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| ROSALINDA LEJANO-MASSEBIEAU |
| Culture Shocked: A Story of Recovery |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS STORY. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR. |
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| Culture shock might be called an occupational disease of people who have suddenly been transplanted abroad…. [It] is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing all our familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse. —Kalvero Oberg in “Culture Shock and the Problem of Adjustment in New Cultural Environments,” Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) One of the most common symptoms or manifestations of culture shock is a sense of being out-of-control…. Often we feel childish and incompetent and our self-esteem is lowered. —Gary R. Weaver in Culture, Communication and Conflict: Readings on Intercultural Relations In a village called Aigues Mortes, in southwestern France, my husband and I decide to live on land that has belonged to his family for seven generations. It is part of a nature reserve, and laws prevent us from building anything of concrete. To get around this restriction, we bring in two mobile homes, put them together in an L shape. In the rectangle they half-enclose, we construct a wooden terrace. The indoor living space is tight, just barely enough for two, yet despite this inconvenience, the place is without doubt a writer’s dream. The original property has been divided amongst the children and grandchildren. The 3,000 square meters we call home is planted with fruit trees and vine. During the growing season there is a continual harvest of apples, olives, plums, almonds, jujubes, and figs. In a forgotten corner, you can find wild raspberries. There used to be enough grapes to provide the family with wine to last four seasons, but through the years they have let go of some of the vine. We are left with just four short rows, not enough to bother with fermenting, but come September there is so much of the berries that we have to ask the neighbors to help. They come to pick bunches for their own tables. My very first summer in this new country, feeling the need to do something with so much sandy earth, I dig myself a little plot away from the trees and their shade, a rectangle of land that receives at least eight hours of sunlight. More than anywhere else, I prefer to be here, pulling out weeds and watering my plants. There are lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, onions, and some herbs—basil, chives, persil, mint, and marjolaine. Every day, I monitor their progress, am thrilled when the first tiny leaves push out of the ground. After spending all my life in a big city, this open-air existence delights me. Until, that is, a chill blowing down from the mountains force me back inside four walls. They call it the Mistral. Meteorologists say that it is an atmospheric phenomenon caused by air being cooled by a high-pressure system over the Massif Central and the Alps. Rushing bitter cold thereafter into the Rhône valley, it can reach a speed of up to 150 kilometers per hour. The locals explain it more engagingly with their many colorful anecdotes about this north wind, but despite that I love stories, they fail to sway me. I consider the Mistral nothing but a vicious beast that reminds me that where I live is not called Bramasole, and that I am not writing a travel book. One morning I wake up to the sound of my bedroom window rattling, a roof tile tumbling, tree branches creaking, and leaves whipping about. Drinking coffee, I imagine that I can even hear the grass bending. A bit of folk wisdom the locals pass on is that the Mistral will always blow for an odd number of days—one, three, five, seven, nine, and so on. This is the third day in a row that I wake up to the noises of the countryside so raucously disturbed. I utter a silent prayer for quiet to return by the evening. In the very beginning I believed that I had been made hardy by more than 30 years worth of monsoon seasons. I’d venture out even while the Mistral blew, and soon enough discovered that this wind wasn’t at all like a capricious Typhoon Bising or an irresolute Typhoon Nando. The Mistral is single-minded and tenacious. Its icy-cold fingers will pry their way into all possible openings—the gap between a gloved hand and the end of a coat sleeve, for example—wrap around bare skin and provoke shivers. Having thus primed its victim, it will grip the entire body in an invisible embrace, begin tugging and pulling. One time I felt as if the wind were about to carry me away like it did to Dorothy and bring me to Oz. But my plane had just recently landed in France. I wasn’t ready to find myself anywhere else so alien. With sheer force of will, I managed to stay on the ground. Wanting to avoid such vexation, every time the Mistral comes thereafter, I abandon the wonders of the fruit trees and the vines, even the treasures of my little vegetable garden. Closing windows and locking doors, I wait it out inside. The afternoon of the third day comes with the Mistral showing no signs of leaving. On the contrary, it becomes more energetic. Tired of windows, it moves to the front door. There is a rattling of a doorknob. My travel-book existence is quickly turning into a crime thriller (and a particularly bad one at that, to build tension with a device so hackneyed as a doorknob rattling). In 10 seconds the episode takes a turn for the worse, transforming into a panel out of the