Tonight the newest caregiver phoned to say she couldn’t get her old boss to let her out of her contract, so she won’t be coming anymore. This news is discouraging, and not just because we’re back to two. It’s a reminder that most of the time I have very little idea what’s really going on.
In Thailand it seems I look at the world through several panes of glass at once. I can see, but the view is distorted by language, culture, and lots of little non-verbal clues that I’m not experienced enough to interpret.
Maybe if I’d grown up here, I’d understand better why it is that we’re having such trouble getting people to stay with this job. (I do know enough about Thai culture to be fairly sure that the reasons given are rarely the real reasons.) Do funky spirits live in our apartment? Is my Thai pronunciation so bad that I am mistakenly insulting the candidates? Are the two veterans intimidating them?
Or maybe I’m just so used to Jip’s eccentricity and her rare-among-Thais disease that I don’t appreciate how odd she must appear to people here who normally do this kind of work. Cross-cultural misunderstanding cuts both ways.
2 comments:
Hey John,
thanks for the updates, sounds like the frustration factor for everyone is at a level that few people could even understand. I know I can't imagine but I thank you for sharing.
~cenzo
Hey John,
You mean those beginning of the school year trainings in Cultural Competency (aka, Courageous Conversations) aren't serving you so well in the Land of Smiles...?
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