My First Culture Shock

r-7

I’d like to share my first ever culture shock, which happened when I was on holiday with my family as a 10-year-old.

We visited Turkey for two weeks on a low-cost package holiday in a run-of-the-mill hotel, equipped with swimming pool, sunbeds and bar, and filled with Brits just like ourselves. You’d be forgiven for thinking that we’d spend the two weeks in a bubble, unaware of the country we were in. Often that happens when you do tourism of this kind (in a country at a lower level of development), but this was certainly not the case here.

If I remember right, the hotel was within walking distance of a small town. At night we would often walk around to soak up the atmosphere and find a place to eat. This was where my first ever culture shock happened.

When walking around the streets, which were quite run down, chaotic and somewhat scary, all of a sudden we heard a voice being projected from a microphone. It reverberated around the entire town. The person seemed to be speaking Arabic or a similar language, and people started to down tools and walk in the same direction.

Of course, we wondered what on earth was happening. Was there an emergency? Should we start running and save ourselves from an impending apocalypse or zombie invasion?

We did nothing, and eventually the voice stopped, but we were left confused as we shuffled back to our hotel.

It was only the next morning at around 6am that we heard the same voice again, and finally it all made sense: it was time for the citizens to head to the mosque for one of their several daily prayers. One of six, if I remember correctly.

As a young boy raised in the suburbs of a safe city in a secular country, this was a shock. I hadn’t realised the extent of people’s faith in other countries. They were willing to go to the mosque six times a day to do their prayers, foregoing sleep, work and play to do so.

This level of faith was totally new to me. This was before I developed a spiritual life and trained as a meditator via in-person and online meditation classes. The idea of an entire town doing the same thing all at once was far beyond the realms of my imagination.

Of course, I don’t claim I fully understand the extent of people’s faith even now, but that experience was a watershed moment. It was the first time I truly felt that millions of people lived differently to how I did.

Posted in new