Culture shock, or...

is my frijol con puerco just thoroughly, absurdly delicious?

It's both, I'm sure of it.

A few postings back, I invited readers to suggest topics for future postings, and being the good blog participants that you are, you contributed all kinds of good ideas. It was Nina, though, who suggested I look at the elephant doing cartwheels to and fro: culture shock.

This bowl of frijol con puerco is not just good... it is medicinal. This stew is saving me. It's a strong word, save, but it's the right one. It is nourishing me, boosting my confidence, telling me I am part of something bigger. This stew is saving me from isolation.

The word I have trouble with is "shock," because I'm not feeling so much shocked as... periodically covered. Covered in a haze or a gauze, unable to fully trust my senses at times, unable to see others fully (with passing thoughts that contain that unfortunate nounless pronoun, They), under-able to communicate who I am (though that may have something to do with the dark sunglasses I've taken to wearing lately).

But this stew, this frijol con puerco, cuts through it all. Speaking from Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, this stew fortifies me from my physiological toes all the way up to my (self-)actualizing head.

Let's start with Physiological Needs

Those would be food, water, air, shelter, clothing and basic health and hygiene. Here, it's important to remember that I made my frijol con puerco here in my own dwelling, so I've clearly got the need for shelter and food taken care of. Though I'm still drinking water from 1.5 liter bottles, I will graduate to water-cooler style water, delivered, in the coming days. I've got a place to bathe that is now pretty much free of the various vermin that were living in it back when I first moved in. (More on that when I talk about safety.)

Some things remain difficult. Noise pollution is my greatest affliction; those of you who have Skyped with me have heard the roar of mufferless vehicles that barrell down my narrow little street. I mutter bad words to myelf about these drivers, these otherwise nice people who are tranformed into speeding, honking misanthropes when they find themselves behind a steering wheel. I haven't had to buy an alarm clock because the traffic reaches a critical frequency right around 6:30 a.m. There, a silver lining.

I have long found Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs relevant in one way or another to most topics, but it was only this morning that I thought of it as paradigm useful in understanding culture shock. This connection was motivated, I'll admit, by a not-entirely-logical dislike for the too-cute "stages of culture shock" paradigm. Not surprisingly, I'm not the first to have made this connection. I found this very smart piece on the Sociolinguistic aspects of culture shock and concluded once again that Dutch intellectuals are a special gift to this world. (Update: It seems I'm predisposed to give the Dutch more credit than they have earned in this case-- this article was actually written by Alla V. Yeliseyeva.)

My bowl is now empty, my stomach full, my sense of well-being humming. I'm keenly aware that my frijol con puerco is more than food-- it is a manifestation of well-being: being in a safe space, cooking with someone who weaves my name into her songs, knowing that I've made a good choice in asking her to teach me how to cook, and realizing I can do this for myself in the future. In upcoming posts, I'll explore the remaining layers of my culture shock and Maslow's Hierarchy, namely: Safety, Love/Belonging, Self-Esteem and, at the top, Actualization.

For now, though, I am sated.