American Vs. Mongolian Culture

 8/2/2013

Today, a second Nadaam was thrown. The wrestler who won the wrestling championship title in Mongolia was from our aimag.He won a couple million Tugriks and decided to throw a second Nadaam for the community. That speaks a lot about Mongolians, in America, when an athlete wins a championship and money, they go out and spend it on new cars or another mansion, here, they spend it on others. He is throwing another Nadaam with his money, so the community can enjoy it. And enjoy it we did! This time I hung out at the horse races all day with our group of PCVs. It was awesome!

It's weird how quickly things become normal. What shocked me about Mongolians when I first got here, no longer seems all that weird to me. We have to complete our second Cross Culture Journal this week for the Peace Crops. The journal is this big packet of open ended questions, which we have to reflect on and write about. One of the questions was: “What things have shocked you in your time in your host community and why do you think Mongolians do these activities?”. We were asked this same exact question in our first CC Journal and I had a whole page dedicated to answering this question. This time when asked, I wrote maybe a paragraph, talking about how nothing really shocks me anymore and that some of the things that at first shocked me about Mongolians, actually now seems practical and makes a lot of sense. I realized a lot of the things that initially shocked me was due to the way I was raised. I was brought up in the US and told how to act in terms of what is considered proper and civilized in the US, but a lot of things we do/have are unnecessary. I remember the initial shock of moving into my first apartment and realizing I had no dish washer, how on earth was I supposed to wash dishes?!?! Now I bathe, do my laundry, and wash dishes in my tumpin, with about a fiftieth of the water I would have used in the US using a shower, sink, dish washer and washing machine. But don't get me wrong, I do really miss showers even if they do waste water. The only thing that continues to surprise me is the lack of car accidents (I have seen zero since being here), compared to the amount of insane driving going on. The car of choice seems to be jeeps (when people actually own a car),which are known for their roll overs, there are no speed limits, stop signs, road signs, stop lights or even paved roads. They must just be better defensive drivers than Americans. I am hoping to get a video of it soon.

Another question in our journal was: “What differences have you observed in terms of values (time, individualism, privacy, friendship, family, age, equality and authority)? Do you feel comfortable making generalizations about American and Mongolian cultural values?”. I thought that I would be able to answer this question easily and feel pretty confident in making generalizations on the two cultures, but as I really began to think about it, and we had a discussion group on the topic with Mongolians and my fellow PCVs, I realized they weren't so black and white. What I have noticed is that there are pretty large differences between the two cultures with the values of time, individualism and privacy. Mongolians seem to be the exact opposite of Americans on these three values. Where in America we value punctuality, individualism and privacy, here in Mongolia, time is of no importance, it is actually bad luck to ask for a specific time on when something is supposed to start and end, individualism and privacy are not understood. Mongolians value time spent together and think that something is wrong if you want to spend time alone. One of the Mongolians in our discussion group actually went to the length of saying that when traveling for business, Mongolians try to find room mates for hotel rooms, because they do not like having a room by themselves, being alone makes them uncomfortable. This has been the hardest thing to get used to, is all the together time with my host family. They think something is wrong if I go to my room and read or watch a movie alone. To them this means depression and unhappiness, in America it's called “alone time” and we value it a lot. When it comes to age, family, equality, authority and friendship, I think that they vary with individual people in America. It depends on a persons back ground and upbringing whether or not that value the ideals. The United States is based on “equality”, but it is not really practiced in my opinion. People of different SES, different races and intellects are treated differently and have different opportunities. In essence we believe in equality for all, but we have yet to find a way, if ever for it to exist. When looking at these values in a Mongolian society, they are easier to generalize. Mongolians value their elderly, family comes first no matter what, when it comes to authority, people tend to make decisions themselves, there are not many authority figures and the Mongolian's view on equality, is that people's opportunities are based on status and financial possibilities, not everyone has the same rights to better themselves (people just except what they are, and from what I have observed, they are happy with what they have). This discussion was one of the most interesting ones we had, it went on for about two hours, we all had so much to say on the subject.