Cross Cultural Experience

By Hans N. Lechner

It’s about the “flex.”  This is an attitude that learned while serving as PCV in Jamaica from 1999 to 2001, and one that I will carry with me throughout my life.  It means the ability to adapt, cope, understand, change and relax.  When I finally understood what it meant to flex my entire experience as a Peace Corps volunteer began to change.  I transformed myself from an outsider – one who was witnessing the daily episodes of a strange and amazing people – to an active participant and member of the community.

During my second year as a volunteer I moved to a small but extremely energetic community.  Experiences were never farther away then my front door.  There were always people walking and often stopping by to shout hello or share a mango.  When I walked through the market I never rushed, as is common in the U.S., but I sauntered calmly with the crowd.  I would argue the price of produce with the merchants, not for lack of money, but because that is how deals were made.  I tried to prepare the local favorites, using all the common herbs and seasonings – allspice quickly became a personal favorite.  While the food was often a poor reproduction of true Caribbean cuisine, I never gave up trying.  I wanted to walk, talk and cook like a Jamaican.

Public transportation was one aspect of Jamaican life that often scared me and no amount of flex could change that.  However, I never let it show that I was uncomfortable.  Even when squeezed with three others into the back of an old and rusted Hungarian automobile traveling at 70 miles per hour into on coming traffic I would employ the flex.  I would laugh and make jokes with the other passengers about the driving, while secretly appealing to higher powers to ensure our safe arrival.  When we would reach our destination, I would coolly pay the driver and casually stroll away.

After my Peace Corps service was finished and I returned to the states, my home seemed different.  People seemed different and the world seemed bigger.  I was no longer in Jamaica and could therefore no longer live as a Jamaican.  I again employed the flex to transition my self back into U.S. life.  My pace increased and the urgency of daily tasks returned.  I quickly became a Californian once again.

While those experiences are long behind me now they have not been lost, for new ones present themselves regularly.  To this day I flex.  In a new job, a new, and a new school I flex.  I look around, observe, adapt, cope and try to understand how life is lived and then try and live it that way.  Hopefully, I will again employ the flex while serving as Peace Corps volunteer in new country, with new people in a new community.