If you wore [sic] born and grew up in the U.S., Canada, Australia or any other country considered “developed,” there are probably a lot of things you take for granted on a daily basis. Things like clean drinking water, big grocery stores, and even mirrors. But for people who grew up in developing countries and then left, many aspects of life in the developed world might come as a shock.
So writes May Wilkerson in “35 people who moved from the developing world to richer countries share what shocked them the most,” somecards.com, February 13.
All 35 items are worth reading. They remind me of things that most of us take for granted, but that make life so easy. You’ll notice how few of the 35 items are about cell phones and other very modern conveniences and how many are about simple things like toilet paper, well-stocked supermarkets, and, especially, lack of crime and increased personal safety.
I’ve always taken personal safety for granted, except for the months following two episodes: (1) December 1978 when someone robbing my house in Rochester, NY jumped out of a second story window of my house but just before doing so yelled, “I’m gonna kill you.” (2) November 1979, when my apartment in Oakland, CA was burglarized and the burglars might have been there when I got home. (I didn’t wait around to find out.)
Also interesting is the appreciation of people of various colors.
HT2 Jonathan Meer.
READER COMMENTS
Jon Murphy
Feb 14 2020 at 5:54pm
#25 was a feeling I witnessed 1st hand. When I lived in NH, I did public outreach with my church to help immigrants and refugees navigate life in Concord (we had a lot of Somali and Nepalese refugees).
One day, I was helping a family explore their new apartment. The father (the only one who really spoke English well enough to communicate) said the family was amazed by the toilet, how it had clean water, not dirty mucky water. He wondered if they would have to pay extra for that; I told him no. Pretty much everywhere in America, we have lots of water for toilets, drinking, and everything. He then asked “isn’t there a drought?” (the state was currently in a drought.) “Yes,” I replied, “but we still have lots of water.”
The family was utterly shocked.
Working with this family, I first started to appreciate how insanely wealthy the US really is.
David Henderson
Feb 14 2020 at 6:18pm
Nice.
Matthias Görgens
Feb 14 2020 at 11:23pm
I had similar reactions. I grew up in first world Germany, but now live in zeroth world Singapore.
Phil H
Feb 15 2020 at 2:42am
Moving from the UK to China in 2003, it was interesting how many of these differences were not there. China was well on the path to development back then, but still really quite poor. But it was already (in my nice medium-sized coastal city) a fairly polite place; well-maintained; safe; with good basic amenities; and masses of choice available in wet markets (no good supermarkets at that time).
There wasn’t much ethnic diversity, but there was a lot of regional diversity in the form of people from other parts of this continent-sized country.
Fazal Majid
Feb 15 2020 at 8:10am
It’s amusing to see how Americans react in the same way when they are exposed to health care systems elsewhere in the developed world.
David Henderson
Feb 15 2020 at 10:17am
I don’t know your experience, of course, but that certainly doesn’t describe my reaction to Canadian health care, which I observed up close in a few episodes with my father’s care, or lack of, in rural Manitoba.
Aaron McNay
Feb 18 2020 at 1:37pm
Like David, I can only speak of my own personal experiences. When utilizing England’s NHS, I was initially shocked with regards to the very low prices. However, I quickly saw where the low prices came from with regards to the quality and quantity of care.
Shane L
Feb 15 2020 at 9:02am
It is interesting that several people note the First World obedience to traffic rules. A recent tv dramatisation of the hunt for the Unabomber showed one of the police express concern that the Unabomber’s fears about technology controlling people were appropriate, after finding himself waiting at a red light while driving at night, with no other cars in the area. He was uneasy to find himself sitting obediently at this red light, when there was clearly no danger to driving through it.
I thought this was mixed up. People waiting at a red light, at night, when no traffic is in the area, indicates not obedience to technology, but rather general social trust. When I lived in Japan, I was amazed to see even pedestrians waiting on empty streets at night for permission from the lights to cross the road. Yet I recognised that Japan had extraordinarily low levels of crime, and of litter and vandalism. I thought: this kind of obedience shows broad trust in public institutions, which seems like a good thing, not bad. Many developing countries have corrupt public institutions… and people drive through red lights.
BC
Feb 15 2020 at 12:52pm
Right, and it’s not just trust in public institutions, but trustability generally. If people generally follow traffic rules voluntarily, even when there is little chance of being cited for violating them, then perhaps it’s also easier to engage in various economic transactions since one doesn’t need to rely on too many costly enforcement mechanisms.
When countries become wealthier, do people start obeying traffic rules more or do high-trust countries in which people do things like voluntarily obey traffic rules encounter fewer barriers to becoming wealthier?
robc
Feb 15 2020 at 9:54pm
Por que no los dos?
Shane L
Feb 16 2020 at 7:28am
Agreed, BC. I’m unsure where the trust derives from to start with.
Robert EV
Feb 16 2020 at 10:51am
What’s the payoff to breaking the rules and the payoff to following them in these various countries?
In the smaller US city I was raised in no one honked their horns except to indicate an imminent collision (I’ve waited through one or two entire light changes when the lead car driver didn’t pay attention to the light turning green). In the larger US cities I’ve been in (coastal and rust belt) people honk their horns for any delay at all, and in anger (the majority of these people have appeared of developed-world origin, though I can’t be certain). And some drivers notably weave in and out of traffic every day without signalling (though I don’t know the geographic origin of these drivers).
Why? This question needs to be answered to have a hope of answering the question with respect to countries.
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