LiteraryTraveler.net

I just shared a positive anecdote about surrender in a culture shock situation, but it can also be a liability.  A traveler has to be willing to push boundaries, to grin and bear the uncomfortable situation.  However, especially during the early phases of adaptation, this flexibility makes her vulnerable, too.

The subtle culture shocks – tremors, as I called them – can define a culture in contrast.  You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.  And sometimes “it” is something as minor as a healthy selection of peanut butter.

Likewise, a person can be defined in contrast – you are marked by your limits, notable for what you do not do.  Let’s add a moral element to the food, and say that a vegetarian may identify as someone who does not bloody their mouth with the inhumane slaughter of animals.  But what if the vegetarian’s host family slaughters a goat in celebration of her arrival?  If she ate it, it would be a sign of respect to the family, and certainly reflects a willingness to push her boundaries.  But at what point does she violate her own beliefs?  And, if they are constantly in negotiation, how will she know?

I tended to know when the line is crossed – rampant sexism always gets my goat – but I had trouble knowing when to keep that goat as a pet, or when to slaughter it in public (I think this feeling of disgust means the metaphor is officially exhausted).

My question is:  How and when did you learn to set boundaries when you were traveling?  Which of your convictions – culturally transmitted, personal, religious, etc. – are nonnegotiable, and how do you react appropriately in situations where they are threatened?  Where, and how, do you draw the line?

I wrote about culture shock a few weeks back.  It hits everyone differently.  Katie was disoriented but liberated when she realized that she was no longer a member of the tourist majority in Mallorca.  My friend Ben started bobbling his head while people were speaking after he spent six months in India.  These moments of realignment – or, more frequently, the tremors of adjusted detail – give the traveler a new space in which to define herself.

Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram provides a literal example of this redefinition.  The novel’s protagonist leaves Australia with a forged passport bearing the moniker Lindsay; he becomes Lin-sang when his Bombay guide has trouble pronouncing his English name; he becomes Shantaram when the inhabitants of his guide’s home village decide to give him a Maharastrian name.  His name means “man of peace,” a contrast to his violent past, and the protagonist explicitly states that “the man I am was born in those moments.”

Shantaram is not a subtle work – two pages earlier, “Lindsay” commented, “My culture had taught me all the wrong things well.” – but it contains some excellent advice for travelers who venture out of their element.

When Lindsay confronts a particularly awkward situation – say, his host’s father insists that the visitor pat his prominent “tummies,” and repeated this request despite polite refusals – he notes, “Sometimes you have to surrender before you win.” He then asserts that “surrender is at the heart of the Indian experience.”  Surrender in some form – to circumstance, to strange-looking currency, to a radically new sleeping schedule, to communicating through a series of drawings – is at the heart of any travel experience.

My most vivid moment of surrender came on a Sunday during spring in Argentina.  I was supposed to be taking a walk with my friend, Sergio.  Most travelers – especially control freaks whose unfamiliar environment renders them powerless – build routines, fulfilled expectations, safe zones.  Sergio and I had a pattern.  I could relax with him, and his family, because they felt familiar.  I knew what to expect.

So when he asked if I’d like to go for a walk on Sunday morning, I said yes.  When he mentioned that his mother would be joining us, I was surprised, but affable.   When we worked our way out of his barrio onto the main street, I was concerned – his mother, Ophelia, was walking in the middle of a major road, which is particularly dangerous on the route to the truck-heavy campo.

Before I could ask Sergio what she was doing, we had turned the corner, and stepped into the middle of a large procession.  People filled the road for blocks behind me.  A quarter-mile ahead, a pick-up truck carried a statue of the Virgin Mary and blasted prayers over a loudspeaker.  I punched Sergio in the shoulder – this was a pattern, too – and considered my situation.  I hate crowds, loud noise upsets me, I’m not Catholic, I had no idea where we were going, and I had no escape plan.  I was, in a word, rattled.  Sergio gripped my arm, told me that we were walking to Toay, the next town over, and urged me to follow his mother, who was hand-shaking and elbowing her way up to the statue, laughing a Santa Maria.  I took a step forward and began to mouth the prayer, learning as I went along.