I really enjoyed the rafa, rafa activity. Basically there were two different "cultures" and you learned one of the cultures and the reasoning for why you did everything that you did. Then, after you had played the game of your culture for a while, you went and observed the other culture. It looked really strange from an outsiders view. Then, the group that went and observed the other culture reported back to your culture what they saw. After that, two more groups went and got to participate in the culture. It was really confusing and I couldn't understand why they were doing what they were doing or how to play their game with them.
Basically, the point of the activity was to open your eyes to how it is to go to another culture. You don't really understand everything that's going on or what you are supposed to be doing. It's kind of hard to understand why people are doing what they are doing just by observing. It made me think about how important it is in my Field Study to make sure that I don't go into another culture and think it's weird just because I don't understand it. It's also important not to try to define their culture only using things you know. I feel like sometimes it's easy to try and explain other people using things you know, or the values of your culture. But it's important that I don't do that when I travel to Tonga. I can see myself thinking that it's weird that they share everything because in my culture it's important to have your own things and be independent. But, when you step back and look at it, independence may not be important to their culture at all. That's just one little example, but something that I can see happening. Overall, I think it just goes back to the general idea that we need to be aware of our ethnocentrism, and make sure that we are trying to view other cultures with open eyes.
You made some good points, especially about how people in Tonga share so many things. I think that oftentimes, people in America and other parts of the developed western world tend to think that sharing means you're just too poor. For instance, if your elderly parents live with you and your family, many people take pity on you because they assume you can't put them in a rest home because of money issues. Hand-me-down clothes are another act of sharing that seems to be viewed as a sign of poverty; even though my family could afford new clothes for the kids, my mom still got us hand-me-downs from other families because she thought it was a waste of money to throw out perfectly usable clothes. But a lot of my friends assumed we were poor.
ReplyDeleteI thought the rafa rafa activity was a good way to open your eyes to the differences inherent in culture. Like you said, sometimes the only way to understand another culture is to just be really, really observant. Sometimes our own cultural backgrounds can help us understand different cultures, but like we learned in rafa rafa, they can also make other cultures seem very confusing and illogical.