I heard a lecturer today that told an interesting story. He's a sociologist, and he works closely with a woman who is Muslim. According to age old Muslim practices and traditions, men and women who are not married are not allowed to be alone in a room together. This presents a problem, because sometimes this lecturer and his partner have important things that they need to discuss together without the interruptions of a third party. So they found a loophole. Ancient traditions prevent men and women from being alone in a room together, but ancient traditions don't know anything about Skype. To solve their problem, the lecturer would go in one room and get on Skype, and his partner would go into another and get on Skype, and they could sit there all day long and have a private conversation with each other in adjacent rooms via Skype.
The point was this: sometimes, there may be a way of doing things that seems only obvious and reasonable to us, but because of cultural practices and traditions, it just isn't feasible, no matter how effective that thing might be. Sometimes, you just can't ignore the rules. It would be shooting yourself in the foot, because if that is what people want and what people expect, doing it a different way will only cause problems. Fortunately, sometimes there are loopholes, because ancient traditions haven't taken modern marvels into account.
I think this is important to realize, because in South Africa, there will surely be customs and traditions that I find a nuisance, preferring my own ways of doing things, but I will have to remember that I am the guest there. Part of the experience will be exposure to those cultural quirks that are different from the culture I was brought up in, and I will need to be able to appreciate those quirks and work with them instead of trying to rebel against them if I want my project to be successful.
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