greasy komiks I read as a child during the early ‘80s. From outside I hear the noise of a thousand snakes hissing. I am about to become prey to Zuma and Galema! Okay, so the rational part of me knows that it is only the wind moving through the marshland’s reeds. Stiff stalks and thick leaves rub against each other to produce this bizarre sound. I know that, of course I do. But the part of me that is quickly flipping out can’t stop thinking of snakes. The sound slithers its way into the crevices of my brain. A brain that despite my seemingly placid lifestyle has so many new things to deal with that it really cannot take this additional intrusion. I feel the beginnings of a terrible headache. If this doesn’t end soon, I think, the noise is going to split cracks in my skull. They will find me dead, green slush oozing out of my ears. A powerful gust blows away part of the garden-shed roof, and I become certain that the Mistral is only going to stop on Day No. 1,341. I will not make it. Le vent qui rend fou is what the locals sometimes call this force. “The wind that drives people crazy.” That day, anyone looking at me would not have had to ask why. My husband finds me late afternoon seated on a piece of stone next to the vegetable plot. Snot and tears jet down my face. Shivers twitch through my body. I am coatless, and attempt to protect myself from the brutal wind only with the hands that I cup over my ears. He asks what is wrong. I can’t respond for all my sobbing. Instead scenes play out in my mind: Myself in Manila, in front of the cameras, hosting a television show. Myself here, at the village café, trying in their foreign tongue to tell the waiter that I want my coffee not too strong, and instead getting a potent espresso. Myself at my old office in Ortigas, correcting the proofs of the women’s magazine I was editing. Myself in my new kitchen, spending 10 minutes reading the simple French on the package of a ready-to-cook meal. Myself in Makati, partying with friends. Myself at a party in Arles, surrounded by my husband’s old friends but desperately seeking entertainment in a glass of red wine, because I am all alone. Each episode seems a trivial inconvenience, but taken together they weigh heavy on me. I am deeply troubled, but typical for this time, I don’t have the words to explain why. So I just cover my ears to protect myself from the Mistral and everything else that assaults my senses in this foreign land, and I begin screaming. “I want to speak Tagalog! I want to speak English! I want to go back to the Philippines!” A pause to hiccup. “I just really, really don’t want to be here!” And for the rest of that evening, I cry. [T]hose who have seen people go through culture shock… can discern steps in the process. During the first few weeks most individuals are fascinated by the new…. This honeymoon stage may last from a few days or weeks to six months, depending on circumstances. —Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) In the Philippines, I’d wake up to find it raining outside and dive right back in between the sheets. It was a reaction learned from childhood, when typhoon season meant that on many wet days we didn’t have to go to school and my sisters and I could sleep in. In France, one early morning, despite that it is drizzling I miraculously roll out of bed, gamely don a light coat, and brave the outdoors. My mother-in-law is going to take me on a little agrarian adventure to gather wild chicory. She gives me a little knife and a plastic bag, tells me how to recognize the particular shaping of leaves that distinguishes the edible greens from ordinary garden weed. Advising me to get the young specimens, those that are “tendre” not “deur,” she leads me tramping about the muddy grounds. I am slowly getting soaked and yet am undeniably thrilled. I feel so very French countryside, absolutely Provençal! Lunchtime, tentatively masticating a salad that is unexpectedly and quite literally sharp, I find myself asking if I hadn’t made an error and picked some distant cousin of the talahib. Chicory leaves have tiny hairs that scratch the tongue quite unpleasantly. I learn that wild vegetables are not for me, but I can’t bring myself to run to the supermarket like I used to. Looking at my neighbors, I make up my mind that like them I can become a gardener. Following the advice of green-thumbed Oncle Loulou, I bury the seeds in the ground at just the right moment of the moon’s ascending, and in a few weeks I am harvesting laitue frisée, romaine, and maché, all lettuce varieties with perfectly hairless leaves. Vegetables taken care of, I move to the fruits. With neighbor Violette, I pick enough grapes to fill a big basket. These we boil in giant pots of sugar and seal in sterilized glass pots that cool upside down. We do the same for the figs, and because the amandier is ready to be picked at the same time, we stir in handfuls of almonds. I figure that 10 liters of two kinds of jams and jellies are enough, so the apples I make into turnovers and pies. Never have I had such a life! Everything I ever ate before had been planted and picked by somebody else. Every bit of soil was washed off before they were packed in sterile plastic bags, to wait for me in temperature-controlled surroundings. Thinking of from where my food had come was not a requirement. Now my senses are engaged. I feel the humidity of the soil as I dig, the crustiness of the aged horse manure I use for fertilizer. I examine the different sizes and textures of seeds, after germination teach myself about