Have you ever changed jobs and found, on your first day, that you've driven half way to your old place of employment by mistake without realizing it? Or bought a new car and then spent half an hour looking for the old one in a grocery store parking lot? One of the things our brains are great at is doing things without making us consciously think about them. Occasionally, this comes back to bite us, but usually it's a great thing.
Imagine that dozens of things that have worked a certain way your whole life suddenly work a different way, and the action your brain has stored in the Automatic Response Bin is now the wrong action. For example, flipping light switches down turns the light on. Or you flush a toilet by pushing a button on top of the tank instead of flipping a handle on the front. These are little things, to be sure, but face enough of them at one time, and it can be surprisingly disorienting. That's part of what moving to a new culture involves. These little things add up to a bigger mental adjustment than one expects, or even consciously notices.
So, here are a collection of differences I've run into living in Senegal, some having to do with technology, and some not.
- Light switches: Up is "off," down is "on."
- Other power switches: Green is "off," red is "on."
- Hailing a cab: Holding your hand up and waving your hand means you don't need a taxi. Pointing down towards the road and waving slightly means you want one (you're saying "pull over here"). It's funny how much this throws me off, especially given how seldom I have taken a cab in the US, and how often I have taken one here.
- Toilet handles: Toilets here don't have handles. Instead, they have buttons on the top. Pressing the button flushes the toilet. (For a few, the water tank is attached to the wall above the toilet seat, and you pull a string to flush.)
Hee are a few more differences that aren't in the Automatic Response Bin category, but are nonetheless interesting.
- Honking: First of all, horns here don't honk, they beep. Secondly, when someone beeps at you, it doesn't mean that you're doing something unsafe, or that he's mad at you. Beeps are usually directed at pedestrians, and mean "I'm coming up behind you." Only in huge traffic jams where no-one has moved for a while do drivers bear down on the horn in disgust--but this is usually aimed at the policeman directing traffic.
- Door handles. Doors here have handles rather than knobs. Several times as I've entered or exited my office, the handle has slipped inside the front of my shirt and torn it.
- Getting directions. In Senegal, terenga [tuh-REN-ga], or hospitality, is a key cultural value. This has some interesting corollaries. To not help someone is virtually a moral failure. So, if someone asks you for directions, you must give him directions, even if you don't know how to get where he wants to go. Giving wrong information is better than being so rude as to give none!
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