TRAVEL | TRAVEL TIPS | CULTURE

When Two Very Different Cultures Collide

Two opposites battling it out in the worst way.

As traveling artists, we paint murals in exchange for accommodation in the places that we stay. In doing so, we get a bit of a look at the behind-the-scenes workings of the various properties that we stay at and we tend to get much more of an insight into what is going on than we would as just regular customers.

While staying on a property in Uganda, I distinctly recall a situation where two very different cultures collided. As usual, I like to analyze these situations and try to pinpoint how things went wrong. I’ve seen enough of these sorts of things happen, and I realize that the reason is usually due to the fact that people are simply coming at life from two very different standpoints.

So, yes, on this particular occasion, we were in Uganda. One day, a German family arrived. There were 2 grandparents, a mom, a dad, a 3-year-old, and a small baby. They were supposed to stay for 3 nights.

They arrived after lunch and claimed that they were very tired as they had been traveling for much of the day already. They immediately ordered lunch and claimed that they were very hungry.

I cringed a bit at this because I knew that the food was not made quickly there.

Now don’t get me wrong, the food was delicious! However, all ingredients were picked from the garden, nothing was pre-prepared, and the dishes were made from scratch, once ordered. Add African time to the mix, and well, it usually took over an hour to get your meal.

It was definitely the singular downfall to people's experiences there.

As the woman was ordering she kept asking if there was a children's menu and had about one thousand questions about her three-year-old’s food. When she finally decided on something, she told the server that he doesn’t like sauce on his spaghetti. The server didn’t understand what she was saying, so she had to get up and go talk to the chef to MAKE SURE that the sauce was placed on the side and not on the noodles. Plus she kept bugging the server about the prices and wanted to know if there was a discount for the kid's food.

After finally ordering, their server asked if they wanted drinks. Of course, they did, and before taking their orders to the kitchen, he went to fetch their drinks. He came back to the table and was fumbling with the bottle top on one of the bottles and the lady said, “Here, let me get that for you so you can get our orders to the kitchen.”

I could sense her hunger and urgency from a distance.

I was painting in the bar area, and I watched this family with interest as they anxiously waited for their meals to arrive. First, they went and hung out in the garden for a bit, and the dad lounged in a hammock. After a while, the mom came and sat on the bar stool and began telling the manager how stressed she was with everything.

Multiple times she asked him if she was stressing him out by talking about her being stressed. I couldn’t help but wonder how stressed she was in her real life and not when she is on holiday.

I watched the dad look at his watch repeatedly, and I could almost feel the tension building moment by moment. Finally, I saw that they were moving tables and getting organized to serve them. I don’t exactly know how long they had waited, but it was certainly well over an hour.

At that point we were finishing our work for the day, so we packed up our stuff and went back to our cabin. I was relieved to be away from the rising tension, and I was happy that they were finally getting food.

Later on, we made our way back to the restaurant for dinner and I was surprised to not see them around there somewhere. Although, I did see the grandfather wander around outside for a brief moment as we ate.

It was quiet that night and we didn’t hear any voices or any other sign that there were other guests on the property, at all. Of course, this was during Covid, so it was only us and them that were staying there.

The next morning we made our way over to the restaurant/bar area to start our painting for the day. I asked the manager how the guests were doing and he said that he thought they were leaving and said that they were in the parking area discussing it. At that point, I didn’t know that they were booked for 3 nights.

After a little while, the husband came up holding the baby and said that they would like to check out.

“Please prepare our bill.” He told the manager. He then went and sat in one of the lounge chairs in the bar.

One of the other staff came along and asked him how they were doing.

“We are checking out.” He said.

I didn’t hear what the staff member said, but I heard him say that the older couple, the grandparents, felt that the cabins were too rustic and they wanted to go stay in a more modern hotel. Honestly, I felt right away that that was an excuse and that there was another reason behind them leaving.

About 10 minutes passed by and the man got up from his chair and went to see about his bill. The manager was still collecting all of the information, and didn’t have it ready yet.

“In 15 minutes I am driving out of that parking lot! Do you understand?” He was clearly perturbed.

I was trying to not pay him too much attention, but the tension in the room was palpable and I was getting increasingly more uncomfortable.

Fifteen minutes go by and he gets up and goes to the desk again. “How are we doing?”

“Sir, I’m trying hard to get this organized for you. But you are making me nervous and I already forgot something and now I have had to rewrite it.” The manager replied.

“COME ON! First, you make us have a three-hour lunch, and now this!?” He stammered. “How hard is it to write down what we ate and add our room total to the bill?”

“Please sir, I am trying. I will be finished soon.” The manager begged.

In the meantime, a few staff members came out from the kitchen to add their two cents to the bill. The poor manager was sweating bullets.

Five minutes later.

“I am LEAVING if you don’t hurry up and get my bill ready! This is not how you run a restaurant! First, you make us wait so long for food and now you are wasting my whole day today! We did nothing yesterday but wait for our lunch!”

He paced away again and turned around, “My baby needs to sleep. Please hurry up!”

A few minutes later, the manager had the bill ready. But, of course, it wasn’t good enough. He hadn’t itemized the drinks on the bill, and the customer was aghast at this. “How do I know you aren’t charging me more than we had?” He stammered. “This is not how you run a restaurant! I want to know what I am paying for. How long does it take to do a bill?”

“Well sir, you didn’t give me any notice and I have been trying to get it organized since you asked me to do it. I can re-write the bill with the drinks listed if you want.”

“Oh NO! I have wasted enough time here. I need to get on with my day. What is the total? We need to be leaving. I have had enough of this. My baby needs to go to sleep!”

