Cultural fatigue

“Cultural fatigue is the physical and emotional exhaustion that almost invariably results from the infinite series of minute adjustments required for long term survival in an alien culture.” From ‘Culture Shock’ by Alfredo and Grace Roces.

Living in a country that is foreign to you requires you to make an infinite number of tiny adjustments, some conscious, some unconscious. All of these combine to extract a price from your self, a shift in your centre of being, tipping you off balance  on a daily basis. Even simple things that you take for granted: surely you know as an adult and as a parent how to pay a household bill, drive to the shops, buy school shoes, get the groceries in? It seems that once you are in a different country you cannot make any assumptions about accomplishing such things easily. The to-do list grows like an anaconda and general administrative grit just chunks up in the running of the domestic engine that at home runs relatively smoothly. I have since learnt to aim to achieve only one thing per day, whether that be sourcing healthy snacks for school lunch boxes, finding a dry cleaner or trying to find fresh rosemary or self-raising flour. And to always have a back up plan.

It can be incredibly frustrating even tear-jerking to decide to make  a mood-enhancing chocolate amaretti cake only to find amaretti biscuits are ‘out of stock’, the chocolate is ‘for a while ma’am’ and fresh cream is non-existent. As an achieving, problem-solving, logical person with little patience I’m really not ideally suited to life here.

Several people when we talked about our move here commented that at least it’s an English speaking country, and how that must be easier than being posted to other parts of Asia. At the time, I was relieved, now I live here I find that concept heartily amusing! Filipinos refer to the English as ‘nosebleeds’ as the English accent is so hard for them to understand. And we’ve had no end of comedy moments between me and my helper.  For the first few months I would gaily tell her ‘I’m off now’ or ‘I’ll be back at half past’ and she had no idea what I meant.

Culture shock is not about getting to grips with new and unexpected things, it’s really about failing to come across what you never would have believed would be missing from any culture. It’s defined as an impaired ability to function due to three things:

• the absence of familiar or comforting characteristics of one’s own culture;
• the presence of seemingly irrational, inscrutable, offensive, or even hostile aspects of the new culture; and
• lack of ability, linguistic or otherwise, to gain cultural understanding rapidly enough to adapt to these changes.

And that’s what it’s like. There’s absolutely no ‘nipping’ or ‘popping’ out to do something, in fact if you find yourself thinking that you’ll just nip out and do X before the school run that is the time to STOP and take a breath and decide to do it another day when you have a more plentiful amount of time and patience and good humour. Or failing that, a really good book in your handbag.