to wipe your feet will also be placed outside the bathroom door.

I write all this down with some amusement, because to me these descriptions are about some of the most mundane realities in life. Does it really need to even be said? But it’s all about contrast. What is to me and millions of others the most normal, boring part of daily life becomes bizarre on the other side of the planet.

In America, imagine my shock to step into a bathroom to find it decorated, even carpeted (with rugs!). The shower may be contained in a glass box, or a massive bathtub takes up a third of the space. (Raised without bathtubs, I’ve never seen the appeal. They mostly seem like dangerous pains to clean to me, but I know some people long for them as if they are a luxury.) Once as a guest I failed to keep a rug hung under a shower curtain on the side of a tub dry, and was confronted by my host for being inconsiderate. I felt frustration from the depths of my Asian-raised soul. How was I supposed to know about this? No one told me. This problem would never arise in Cambodia, where things are done properly!

Don’t even get me started on public restrooms.

Cultures Are Different

An obvious statement. Most people know this, but many don’t actually know just how wide the differences can be until they’ve experienced it for themselves.

Sometimes I’ve been around people who don’t know how different cultures can be, and it can feel a bit nerve-wracking to be judged by their narrow experiences. At other times, an individual has extended such grace towards me, ready to explain and laugh away mishaps. The differences pop up in so many places!

In Cambodia my shoe size is 39, and when the lady at the market asked my mom her birth year (as one usually of course does in an introductory conversation), she then wanted to know my mom’s zodiac year. Zodiac years are all animal-themed, and counted by twelves like eggs (except not in Cambodia, where eggs are logically counted by tens, see the Metric System). My mom and I have the same zodiac year, so she asked me for mine. It’s the Year of the Rabbit. When I was little I was proud of this, because rabbits are mythologically associated with cleverness, a heroic trait in Cambodian myths. Rabbits are also associated with the moon, because of the rabbit on the moon. (Do Americans just have a Man on the Moon, or is it green cheese?)

Did that paragraph just now make your head spin?

When I get home I take off my shoes outside the door, because obviously no one in their right mind would wear their shoes inside. (Absurd!) Shoes are therefore the quickest way to see if people are home or not, and sometimes even who is home, if you’re well-acquainted. On the subject of feet, people usually wear sandals or flip-flops, because it’s too hot to wear anything else.

Languages of Sound

We know about different languages, sure. Maybe we’ve studied one or two foreign languages in school. But it’s not just formal language that’s different. The very sounds you make are different, and what those sounds mean changes.

What noises do people make when they are startled? Is it more of an “Ah!” or “Uh!”? What about when they are agreeing with you? Is it “mm-hm,” “aw,” or “oh”? What do you yell to get someone’s attention? “Hey!” or “Ay!”? Even the sound of your laugh can change between languages.

There are names in Cambodia that are genuinely beautiful to the ear, but to the English-speaking ear they may sound harsh, strange, or unpleasant, simply because we don’t speak the same language of sounds. Reaksa, for example, or Nitch, or Sopheap. Lovely names, with beautiful meanings…in Khmer.

When I speak Khmer for a long time, a different part of my throat hurts than it would in English, because in Khmer you throw the sound more into your nose and the back of your throat.

Music sounds different, and there are different connotations and systems of sound. I’ve had people tell me that traditional Cambodian music sounds like pots and pans being thrown down the stairs. Someone told me that there is no melody or order to the music. I found this baffling. What did they mean? There is an obvious melody, and the beat is easy to follow. There are so many complex folk dances done to this music, of course there’s rhythm!

But their ears were simply not attuned to the Cambodian language of sound. Meanwhile, I gritted my teeth in churches in America, trying to endure the strident, awful noise of the organ. It took a long time to learn to appreciate that sound.

I recently stumbled upon the sound of Chinese opera. It sounded truly bizarre to me the first time I heard it. Later, as I encountered it here and there across different Chinese media, I found my attitude towards the sound had changed. I understood the connotation a little better each time. I found it interesting to watch my own understanding of the sound shift under exposure.

Cambodian songs are usually in a minor key, and they use a lot of vocal sliding. To an outsider, these songs can sound almost dirge-like, but if you have learned to have an ear for the music, you can recognize the beauty of the sound. Vocal sliding can have sensual connotations in Western music, and in conservative circles it would be seriously frowned upon in churches, but in Cambodian music that’s ridiculous. Sliding does not have any sensual meaning. Instead its a natural singing technique, appropriate to use in congregational worship music, and can even be solemn and reverent in connotation.

Worlds Apart, One God

It’s a wide, wide world we live in, with so much possibility. Human beings have carved out such diverse cultures and ways of living, with a hundred thousand differences arising out of diet, climate, sound, and more.

Sometimes this variety causes embarrassment and discomfort when we stub our cultural toes on someone else’s lifestyle norms. We can end up looking stupid, ignorant, or inconsiderate. It can be frustrating. Misunderstandings can arise. But it can also be funny, and make for a lot of laughs!

We have an amazing God who has created such incredible potential for diversity through the people that bear His image. No matter how we sing, where we wear our shoes, or what way we design our bathrooms, we all have the same Creator.