Lessons in Intercultural (In)effectiveness

Before leaving Toronto, I went through a three day crash course on intercultural effectiveness by DFAIT. If the name doesn't give it away, the goal of the course is to equip Canadians overseas with various skills and competencies to work effectively and achieve their objectives in the context of an intercultural culture/environment. One of the biggest takeaways from the course is the importance of clear communication and not to make any assumptions. I know, I know, in a way this sounds painfully obvious -- well, as I discovered this week, it turns out that what is painfully obvious can still be overlooked.

If there's one thing that has not been a problem here in the Philippines, it's been communicating -- or so I thought. Almost every Filipino I've met speaks English EXCEPTIONALLY well...I'm talking native speaker-quality. To date, there has not been a situation I've been in where I've felt limited by my lack of knowledge of Tagalog or Bicolano. When I first sat down with my local project advisor, we quickly agreed that developing a culinary tourism program would be a good project for me to focus on. At the time, we seemed to be speaking the same languages -- English and travel industry speak. We used terms such as 'tour', 'circuit', 'add-on', 'package,' seemingly as though we were referring to the same things. Only today, when it came time to present my work plan did it become clear that we were referring to similar but different concepts in our initial conversation. As a result of our last conversation, my understanding of the local project and my role in it has shifted, and I'm now going back to revise my original ideas and plans. 

In the end, this isn't a big deal -- it's not as though I'm losing months of work, and the initial research that I'd done is still entirely relevant to the new form my project will take, but the lesson hasn't been lost on me. The trap was almost too easy: having worked in the travel industry for a few years before coming here, it never occurred to me that while the technical language used may be identical, the meaning might be entirely different. It was definitely a reminder of the need to problematize all of my own naturalized assumptions and to insist on being crystal clear with expectations and language. In many ways, this is a minor example, but I felt like it really illustrated how intercultural misunderstandings, big and small, can happen so easily. LESSON LEARNED. Somebody get me an English-English dictionary please!