Tag Archives: Canela culture

How to Buy a Pair of Socks

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The Preparation for Culture Stress
My wife and I went through extensive missionary training to prepare us for living and working in an indigenous culture in Brazil. We were thankful for this training when we started raising our preschool girls in a village where everyone was nearly naked, and all five of us went through some startling initiation rites. After twenty years of interactions in this culture, we knew what to expect and were comfortable in every social situation.

The Labyrinth
We still had a year left of work in Brazil, but I could tell I was ready to leave because the culture was irritating me. No, not the Canela indigenous culture, but the Brazilian culture. As I paged through my diary while writing our current book, a memoir of our decades in Brazil, I came across an experience I had on November 3, 1989, which was so typical for that time in Belem; I wrote it up as my report of the day:

  • I enter the store and pick up a pair of socks.
  • A clerk walks up, I give him the socks, and he walks twenty metres to a table where he writes a bill of sale. I follow him.
  • He then searches for his supervisor to sign his bill. I follow part of the way but stop when he disappears through a door into an office.
  • He eventually returns, hands me the original bill and a carbon copy, and tells me to go to the cash register.
  • I walk thirty meters to the far end of the store to pay the bill. The machine spits out the receipts; the operator keeps one copy and stamps it and gives me the other copy.
  • I take my receipt, walk back into the centre area of the store to the wrapping desk, and give the wrapping clerk my receipt.
  • The first clerk brings the socks to the wrapping clerk and gives her a copy of the bill.
  • She carefully reads both the bill and my receipt, puts a checkmark on both the receipt and the bill and writes something on the bottom of each receipt.
  • Then she opens a drawer, takes out a stamp and an ink pad and stamps both receipts on the back.
  • She then puts the socks into a bag along with a copy of the receipt, tears off a piece of sticky tape, seals the bag shut, and hands it to me.

The End
At last, after fifteen minutes of bureaucracy, I am free to leave with my two-dollar pair of socks. The Bible teaches us to give thanks in all things. I was thankful that at least there were no lines to stand in, or it would have taken much longer! I can hardly wait to return to Canada, where this transaction would take fifteen seconds as I stopped by a cash register on the way out of the store.

The Lessons
So, what are the lessons in this for me? Be accepting of ALL cultures. Fit in with them, even when they cause me stress. Do not reject any aspect of culture unless it directly contravenes the clear teaching of God’s Word. In our increasingly multicultural country, these are probably good lessons for all of us to keep in mind, not just for a cross-cultural missionary veteran like me.

To Bribe or Not to Bribe, Is That the Question?

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Why is it that good, well educated, and right living people, can have such strange ideas about cultures? It seems that we North Americans tend to consider anything in another culture wrong if it differs from our own in ways we don’t like.

Languages, being part of cultures, differ from country to country. We wouldn’t dream of criticizing Japanese for speaking their unique language. Nor would we expect to live and work in China without learning Mandarin. In the same way, a Canadian or American company that wants to work in Mexico would expect its people to learn Spanish and behave according to generally accepted Mexican customs.

So why this huge outcry recently about Walmart bribing its way to success in Mexico? Walmart built over a hundred stores in Mexico in a remarkably short time. The accusers pointed at funding trails that showed large amounts of money had been spent in getting the building permits. Their argument was, money plus building permits proves bribery.

That may be true within Canadian or American culture, but is not at all true in the cultures of many other countries. No one disputes that money changed hands. The question is, “Was this money given in order to get some official to do something illegal or unethical, or was it simply a culturally expected tip?”

This picture has nothing to do with the subject of this column other than show what Jo and I looked like about the time of the driver's license story.

When I was a first-term missionary, I remember getting dozens of documents ready so I could renew my Brazilian driver’s license. My folder had it all: police clearance statement, certificate of proficiency, physical and psychological tests, driver’s test successful completion record, passport with permanent residence visa, receipts for all licensing fees paid, etc. Each document was notarized and well within the application deadline.

As I walked away with my thick folder of documents to catch a bus to town, I met our neighbour, a veteran missionary.

“Pray for me,” I said, “I’m turning in my final documents to get my driver’s license renewed.”

“Okay, I will, I know what a hassle that can be. Are you sure you have every paper you need?” he asked, reaching for my folder. He paged through all my papers, gave back the folder, then pulled out his wallet.

“Here,” he said, “As he handed me a note of Brazilian money worth about five dollars. Put this into your passport. It helps to move things along.”

I took the money, put it into my passport and later that morning handed in my folder to the clerk behind the wicket. She slowly paged through all the papers, riffled through the passport, saw the money, kept on looking through the papers, then looked up and said, “Yes, everything is in order, you can come in tomorrow morning and pick up your license.”

True to her word, my license was ready and I was good to go. When I paid back my missionary friend I asked him, “So what was that money for?”

“A tip,” he replied, “officials, like taxi drivers and waiters are not well paid and they expect a tip.”

“So it wasn’t a bribe?”

“No, of course not. As Christians we do not bribe, it breeds corruption and is wrong.”

“So what is the difference between a bribe and a tip?” I asked, still feeling slightly guilty.

“Very simple. A bribe is payment to an official so he will do something illegal, unethical, or immoral. For instance, when someone has failed his proficiency test he may offer to pay the inspector to pass him anyway. That is a bribe. Whereas what you did was give the clerk the culturally expected tip so she would do her job. It is no different from giving a tip to a barber or a baggage handler. You were not asking her to do anything wrong, you simply let her know you appreciated her work on your behalf.

Knowing the culture is so vital. When Jo and I were Bible translators, we needed to understand not only the language and the culture of the Canela people, but also the culture of Palestine in Jesus’ day and of Greece, Turkey and Italy in the time that the apostle Paul wrote his letters. As North American businesses like Walmart spread around the globe, and as millions of people from every culture in the world come to North America, we need to recognize that all cultures differ from each other, all have some good aspects and bad ones. Just because it is different from our culture doesn’t mean it is bad. Besides, no culture is perfect. No, not even our own.

Some societies value time and money, others are strong on relationships. Some promote fierce individual independence, others value interdependence. Some degrade women, others honor the elderly, yet another exploits children.

All cultures differ from each other just as individual human beings differ. The bottom line is, in the same way that no individual measures up to God’s standard of behaviour, no culture is faultless. We all, individuals as well as cultures, need God to redeem us and give us new life.