CULTURE MISCOMMUNICATION
Have you tried being a tourist inside your own country? Like you meet people with different beliefs and cultures, or you wonder on that spot what they meant to say because I had been.
The Philippines is an archipelagic country. Our country consists of 7640 islands. These are divided into three island groups named: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. Since there are lots of boundaries in each place, it resulted in lots of differences. The people here in the Philippines were not united under one government but many smaller governments. We also had many different languages and many different dialects of each language. This is the main reason I feel like I am a tourist in my own country whenever I travel to other places.
One example of this is when we had a chance to go on a temple trip in Cebu, Philippines (Visayas). Please take note that I am from General Santos City, one of the cities in Mindanao. Since each island is surrounded by water, we have to ride a plane to get to Cebu. When I got there, I met people that have a different culture. Since we are new to the place, we asked one resident where this specific place is and if it is near or far. I clearly remembered how she directed us and confidently answered our questions that this place was very far. At that time, we did not consider if her “far” was really far. Because in my community, we would walk for like 3-5 kilometers and still consider it near. So we rode in a jeepney, and to our surprise, it literally took us five minutes to be there.
We did not realize that their definition of near and far is different from ours. Since we have cultural paradigms, we did experience a potential misunderstanding. Well, we did take note of that not to have the same mistake if we travel again. Remember to be aware of those potential misunderstandings and realize that those people have good intentions. They have good intentions; they are just working off of different paradigms.
Every person has a different perspective on things. An example of this is how these two people in the picture perceive the number. One person thinks that it is six, and the other person thinks it is nine. These two think right since that is how they see it, and we can’t blame them for seeing it in that way. This is why we should be careful about how we should talk, act, and approach people with different cultural backgrounds. Acknowledging different cultural backgrounds will help people understand each other. And if people could understand each other better, then I believe that misunderstandings will be lessened.
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