Article
KULI!!!! KULI!!! (Eat!!!! Eat!!!)
ID # 3769
When I was in Morocco, we were given a mini Moroccan Culture 101 session on the first day of our arrival at the Medina. We were told the basic dos and donts and as a woman, this was greatly needed. We were then introduced to our host families; my host family knew basic French and spoke Moroccan Arabic. When I first met my host mom, she initiated me into her family with a huge smile and hug. That night, she gave me- in my opinion- too much food to eat. I literally felt like I was going to hurl if I stuffed one more bite into my mouth. She insistently demanded “Kuli! Kuli!” which means eat! eat! My host mom looked so hurt when I told her that I couldnt finish the food. My host cousin soon informed me within seconds (he spoke fluent English) that I really needed to finish the food because it would be very disrespectful if I didnt. At that moment, I had two choices: to either be selfish and refuse to finish the plate of food or to be selfless and show appreciation for her kind gesture through ingesting the rest of the food. I chose to finish the food and when I finished it, I was very glad to see the smile on her face as I was taking my last spoon.
Unfortunately as Prof. Geert Hofstede once said, Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster. I completely agree with this statement because a lot of it has to do preferred communication styles. When you take a high context situation and encounter it with a low context situation, it is very easy to have conflicting results if one person is not humble enough to recognize such barriers. I know that in my case, I had been warned in my World Learning program that I was responsible for recognizing cultural differences and keeping that in mind when facing a situation. I chose to analyze the situation that I was in from a cultural analysis rather than a universal or personal analysis. Not only was the living environment that I was in different but the language barrier made it very hard to communicate clearly and challenged me to build a certain trust albeit an alternative way. Without trust and understanding, it can be very hard to be accepted/ integrated into a host community and culture. In class we talked about time being quantifiable from a monochronic perspective and personal relationships being a lot more valuable with respect to the polychronic perspective. In this case, I think about it as comparing tasks vs. relationships. Instead of snapping on the mother because of the given fact that I was full, it made more sense to prioritize and maintain a mutual respect between the two of us since I was willing to be understanding.
My professor- Dr. Cate Brubaker- later asked me how Moroccans deal with such a situation on a daily basis and it then dawned on me that I could have easily declined using three Darija (Moroccan Arabic) phrases: “Shookran, Safi! Shbaat…” which translates to thank you, enough! I’m full…Oh the power of language! I was actually taught this at my Moroccan 101 session but apparently it didn’t stick. Now that I look back in retrospect, my host mom was probably just concerned and expressing her traditional form of endearment through this act of encouragement. With all of this being said, I would like to end on a cognizant note by saying that I love culture!!
One Response to “KULI!!!! KULI!!! (Eat!!!! Eat!!!)”
Nate
Moroccans are very generous people, in their culture when they have guests it’s like thanksgiving everyday, they cook feasts and the guest who does not eat is kind of a rejection because the host spends a lot of time shopping in the market for the freshest of ingredients and more time in the kitchen cooking all the various foods and the reward is all the food be eaten and a smile on the guest’s face 🙂
I enjoyed your article.