Culture Shocks: These things just made me smile!

“Christy, KB’s kombi is dead at the spar. We pushed it to the side. I came to get Thabo’s kombi, but it is dead too. It must be this cold rainy weather. Will you take us to rescue KB?”
Okay, no big deal. Nombtie and the guys pile into my truck as we make the short drive to the Spar parking lot.
Happily I found an empty parking spot right next to the kombi. (Kombi batteries aren’t under the hood, but on the side behind the passenger seat.)
So they attempt to stretch the jumper cables from the kombi to my truck only to find out we were about 4 inches too short. The two vehicles needed to be closer together.
So can you guess their solution? Yes, if you read my blog regularly, you already know what I’m going to say.
Get the dead battery kombi closer to my running truck.
4 people stood out in the pouring rain pushing the kombi backwards, and then ran quickly around behind it pushing it forward again as KB steered the wheel closer to my truck.
They cheered triumphantly as the cables reached my battery and after just a moment the kombi was jumped and running.
Nombtie got back into the warm dry truck with me.
“Nombtie…wouldn’t it just have been easier for me to move my truck closer to the kombi?”
She packed up laughing as she realized what the 4 of them had just done. “Oh yes, my baby… That’s funny we did that…. Do you have one of these blog things? You should put it on there to make us laugh. Oh that was so funny.”
Yes is was.


We played this board game the other night where there is a category and you quickly right down as many things as you can and then compare with your partner. You get points for any matches that you have.
Cross-culturally this is a difficult game to play. For example, “Names of football teams” will get responses of “Cowboys, Steelers, Lions, Bears” from an American but “Sharks, and Springboks” [soccer teams] from a Swazi. (Actually those might be rugby teams but you get my point.)
So the category was “Things that people are afraid of”
My list:
Spiders
Snakes
Marriage/commitment
Heights
Death
Cockroaches
My Swazi partner’s list:
Snakes
Shylocks (like a loan shark)
Taking a loan (getting yourself indebted to a shylock)
Diseases.
Wow. It showed me such insight to the differences of the culture. Yeah, who would be afraid of heights, when the shylock who gave you a loan for school fees is charging you 300% interest?



I took two Finnish women to church with me yesterday where we had a great baptism celebration service. Afterwards we ate cake. Now, some of these pieces of cake were hilarious! I think the cutters didn’t consider the height of the cake so they turned out as blocks of cake. They were huge!!!!!
I was laughing with the girls about it. The one said, “Oh… we knew everything is bigger in American… we thought that was just the way you ate them.”