During Service (#3)

During our volunteer hours today it was a little more of a relaxing have fun day because Taghreed was really tired and starting to get more baby pains and both of the kids were a little high strung from being inside all day. However, this gave me more opportunity to notice subtle things about the family and the house. The kids got our names right away this time and then we colored for a little bit. We found out that the kids really like to do mazes and they both got pretty good at them which was exciting.  We also did another power point where they had to write down the word from the screen and then tell us the letters. Both of the kids were pros at it this time and sometimes the dad would even get a couple right and he usually doesn’t join in our activities so that was fun. During some of the down time I noticed one of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, masculinity and femininity. In this family the father works and the mother stays home with the kids and does all of the house work. These are the traditional roles of man and woman, however, today I did notice that Taghreed was really tired and kept holding her stomach and instead of still making her do all the house work Saad noticeably stepped in to help, which I hadn’t seen him do before.

                Another thing I noticed today was the ascribed identities of each member of the family, particularly the mom and dad. It was easy for me to tell the type of person they were each trying to identify with and how they wanted to be known to other people. The last concept I noticed as I was observing the family was ethnocentrism. It wasn’t a mean form of ethnocentrism but none the less I would classify the event that happened as ethnocentrism because they kind of laughed at our culture a little bit.

                In regards to the masculine and feminine component of Hofstede’s five cultural dimensions, I mentioned earlier that this family does adhere to the traditional 1950s gender roles. Saad, the man of the household, works and Taghreed, the mother, must provide moral support for her husband as well as take care of their children and the house. Both of them don’t speak English very well so I would assume that even if Taghreed could speak English she wouldn’t be looking for a job, however, she is also eight months pregnant and will need to care for a baby soon. It is very clear in their family that the women and men’s roles are separate, whereas in my family the roles are more similar. My parents both work and they both clean the house and take care of me and my siblings. Earlier I discussed ascribed identities which are labels given to you by other people. From the way Taghreed acts I can tell that she is trying really hard to be a good mother and to be hospitable towards me, Kaelin, and Hailey.  She always makes sure that we feel welcome and gives us food and drink without us asking for it first. This could also mean she is just a really nice person, but I also think that this shows her ascribed identity. As for Saad, I believe that he wants people to think he is a good dad and he is also trying really hard to know English so that he can teach Taghreed. Also, I noticed that when we first walked into the house there were some kids’ toys lying out on the table and he got really embarrassed and put them away. This shows me that he doesn’t want people to think his family is messy because it was only one toy on the table and their house is surprisingly always clean, whereas in my house it is easily disrupted by all of the belongings my family has.

                Lastly, an event occurred that really confused me at first and all three of us didn’t really know what to say when it happened. For our power point this time we focused on food instead of animals and for the letter h we put ham. The dad, Saad, happened to look over and tried to ask me that he wanted to see a picture of the ham so I showed it to him again. He actually wanted to see a picture of where ham comes from. When we finally understood we found a picture of a pig online and showed them and they all started cracking up. We had absolutely no idea why they were laughing and we were so confused that we just started laughing with them. I did a little research and it turns out that Muslims cannot eat pork because it doesn’t come from a kosher animal. I think this may have been the reason they were laughing but at the same time they were laughing at the fact that we do eat pig in our culture. Apparently they don’t agree with the eating of pig.