Living cross-culturally is a lot of fun, but it is not always easy. As you all know, and as they pound into you at PCUSA Mission Co-worker training, cross-cultural interactions are ripe for serious cross-cultural blunders and misunderstandings. Interacting with unfamiliar cultures almost always leads to a few comical stories, embarrassing moments, and unintented offenses. To minimize these possibilities and to try and be as “culturally sensative” as possible, people like us take extra measures to learn about and from the culture in which we are aliens. Before moving to Zambia, Claire and I both read books about Zam and talked with several folks familiar with Zambian cultures in order to familiarize ourselves. During that time, we hear numerous statements, which cause me to think, “Well that’s simple enough isn’t it.” What follows, are three few simple generalizations about living in Zambia, which I knew before arriving, and which I thought were quite simple. Funny how these simple things about living in Zambia make living not so simple.
1. Zambians drive on the left side of the road (aka “the wrong side”).
This is a pretty straightforward observation. Most folks around the world drive on the left side, but just knowing that is only have the battle of actually driving in Zambia. Driving on the left side is easy and straight forward while you move straight down a two lane, well-paved, and freshly lined road, but gets quite confusing when it comes to making turns in a congested urban center. After a decade and a half of driving, I have all these unconscious routines that allow me to check my blind spots and to anticipate where pedestrians and other vehicles might be or emerge. Unfortunately, all these rote practices actually focus my eyes on all the wrong places to predict and avoid cars/pedestrians when driving on the left side. One other major hiccup while driving on the left side of the road is turning into the correct lane. In the US, turning left requires me to look both ways and then to cross several lanes of traffic, while right turns only require one direction checks. Most of the time we do these things without thinking, but here in Zamtown both will result in head on collisions. On multiple occasions, I’ve found myself driving headlong at oncoming traffic, yelling at the approaching car to get in the “right” (correct) lane, all the while I was in the “right” (not left) lane…
READ THE REST OF “THREE NOT SO SIMPLE, SIMPLE THINGS” HERE.
This blog post like all posts labeled BLOG on this website, first appeared on the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church blog, Glory Be: A Tale of Two Zambian Trained Missionaries. There, you can find scores of other original blog posts by Andrew Ruth.
The original introduction is reproduced above, but to read the entire post in its original format, please visit “Three Not So Simple, Simple Things.”
Andrew David Ruth 