linear, elliptic, spatulate, ovate—the various shapes of leaves. I discover that a cherry tomato’s green parts will give off an astringent odor when I pick its red fruit. I plant rosemary and lemon verbena because their fragrance makes me think of freshly washed linen and innocence. [I]f the foreign visitor remains abroad and has seriously to cope with real conditions of life,…the second stage begins, characterized by a hostile and aggressive attitude toward the host country. —Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) France profond, they call places like this, deep France, areas where the locals live still steeped in traditional ways. There is a period during the year when the entire village dresses up as kings, queens, princes, princesses, knight, ladies of the court, and jesters, remembering when, in the thirteenth century, Louis IX launched the seventh and eighth crusades from this ancient royal port. The rest of the time, the residents look pretty much like normal people, in everyday shirts and blue jeans. Then the picturesque moments come naturally. Life begins in the mornings at the boulangerie. Everyone knows everybody else, and so there’s a lot of greeting going on as the croissants and baguettes are bought. You hear an incessant chirping of “Bonjour” and a continual asking of “Ca va?” A hungry family awaits, so “Au Revoir” follows quick. Occasionally, you spot someone leaving on a bicycle, bread tucked under arm and sporting a beret. Before meals, the folks meet up at the bars for aperitifs. At L’Express and Perroquet, everybody’s favorite order is pastis. An amber-colored liquor, it is mixed with water to transform into a thick yellow liquid, the anise-flavored milk of Provence that the locals suck as if indeed it were nourishment from their mother’s teat. Late afternoons and on the weekends, find the men on dirt fields, intent at their pétanque. It is a hundred-year-old game played with metal balls. Think holen with heavier orbs to throw around and slightly more elaborate rules. Observing the goings-on is the older generation. In mild weather you’ll find them, gray-haired men and women sitting together in rows, usually in foldable chairs parked in front of a doorway or under a tree, happily chatting their days away. They actually ruin it for me, because looking at the oldies reminds me that since I’m not yet a sexagenarian, I had better stop playing spectator and start going about the business of living here. While rabbits hop merrily in the nearby fields, pork, beef, and chicken can never grow in my garden. Trips to the supermarket are necessary to satisfy carnivore needs. Choosing my lean cuts I already feel the dread of what awaits me at checkout: I would be telling myself to hurry, hurry, hurry, pack those groceries into those plastic bags quick, you don’t want to annoy the other people waiting in line behind you, make them think you’re an inefficient foreigner, because you can’t explain that back in the Philippines where labor is cheap, young men hired by the store and called baggers would do this for you. You never had to think of such things as, do the canned vegetables go on top of the bags of fruits or below them? On the way home, I stop at the gas station, mentally berating my husband for forgetting to do this for me. Missing the gas boys of home, I remember to pick up the yellow dispenser that pumps diesel, and not the green which is for regular petrol. Exactly as my husband showed me a week back, I start to fill up. I feel incompetent that at 32 years old this is my first time to pump my own gas. I also feel silly, but I can’t help it that I’m nervous. My overactive imagination is half-convinced that I’ll do something stupid and make my tiny Ford Fiesta explode. Worst is when I have to do chores that involve talking to people, set a doctor’s appointment for example, or even just buy vitamins at the pharmacy. Even if in my head I know the foreign words, I open my mouth but can’t let a sound escape past my lips. I long for the company of women my age, but when ordering coffee is already difficult, building friendships is impossible. One of the reasons I prefer my garden is that lettuce and tomatoes are mute. Forced to speak, pieces of uncertainty choke me: I’m not sure it’s the correct conjugation. I won’t be able to pronounce the Rs the properly. Do I use vous or tu? Wanting to get it all exactly right, not wanting to sound stupid, I end up sounding nothing at all. The second stage of culture shock is in a sense a crisis in the disease. If you come out of it you stay; if not, you leave before you reach the stage of a nervous breakdown. —Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) “Tu l’as ramené ici?” It is a question my husband often encounters. Did you bring her over here, they demand of him, about me, as if I were some souvenir from the tropics, like a kitschy pair of mega-sized wooden fork and spoon for hanging in the dining room perhaps, or maybe something vulgar, like a barrel man. His usual response begins with a joke. “No, I’m so hot she came chasing after me.” Then he starts it, sometimes subtly, sometimes more upfront, depending on his mood, different ways of saying, she got her own visa, bought all her own plane tickets, before the wedding spent her summers vacationing here on her own money. This is not a marriage of convenience. I’m not my wife’s financial savior, you see. I appreciate his efforts, really, but one time I have enough of feeling like my entire curriculum vitae has to be dug out of the filing cabinet and presented as