Culture Shock

6/30/12
I know I tend to keep it pretty light, so having two out the past three blogs be more serious might make it seem like Africa is making me a drag, but I am here to write about my travel experiences and today I went through a serious one worth writing about. 

I can really only some it up as the severest culture shock I have dealt with in all of the three countries of my tri-country excursion.

I was at the orphanage earlier today, enjoying a lazy Saturday morning with the kids. It was raining pretty hard on and off, so we were camped out under the gazebo, staying dry while reading books. Between my reading out loud and the sound of the rain on the gazebo roof, we all managed to miss the sound of someone knocking on the front gate. As it turns out, it was the director (Papa) and he was furious at the kids for leaving him in the rain. He came yelling into the gazebo and started hitting all the kids, demanding to know why they hadn’t opened the door. All of the kids in the orphanage are small, even the 11 and 12 years olds could pass as 6 or 7. The director is a big guy, and size didn’t matter when it came to the force of his hits. 

Physical punishment is not uncommon here. Even my French professor, who teaches at the university here, was telling me the other day that when not a single one of his 60 students did an exercise he assigned for homework, he hit every single one of them. Back at home, I am not exactly against the deserved spanking, when the intention is not to harm, but to check a bad behavior or attitude. I got spankings when I was little, never hard, not like my mom when she was little, learning just how many pairs of underwear she had to put on if she knew she was in for it. When Christian told me about his students, I realized that there is a clear cultural difference between here and the U.S., but honestly, what else is new? 

But actually sitting in that gazebo this morning and witnessing such a difference...that was really hard. This entire trip has been about never trying to fit the place that I am in into a frame I have previously constructed. Punishment and relationships between kids and adults are just as varied between different cultures as food or music, and I understand that.

But at the end of the day-constructs and cultures and open-mindedness aside- what I saw at the orphanage today was still just a group of little kids getting smacked around by a big man.

When I left, the director apologized to me. He said that’s how things are here, but he was sorry that I had to see him so angry. What was I supposed to say? I told him it was different than where I am from, and then we shook and hands and said “See you Monday.”

I should have told him that he missed somebody earlier.

I hadn’t heard the knocking at the door either.

For the honor and glory.