He was told the total, he pulled out his wallet, paid the bill, and marched off. Apparently, his wife and her parents were waiting in the vehicle for him in the parking lot.

The whole ordeal took about 40 minutes, and it was a very uncomfortable 40 minutes, I might add.

As he marched off to the parking lot, I looked over to the manager. He blew out a sigh of relief and just shook his head.

Wow! ‘What a catastrophe,’ I couldn’t help but think.

I looked over at him with a sorrowful, cringing look. “You may get a bad review from this one,” I told him honestly.

“Ya, that is my biggest fear,” he said. It was then that he told me that they were meant to stay for three nights.

After the dust settled for a few minutes, I started to replay the whole event in my mind and realized many things. What I had just witnessed was two very different cultures clashing.

One is German. Some would say they are the MOST efficient people on the planet.

One is Ugandan. Some might say that they are the LEAST efficient people on the planet.

Now, I’m not here to say that either of these is good, or bad, I’m just stating what I know. We have lived in Uganda for about a year, so we know a thing or two about how things operate in this country.

But what struck me the most was that both parties were trying to control the other, to an extent.

“I just wanted him to chill out and relax a bit.” The manager said to me after.

“Yes, and he just wanted you to hurry up!” I told him.

Two impossibilities were trying to happen simultaneously.

Both parties were trying to control the other party, but both were coming at life from totally different angles. The man would never have relaxed, and the manager could never go faster than he knows. It was a no-win situation.

I told him that Germans are very efficient and the man likely couldn’t understand why it was taking so long to get the bill together. The manager told me that the more the man pushed him the less he could concentrate to get it finished properly. Bear in mind that they don’t have fancy computer systems in these places. All items are handwritten, they have to be transcripted to the bill, then added up with a calculator. Of course, if a mistake was made, the manager would have to pay for it from his small salary.

Besides all that, Africans don’t understand pressure and stress. At least not the stress that is experienced in the western world. This particular manager told me a few times over the course of our stay that he was stressed, and it looked very different than the stress I knew back in Canada. But the fact is that they certainly do not operate well under stress. The harder they are pushed, the more they can’t function well.

I also chuckled a bit about the fuss that the Germans were making for their children. Here in Uganda, and many parts of Africa, kids are at the bottom of the totem pole. They are best seen and not heard. They go do their own things, and adults don’t fuss over them in any way, shape, or form. They get fed when they get fed, and they get fed WHAT they get fed, and that’s the end of it. There would never be a kid's menu! In fact, I’m sure they have never heard of such a thing. Plus, if kids are tired and need to sleep, they are swaddled up on the mom’s back, or a blanket is placed on the floor and that is where they sleep.

A Ugandan would NEVER use their child as a reason for anyone else to have to do something, that is for sure!

I told the manager that this is how life is in Germany, and many parts of the world.

“This is them on holiday!” I said. “Imagine how they are in their real life!”

“I can’t imagine.” He said.

Unfortunately, this whole chain of events set off the staff and they all set about arguing with each other for much of the rest of the day. I’m sure they were fighting about why they left and who was at fault.

After hearing the man complain about the long lunch wait, multiple times, I feel as though that was what started them off with not liking the place. It was their first impression after all. From there, it would have been very hard to win them back.

But it was interesting to witness how this one disgruntled customer, changed the entire mood of everyone on the property, for the rest of the day.

I felt terrible for them. In those covid days, getting 4 paying customers for 3 nights was a big deal. I figured that watching them walk away must have been devastating for the staff. However, when I spoke with the manager about it later, he was actually relieved that they left. He said they would have just made more problems for them.

And he was probably right.

That is one thing that we have noticed in Africa. Well, we have noticed MANY things, but this one certainly stands out. If they don’t feel like doing something, serving a customer, or dealing with anything in general, they don’t. They don’t care if they don’t make the money and aren’t worried about how it will affect their business. They would rather be hassle-free and not stressed than getting paid. It’s an interesting cultural shift, that is for sure.

We are still in Uganda now, and we have gotten to know this country pretty well. We see frustrated travelers come through all the time and believe me, we get frustrated with the inefficiencies as well! But we also know that trying to change the culture, or get people to do things that they don’t want to do, never works.

So when travelers come here, I would suggest these things:

• Don’t expect things to be done quickly.
• Don’t think that if you bully and push, you will get your own way.
• Don’t dangle money in faces thinking that it will change the outcome.
• Take a deep breath when you arrive and know that things will not be efficient. The less you expect, the more you may be pleasantly surprised.
• Don’t use your cultural values as a way to try and manipulate the other.
• And RELAX, you are now on African time!

I think the biggest lesson here, for all travelers, is to respect and understand that you have arrived in a completely different place, and possibly nothing will be the same for you as it is when you are home.

But don’t forget, this is why we travel!

We travel to see the world, yes, but we can’t discount that we travel to see how others are living on the planet. Each country has its own ways of doing things, and no matter how much you don’t agree with them, you can not claim that their way is wrong.

While Africa seems like a land of inefficiencies, it is also a land of happiness. They don’t fret and stress over time as we do in the western world. They enjoy each day as it comes, to the best of their abilities. Having a 3-hour lunch would not phase many of them.

They have nowhere else to be, so they simply enjoy that moment.

As usual, there is much to learn as we travel. We can choose to get frustrated over small things, or we can choose to relax and roll with the punches. After almost 5 years of full-time traveling, I can assure you that relaxing, and rolling with the punches, is certainly the best way to go about things.

Thanks so much for reading my recount of two cultures colliding. At the end of the day, we are all human beings simply doing our best at living this thing we call life. Nobody is doing it right or wrong, it is just different.

And really, while we are all so different, in so many ways, we are also very much the same.

Happy travels!

xo Jill

Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years!

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