proof of my acceptability. So I snap. “Yep, brought me over, he did,” says I to one lady. “At the supermarket, he purchased an extra-large cardboard box and a roll of sticky tape. He packed me in there really tight with some bubble wrap. It could have been a rough ride in the plane’s cargo hold, but my husband was really considerate. He remembered to punch air holes. Also to mark my brown box ‘Fragile’ and ‘This Side Up.’” Anger is effective at loosening my tongue, making me take to the foreign language, but one incident shocks me so much that I become numb and dumb. It happens on the night of an acquaintance’s restaurant opening, and gets me thinking that I had moved all the way to France only to star in my very own Pinoy telenovela. Imagine me on a Saturday a gorgeous Iza Calzado, long black tresses falling in sensual curls down my back as I stand at some restaurant’s bar, sipping a drink, talking to a guy who is not at all hot. Ugly as hell, in fact, no Dingdong Dantes this one. Anyway, he starts small talk and to be social I small-talk back. A little while later, I take my leave, turning to say goodbye to the guy’s companion, a blonde with bad posture, craggy face, and skin the color of pastry dough. Unbeknownst to me, this female character has the spirit of an evil Princess Punzalan. In a jealous rage peppered by a mega-dose of racism, she focuses on me her mean eyes, reaches a claw out to give my hair a tug—yes, members of the audience, a sabunot it is—then proceeds to abuse me with a sentence not fit for printing here. And then her final line: “You, Thai puta.” As I wrench myself out of her grasp, the part of me that still thinks that all this is not real, is in fact a ludicrous dream, that part of me wants to scream, “Excuse me, pero hindi ako Thai!” But my attacker is an ignorant country chick who has never travelled too far from the backwater where she was born. She has no hopes of understanding another people, not their language, and definitely not their humor. All I can do is wallow in depression in the two weeks that follow. I am always on the verge of booking a ticket for home. If the visitor succeeds in getting some knowledge of the language and begins to get around by himself, he is beginning to open the way into a new cultural environment. The visitor still has difficulties but he takes a “this is my problem and I have to bear it” attitude. —Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) Even my insides reject the new country. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I eat three-course meals the main ingredients of which always seem to be meat, cream, and some form of cheese. I often go for second servings. Then one evening, just like that, I begin retching and vomiting. I can’t stop. My stomach, which up till then had been fed largely on rice, seafood, and steamed veggies, is complaining: The new menu is just too rich. In the middle of the night, a doctor comes into my room to punish me for my indulgences. He takes out a wicked needle, pulls down my pajamas, and gives me an injection on the butt. After months of suffering stomach upsets, I try to seek solace in Asian restaurants. It doesn’t work. While the rolls called nems are tasty versions of our fried lumpia, the food they cook to suit European tastebuds is largely disappointing. I am probably the only customer who complains when her chopsuey is placed in front of her: “Why is it loaded with meat? Where are the vegetables?” Back home, almost everybody in my family cooked better than I did, so I rarely ventured into the kitchen. When I did try, it was to whip up a quick pasta, salad, or omelette. I thought cooking Pinoy dishes was a tiresome affair that required way too much chopping. So when I decide to put in the effort, I find that I lack the know-how. Easily solved, in this age of broadband. I search “Filipino recipes” on Google. But it’s not as if I still lived in Mandaluyong, a taxi ride away from Cherry Foodarama or a tricycle trip from the talipapa in Barangka. I agree to pay the equivalent of 140 pesos for a bottle of toyo, and about the same amount for patis, but many ingredients are not to be found. Creative thinking is needed. For siomai wrappers, I buy a packet of pâte feuillettée—pastry dough—and roll it so thin it is almost transparent. Thanks to a 70-peso pack of Knorr Tamarind Mix, I have sinigang broth. Into that I toss in les haricots in lieu of a bunch of sitaw. Labanos is readily available, only here it is called le navet. For the Bicol Express I consider buying the niyog I find in the exotic-food section of a big chain supermarket, but figure that there is no way I am going to find a kudkuran. I settle for the cans labelled lait de coco. I put that in the pot along with onions, ginger, peppers, and string beans. After the meal is eaten, I decide that it’s the meat that leaves me dissatisfied. They can say all they want about the superiority of French food, but I have to insist that their porc is not up to the standards of the Philippines’s baboy. Where is the inch-thick layer of fat between meat and skin? And why is it a healthy rose, when it should be that perfect combination of pink flesh and yellow fat globules? Their porc is not porky enough, so to your sauce you have to add cubes of fat to get the right lardy flavor. My Filipino cooking repertoire expands. I try espadon to make fish kinilaw. Tortang talong I cook with fresh origan. Wrapping my lumpia, I use a thing called feuille de brick. The pinaupong manok requires just chicken and coarse salt, so I don’t have any