Nikki's "Aha!" Moment

Getting to Common Ground
What Cross Cultural Communications Means To Me

Nikki L. Massie

In their Washington Post article entitled, "The long and ugly tradition of treating Africa as a dirty, diseased place," reporters Laura Seay and Kim Yi Dionne build a timeline, dating back centuries of how our conception of Africa was built, beginning with the generalization of Africa as a whole entity, instead of something made up of a diversity of parts. Even Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate, seems to think of Africa this way.

I'm almost ashamed to admit there was a time in my life when I did too.

Even today, after working for a refugee resettlement agency for nine years - and helping to resettle the Lost Boys of Sudan, among other refugees from various African nations - and working for the past seven for a relief and development organization that operates in six countries in both East and West Africa, I admit I still have preconceived notions about people from Africa.

Unlike the sentiment described in the Post article, I don't think Africans are savages, but I do tend to categorize them as chronically disadvantaged. However, even before this project that notion was challenged.

One of my co-workers, we'll call her Brenda, was a Nebraska native who traveled to Tanzania for our organization, where she would meet her future husband. The more I learned about him, the more my notion of the disadvantaged African came into question. He was an upper-middle class man and owned several homes and ran a safari company. He had more than enough means to support his family and even to hire outside help.

So it should have come as no surprise to me when I interviewed Hussein that he did not come from a disadvantaged background, yet I found myself prodding for some narrative of the sort. It both surprised and delighted me that he had a peaceful childhood where he was well provided for, but also that he did not find American culture superior to his own. I believe the narratives thrown around during debates on immigration have many Americans, myself included, thinking that everyone covets American culture. They all want to be us, right? They all want to live here and take part in the so-called American Dream?

What I found was that the culture of the DRC is one that is defined by diversity of many kinds. When I talked to the Makanos (the family my church helped resettle from the DRC) about where Hussein was from they were unfamiliar with the area. They lived in a rural village where the main livelihood was farming and fishing. They didn't speak the same native language as Hussein (although they did speak French) and about the only thing they could relate to from my interview was the fact that Hussein, too, ate fufu.

In the process of putting this site together, I began to think about how insulated Americans are. I'm sure people who live in states bordering Canada and Mexico can relate to having another country (and its customs) within stone's throw but those of us who are mid-coastal or on the interior of the country really have no idea. I tried to imagine, for example, how I would navigate many native languages. I thought about how Hussein said language is an identifier of a person as an "other." I thought about having nine countries bordering my country and how that might affect my day-to-day life.

But then I thought about if I was making the differences out to be more than what they are. After all, as a resident of a metropolitan American city, and by Hussein's accounts, I've experienced more people from more countries than he has. The matter of language is another quasi-false difference. Yes, most people in the US speak English (as most people in the DRC speak French) but we also speak dialects of English (African-American vernacular, Creole in the south, various accents and intermingling of English with various other mother tongues). While most Americans speak English well enough to communicate with one another, just as Hussein could identify an "other" by language so can we - mostly by their regional accent.

So I suppose in the end my "aha" moment is that there is almost always common ground, no matter what culture a person hails from. Getting to that common ground can be tricky, but by using observational skills and good listening skills we can find it. Finding it, in my estimation, is worth it because common ground is a good foundation for both trust and communication.