Cross-Culture at Home

I think a lot of us in Malaysia, who have lived here all our lives, don't really think about what it means to be at home in our culture. We blow our trumpets at our friends across the border about our mamak nights, good food, manglish, exclusively Malaysian jokes, multilingual communication (not 4 separate languages, but all 4 mushed sensibly together in a sentence), and just the general pretty-chill atmosphere of Malaysians among other Malaysians in Malaysia. 

A culture has so many quirky, beautiful and undoubtedly unique customs & nuances. That's what makes it a separate culture: distinct from the cultures around us. It inevitably follows, then, that cultures can be exclusive, without even meaning to be. That's the reason culture shock is so real: I'm anticipating a bit of a shock when I move overseas to study. Seeing such different-looking faces around me, different accents, different thought processes & considerations (If you've watched Arrival, you'll remember that speaking a certain language very different from your own can also rewire the way your mind works), different household names and topics of conversation. And in general, the whole thought of being away from home, out of your comfort zone, perhaps an oversensitive tendency to think you're being silently judged, the illusion of patronizing locals... all the familiar sights, sounds and dear comforts, take a backseat as you ride alone, crashing even at your first moment into a torrential culture shock snowstorm. 

It's much easier, surely, when locals welcome you. And much easier still, when they welcome you warmly, with genuine concern & empathy for your situation: understanding your plight, and seeking to find common ground with you, where you can relate, be made to feel more at home, to find the point of fusion of two culture bubbles - a sweet spot of relationship.

So that's what I feel in the context of us Malaysians moving overseas, a culture shock perhaps much less demoralizing and emotionally destructive than it could be, because we often go there by our own happy will for an eye-opening experience. 

Now for other-culture migrants into Malaysia – those who come from other parts of Asia to earn money for their family back home, or those who come to a strange country as refugees. We've settled that cultures are exclusive by nature, but how does that bear on our migrant friends? Are they welcome? If they are, do they even feel welcome? Is there something our friendly culture could do to help? 

I went for Street Evangelism one night in Brickfields, KL, and as I went out with my small team we encountered a solitary dark corner on Jalan Scott where sat a tanned, sullen, tired-looking and frazzled man. He was squatting, huddled over a small object held in his hand, looking frantic and on the verge of tears. "Hi, is there anything we could do to help you?" we asked amicably. We saw that the object in his hand was a small old cell phone. In broken Malay, he replied that he was a worker who had come from Bangladesh, and that he had tried to call his wife back home, but the line disconnected and he couldn't reach her. He was going to break into sobs anytime then, and all I felt was a deep pity for someone who was, to put it simply, sorrowful. 

He was so far from home, missing everything once so familiar but now a wisp of memory, a light at the end of the dismal tunnel that seemed then just a blade of light so small it stabbed not with pangs of joyful expectation but with pangs of painful longing. It's intoxicating, I imagine - though I don't claim to have an imagination that fully grasps the struggle of the migrant workers among us. 

We complain of being victims of racism and prejudice when we go overseas to study, being put down as we are thought to be less civilized, inexperienced, coming from a home of backward kampungs that know nothing of the advancements of the west, that our closed minds aren't complex enough to grasp their ideas, that we speak only extremely limited English, assumptions put on us automatically because of our ethnicity. We criticize other countries' reception of a different culture. Yet in the same breath we speak of the migrants among us as uneducated, useful only for manual labour (as if that's such a point of inferiority), meant to be ignored until they get out of our country, meant perhaps to be jeered at or treated rudely. 

With the influx of migrant workers among us, this is a time to celebrate our culture – and celebrate it on a platform other than our Facebook timelines sharing MGAG memes and videos about Malaysia. It is time to celebrate culture with another culture, to show them that while a culture by nature may be exclusive, the people stewarding it can make it inclusive. We see them everywhere, all around us, manning shops, selling us tealive, guarding our neighbourhoods, patrolling our schools and shopping complexes. What a field there is to sow real, active, love, in hearts that almost surely pine and decline with a yearning for all they once knew to be home.

Sure, it's not advisable to gullibly divulge all personal space to strangers around us, but within those boundaries there is so much room to be kind and at least to brighten someone's day – perhaps with a kind word or a sincerely interested conversation about where he/she is from, how long they've been in Malaysia, how their own culture is different from ours... and so on in creative ways. Not only will such encounters lift their spirits, but they'd also enrich us in our understanding of others and realisation of good, sincere harmony.

So let's sow seeds of love and care. Let's make an effort to make our country a home - temporary or permanent - to insiders and outsiders alike.

Picture taken from Semantan MRT station overhead bridge (our MRT is really nice!) - and it could possibly represent the state of the troubled hearts and minds of foreigners among us when they feel left out - invisibly barred