stories about that one, except that my husband does love telling guests its name. Then he quips, “If you cook it lying down, it will not have the same taste.” The culinary activity calms my spirit. And that is why—because surrounded by the tastes of home I finally begin to feel comfortable in this foreign land—I allow my husband to think that he is being funny. Usually in this third stage the visitor takes a superior attitude to people of the host country. His sense of humor begins to exert itself. Instead of criticizing, he jokes about the people and even cracks jokes about his or her own difficulties. He or she is now on the way to recovery. —Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) I have fun telling my friends back home that I’m actually still in the Philippines, entertaining them with anecdotes about how my husband’s aunt, Tante Marithé, who can heal with a touch of her hands, is France’s version of our hilot; and about how here the village folk are fond of giving each other nicknames, like they do in an area of Malabon I was familiar with. In that small community lived a “Clapton” and a “Manok.” Here, their mechanic is “Camboui” and a frail old man is “Anchois.” I say, to my friends’ great amusement, that if they were from Malabon, these two men would have been “Grasa” and “Sardinas.” Taking the thought that I am actually living the same life, only my address has changed, I resume the small-scale business I had in the Philippines. The tiangges here are called marchés, and instead of NBC Tent at the Fort and the World Trade Center in CCP, my new locations are Arles, Saint Remy de Provence, and Gordes. Still, the work is the same. Make jewelry of semiprecious stones, afterwards convince people to buy them. While earning euros is the goal, I get a nice bonus. The first few days I chat just with the American and English tourists, but realize that if I want to get my bracelets and necklaces moving, then I’d better communicate with the French-speakers too. My initial forays are tentative. “Oui, c’est jolie.” “Trente euros, s’il vous plait.” “Tous vient de mon pays, les Philippines.” Then my natural talkativeness takes over, and soon I have entire conversations about nothing really special, where they come from, why I moved to France, the weather. Happy at finally making connections in this new language, I nevertheless utter a silent apology for mangling the grammar and pronunciation sometimes so terribly it could possibly induce bleeding from the ears of the experts over at L’Academie Française. In the fourth stage, your adjustment is about as complete as it can be. The visitor now accepts the customs of the country as just another way of living. You operate within the new surroundings without a feeling of anxiety, although there are moments of social strain. Only with a complete grasp of all the cues of social intercourse will this strain disappear. For a long time the individual will understand what the national is saying, but he is not always sure what the national means. --Oberg in Practical Anthropology 7 (1960) It is early spring, at the end of my second year in Aigues Mortes. I make a note to begin working on the vegetable plot this week, because right now weeds and wildflowers are all I have to harvest. I will also have to clear up the dirt alley that my late father-in-law used for playing pétanque. New friends are coming over on the weekend for a party. They’ve tasted my Pinoy cooking and liked it (“C’est une aventure,” one declares), but since I don’t feel like chopping food for eight, we’ll be keeping it simple. Games of pétanque will be played and steaks put on the grill to welcome the coming of warmer days. Of course, pastis will be served. On the morning of the get-together, I will make a stop at the village market. I prefer it to the grocery store, for the ambiance, and because the service is more personal. I don’t just stand in front of a display of cheese and point out my choices. The crémiere will spend a few minutes with me, to show which of her fromage de chèvre is most rich and creamy. As for my meats, when I find them too tough, I don’t just switch to another brand found in the supermarket chillers. I go back and complain to the boucher. He’ll make sure I get the best cuts on the next purchase. Done with shopping, I may go to the bar for my kind of coffee, which I have learned to say is café allongé. The barmen call me “MacIntosh.” Yes, I now have my very own nickname, the origins of which require telling a story that is too long and frankly not very interesting. Despite early incidents to the contrary, I have to say that the people here are generally friendly. They are curious about Asia, and enthralled by the idea of eternal summers. Pictures of endless beaches lined with coconut trees on their minds, they want to know how it is to live on an island. They are a little bit disappointed when they find out that I come from a big city. And what of the Mistral, my old nemesis? The weather has been mild, and it has blown in only once so far this year, but then so fiercely it ripped off our terrace awning. I still hide indoors while it makes its racket, convinced that it is one of the things about this foreign land that I will never get used to. That last time it battered the village, by the evening of the first day I already had a throbbing headache. Unfortunately, my vegetable plot wasn’t there to provide a setting for my theatrics. I had to be content with popping an aspirin. This won Second Prize for the Essay in the 2007 Don Carlos Palanca Awards |