How do you learn about a culture?
Culture is the way a group of people live life together. The rules are unspoken and everyone in the "in group" knows them, they don't need to be taught. I've found, living in Udaipur in a culture very different from my own, things can seem so different at first glance and then slowly you see that people are essentially all the same. As you look a bit deeper into motivations you realize “THAT IS SO DIFFERENT”. Once you get past the differences, then you see the similarities. I’m hoping that with time and intentionality, we can get a clear picture one day of this culture, the one we are living in here in Udaipur, but I don’t expect the surprises will ever stop.
As I learned to drive, I used to marvel at the laws of the road. The solid vs. dotted lines that indicated if it was safe to pass, the signs, watching eight lanes of highway traffic weave around each other. “This would never work if we didn’t adhere to the rules,” I would think to myself. And then I moved here. Turns out, that nope, actually there is another way of doing it.
So take away all the rules, and replace them with one: you are in charge of making sure the front of your vehicle doesn’t run into anything. That’s it. Drive against traffic, pass from either side, stop or don’t at the intersection, park anywhere (including the middle of the street) as long you don’t hit someone, you are golden. And guess what, it works pretty well.
This is a very simple, concrete example of what it’s like to experience life in another culture. As we have learned, adapted, and have been challenged by experiences and ideas we literally had no idea existed, we have had to change ourselves. But these changes, these small adjustments in our lives, have helped us understand our friends and neighbors better and have made our connections here even stronger. There have been a lot more aspects of the culture here that are harder to see, things that challenge my ideas of my needs vs my community needs, independence, trust. It will be a continued learning process.
As much as we want to connect the community, and connect the community to meaningful opportunities, we want you all to be connected with life in Udaipur. It has been a very bumpy but amazing journey moving here, and we just think more people should get to experience it! It’s a big lesson in listening, being a learner, and empathy.
It’s exhausting, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything! Our lives are exciting, meaningful and rewarding and at some point we looked at each other and said, “we want people in Udaipur to have opportunities to connect to new ideas and people and jobs; but people should really get to know about life here too.” At the end of the day, we want more people to get to ponder these big questions with us, marvel at the different ways you can tackle the same problem, and somehow touch and feel what life is like.
Bye for now!
Analise
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