Crossing the Cultural Divide

Today was a great day. If I weren’t so exhausted from the effort, I’d be positively glowing.

Yesterday was my first day back at the office (after just one day last week) and I was a little anxious. I am suppossed to be in the office all this week helping the administrative staff and learning more about the organization and I thought it might be a good chance for me to get to know the staff better and to help them to be more comfortable with my presense (and to hopefully be helpful along the way!).

I entered the vestibule and traded my shoes for house slippers (you don't wear shoes inside anywhere in Thailand except for public buildings and shops) and said my "Sa-wa-dee, kas." Pong, offered me a seat and I sat. After a few minutes, I asked if I could help her with anything, to which she replied "mai bpen rai, ka," literray "nevermind or it doesn't matter," or in otherwords "no, thank you." So I thought I would ask Fawn. Same reply. Hmm. So I sat. And I sat. And I began to think over everything I'd ever read or heard about international volunteering. You are suppossed to be proactive, innovative, patient, open-minded and friendly. I had the friendly down pat.

Finally, Usana, came over and gave me a copy of the brochure that they want me to update. Relieved, I happily took out my pen and began editing, enjoying having something to do and being back in my element. After a few crossed out lines, some arrows and write ins, I realized that I was writing on a color brochure. Maybe this was the original... And it turned out that I was right. Pong came over and said, "I make copies from that. That is all I have." My heart sank, but was soon lifted by Vikram, who said, "mai bpen rai. You've done it. No use worrying" and I continued on with my edits. That afternoon, Usana gave me a list of topics to research and set me up on the Internet. I spent the rest of the afternoon feeling quite productive.

Today, most of the program staff is out of the office for the next few days doing training and so the office staff temporarily consists of the director, Sua, myself, Pong, Ni, and Usana. Sua is program staff, Usana is the head of administration, Pong is the office administrator and Ni is the general staff caretaker (cook, housekeeper, etc.) This morning I continued on my assignment from yesterday (research on Child Abuse Statistics both general and in Thailand). Since it was just Sua and I in the office, he really opened up and in between boughts of working, he would ask me questions about myself along with telling me about his wife and son and where he was from. He then started plying me with questions about English word meanings and pronunciations.

“How do you say “three?” Now how do you say “tree”? (Thai’s have a hard time pronouncing “th.”) "How do you say “sick”? Now how do you say “sixth”? “What is the difference between “pretty” and “beautiful”? “What about for a man? There is handsome and what else?” (For this we looked up “handsome” on thesauraus.com. I had no idea some of those words even existed! ) “Why do western women wear trousers and Thai women wear skirts? Do you have any skirts?”

All along, he taught me sayings and words in Thai. I can now say, “I really like the food here” and “I need to drink a lot of water. The weather is hot!” “Di-chan chawp ah-han nii mai, ka” and “Di-chan tong-khan deum naam ma. Ah-kaht ron!” respectively. He is also teaching me that some of the things in my lonely planet guide phrase book are considered rude. For example, “I don’t understand” according to lonely planet is “mai khao jai,” but he said if he “explain, explain, explain” something to me and I said afterward “mai, khao jai,” he would feel bad. So I should say, “Koh Todd, ka. Poot mai see, ka,” or “I’m sorry, please repeat that again.”

I suggested that maybe I could teach English to him and any of the other staff who were interested for 30 minutes a day or so (an idea given to my by our CCS director) and he was very agreeable. (I asked the director at lunch and he thought it would be great as well. After the English training last week and our back-and-forth this morning, I really think I am going to enjoy the lessons).

Lunch was just me, Sua, Pong and Ni and Sua proudly asked me “what are you doing?” pointing at my water bottle. “Di-chan duem naam (I drink water),” I replied and he lit up. We spent the rest of the meal going back and forth in very rudimentary English and Thai.When the director joined us, he explained to me that the research I was doing was for a concept paper that was to be part of a proposal for new project. He said that it would be about 1 – 2 pages. Then he said, “tomorrow, we will talk more about the paper and maybe you can write some of it… maybe 1 – 2 pages.” It turns out I might be helpful here after all.

Along with my success in the friendly department, I've also had to wrestle today with patience and innovation. I’ve found that internet research here is not as easy as it would be at home. For one there are the disconnections every 15 minutes. Also, the version of WORD here is in Thai, so if I want to insert a table or a page break or change the spacing, I have to work by trial and error, guessing at where the commands are on the menus in English. Most of the time I can figure them out but it was a huge accomplishment when I figured out how to change a table to text. I was quite proud. I encountered another hurdle when I tried to save the document I had created to a disk to be printed downstairs. For some reason WORD kept crashing every time I tried to save my document to a disk. I thought I would fool the computer and simply drag the files from my document folder to the A drive in Windows explorer, but it was on to me and explorer crashed when I tried to move the files. So finally, I came up with the bright idea of emailing the files to the HAT email and having Pong open them downstairs to print. After about 40 minutes of trying to upload the files between crashes – SUCCESS! Now I just hope the director is happy with what I put together!