Thai Broom...moving in a different culture
                                                                             Observations and Speculations
 
     The Thai broom is made from the soft pliant seed heads of a tall reedy grass. It has a short bamboo handle. The western broom is made from stiff broom grass bound tightly to a long wooden handle. The differences between the two brooms results from  different approaches to sweeping, and tempts one to make sweeping generalizations about our differing approaches to life.
     Sweeping is the first act of the day for many early rising Thai. The body is bent forward in an arch; the extended broom is drawn toward the sweeper with a gentle dragging motion. The western broom, on the other hand, demands an erect posture and brisk strokes. The Thai's movement is a dance; the westerner's, a march.
     The Thai person's walk may seem less than purposeful to a foreign visitor. The westerners' walking style tends to be as upright and vigorous as their sweeping. One Canadian, frustrated by being out of synch with the slow moving Thai pedestrian traffic, told me, "I like to get where I'm going." A comment that sums up our very direct, goal-oriented approach to life.
     During my first six months in Thailand, I often found myself feeling claustrophobic in public spaces. The density of the crowd was not the cause. I could move with a feeling of relative freedom along the pedestrian packed sidewalks of Manhattan, but in Thailand I could not find the proper rhythm.
     One day, while having a particularly difficult time making my way through a market in Nakhon Sawan, I recalled something I had read in anthropologist Edward T. Hall's Beyond Culture . It seems that humans unconsciously synchronize their movements with those of people they are speaking with, and in a larger context, entire groups become synchronized. Hall suggests that, "The way people handle synchrony is both rooted in biology and modified by culture."
     I tried to literally escape my cultural blinders by consciously attending to more information from my peripheral vision, and focusing less on my direct path.
I became aware of the movement throughout the market, and the result was immediate. The tension left my body and I felt myself moving easily along with the crowd.
     Another problem I had moving in Thailand resulted from a different spatial awareness. I am not a trained observer, but it seems to me that westerners' personal space wraps around them 360 degrees while the average Thai seems to claim responsibility only for  180 degrees to the front. I base this conjecture on the number of pedestrians I have seen stop suddenly in the middle of the walkway without a glance behind them, and the tendency of Thai drivers to pull out into traffic without a look for oncoming vehicles.
     Although expatriates never seem to tire of criticizing Thai drivers, that's not my intention. I really do believe that a different mode of perception shaped by cultural values is at play here. I enjoy speculating about its roots. Imagine the ancient Tai peoples riverine existence: floating along between forested banks; no horizon, only the forward movement of the boat towards a continually shifting opening in the wall of trees. Now, shift to the scene of a nomadic Eurasian migration: mounted on horseback, ringed by a vast plain, scanning the distant horizon for game animals, lost stock, approaching enemies or greener pastures. On horseback each person becomes an island in space, ready to respond to danger or opportunities from any direction. The boat however, carries us forward communally to our encounters with the unknown.
     The Thai drivers expect that the unexpected may suddenly appear before them and are ready to respond. They seem to trust the drivers behind them to be equally responsive. American drivers expect everyone to look out for themselves and to proceed in an orderly predictable way.  Thai drivers do much better than Americans in negotiating the fluid structure of a traffic circle, but they may create bedlam at a four way intersection.
     So what does all this mean? Are Thai people more flexible like the Thai broom?... less goal oriented like the Thai pedestrian?...more adaptable like the Thai driver? I don't trust those kinds of generalizations, so I'll just keep looking on.
If you have a comment about any of this or observations of your own, please  write to me For more information about cultural variations in movement visit Face to Face