An Eggshell Veneer

Between Mosque & Modernity - Sep 2009

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by a congregation member here if I was feeling homesick at all or if the the transition to life here had been difficult. After a quick self-check I had to admit that I really was neither all that homesick nor troubled by the transition. Two good things indeed!

Malaysia, it seems, has been a pretty easy place to step into. At first blush it is a modern, high-tech Westernized wonderland - at least in the greater Kuala Lumpur area that I call home. The light rail system is efficient and timely with trains arriving on average every 5 minutes and 19 seconds (or so the computerized signboards tell me). My lack of local language skills has not been a problem at all given the ubiquity of English. The creature comforts of Starbucks and A.C. add to the sense of globalized urbanity and the familiarity of an omnipresent monoculture.

On further reflection though, I wonder how long this tranquilized comfort will last. The key phrase in that previous paragraph is 'it seems.' As I poke and prod and bulldoggedly dig deeper into life here I'm finding that much of what made my initial entry so easy is largely cosmetic, that the Western cues I've been using to orient myself only run skin deep, that the seemingly solid Modern ground on which I've been walking is but an eggshell veneer.

It is perhaps in this regard that my experience here differs most greatly with the time I've spent in Tanzania. There I started with a cultural landscape that was clearly foreign and yet over time became increasingly familiar; here it is the reverse as what I took to be familiar at first is actually quite foreign indeed. The differences that do exist here are far more subtle and it is in that subtlety that the danger lies - for it can perhaps lead one to assume too much similarity.

My subterranean spelunking hasn't really gone far enough for me to offer concrete examples yet. Mostly I'm responding to a growing sense that, like Alice, the further I go down this rabbit hole the curiouser and curiouser things will reveal themselves to be. As I continue to explore, the challenge going forward will be in sounding the depths of difference between things as they appear on the surface and the reality underneath.