Clash of the Cultures
In a recent lecture about behaviour science the professor talked about biculturalism. Halfway through the lecture my mind wandered off. I started thinking about my youth in Albania.
Although I have spent half of my life there, my upbringing wasn’t really bicultural. My parents raised me with the dutch (western) culture.This sometimes led to friction between the Albanian culture and mine.There is one particular situation that I can remember vividly.
I must have been around 11 years old. In that time I spent a great deal of time with my best (Albanian) friend, Vici (short for Ervici, Albanian for Elvis). One day I was at his house and spotted a few of my toys in his room. I remember exactly witch toys. A few plastic soldiers and one of my favorite miniature cars. So I told him: “Those are my toys”. He denied everything, of course, but I was 100% sure they were mine. We argued for a while and then I shouted in broken Albanian: “Ti vetem je shok per jera”, meaning: You’re only my friend for (my) stuff. Not waiting for his reply I stormed out of his house.
A few days later the doorbell rang. I opened it and saw Vici standing there. He was holding the stolen toys and threw them at my feet, all this time not saying one word. He started walking away. I tried to stop him and tell him I was sorry for what I had said to him. But he kept on walking.
This was the last time I really spoke with him. Our friendship ended at the moment I said those awful words.
The following weeks I tried to make it up, told him numerous times that I was sorry for what I had said. He was friendly and said that it wasn’t a problem but he remained distant.
In my defense, you have to realize that living in Albania as a (rich) western person attracted some “gold-diggers”. This made it hard for me to distinguish real friends from people who were after my stuff. I’m convinced that Vici wasn’t after my stuff, but I doubted him at the moment I saw my toys in his house.
Looking back at this with my current knowledge of the “shame-culture” that dominates in Albania I can understand Vici’s extreme reaction. I handled the situation wrong. What I should have done is ‘steal’ my stuff back. Questioning Vici’s integrity out loud, resulted in the fact that he didn’t want to face me. I offended him, something you don’t do in a macho/shame culture.
Even though this may be an explanation, it’s pure speculation. It could be that any one of my friends Albanian, Dutch or American would break a friendship after hearing the words: “You’re only my friend for stuff”. I never found out. After that incident I ensured that it wouldn’t happen again. No Albanian friends playing with my toys and in Holland it has never been an issue because my friends never stole from me.
As I was daydreaming and thinking about the whole situation I realised that I was attending a lecture. Time to focus on that.
At one point the professor said that people who are raised with two cultures develop a form of “cultural frame switching”. Roughly meaning that a bicultural person can view a single situation from two different cultural angles and as a result will be able to form a more nuanced opinion about that situation.
If I only knew this when I was eleven years old. It would have saved me a friend and years of dispising/distrusting Albanian boys of my age.
