Diary from Burundi # 6 - Bridging cultural divides

In Japan you must take off your shoes when entering a home or hotel room. In Sweden you can go naked on a beach with no punishment. In some places your making a circle with your thumb and index finger means “zero”, elsewhere “excellent” and in South America it is a very vulgar gesture in the eyes of a woman. In most of Europe you can wear shorts on a warm summer day, in Somalia it means that you’re going to water the camels – and don’t even try shorts in Japan even though you’re a Gai-jin - “Stranger” - there. In Denmark it would be an offence if I said “Hello, nigger” to a black man, but in Burundi it is OK to shout “Muzungu” after a white man like myself. While I can safely half-sit on the edge of a table I lecture in most countries, it is considered very impolite to place your behind on a table here in Burundi. We can go on with examples like these…

Language, proverbs, body language, eating habits, the way cities are structured, the way you greet someone, the relationship to God, the perception of time and space are but a few of the “indicators” of what culture means and is expressed. And “culture” means something very different to different people in different culture.

Even with the best of will, intention and some knowledge, we are invariably bound – to make mistakes when we enter into someone’s different cultural space.

The moment we can talk about it, explain to each other, it is not necessarily a big problem. But openness about difference and articulating conflict is not a high-ranking value in all cultures. Much of what we Western peace researchers and trainers try to transmit to others about dialogue and open, non-violent confrontation, stating that “here I really disagree with you and would like to explain how I see it” meets no (cultural) understanding in many cultures; it may even be perceived as an offence, an intrusion into privacy and ignorance of norms.

I’ve often wondered about these things in Japan where I have worked a lot and when teaching multi-ethnic and multi-cultural classes in Europe or elsewhere. In Burundi where I am while writing this, going silent is a sign that there is disagreement in the air. Many Burundians are aware of it and when you begin to deal with it and they have some confidence in you they will state – paradoxically, perhaps – that, as a culture, they are not that open when it comes to disagreement.

Take the issue of punctuality, the concept of time, for instance. I am used with my Nordic background that an agreed time for a meeting means that particular time, say 3:00 pm. OK, you can be late a few minutes and if you are rather late, you grab your phone and say, sorry I am 20-30 minutes late, forgive me, I’ll explain – thereby providing the other an opportunity to do something else, make a call, do some planning for the next day and not waste his or her time. This is what Western industrial-mechanical time is all about and, stressed as we are, we are constantly filling our calendars with plans and chopping up time units to be “productive” and “efficient”. “Time is money” some people think.

Not so in Burundi. It is normal to be late, very late. It is normal to not call and say you’ll be late and few will apologize for being late. The first many times I encountered this I felt angry, I felt my friends did not respect me and that they were stealing my time. And we talked about it. Everybody promised to be on time for the next meeting – but, the same happened. And my level of anger increased until I probably exploded and made them angry: Who was I to tell them how to behave??

During a cultural seminar we learned that both sides have time concepts but very different ones. Time is much more related to social affairs; if you meet a friend or relative in the street while on the way to your meeting, it’s important to catch up, get the last news and send greetings to his or her friends and relatives. Time is also perceived as more “organic” here; while I believe that 5:00 PM is quite clear, to a Burundian it may mean something like “when the cattle shall go home and the sun is about to set” – then we sit down and talk over a beer.

Time and punctuality is also related to social relationships. You honour a time more with someone you have established trustful relations with, dear friends, relatives and people of authority. A foreigner, a visitor, does not achieve that level of social status easily or quickly.

And, by the way, getting to know each other personally is the sine qua non of getting anywhere and getting anything done here. In the West, we are used to having tasks and projects, often with people we don’t know that much, but we get to know them while carrying out the task. Not so here. You must meet several times, talk about family and values, drink a beer, socialize in different ways, explore personal histories and the like before anything can be done together. Trustful social relations is everything.

It is easy to make judgements. You may say to yourself that these people have no sense of time. Wrong! Their sense of time is just very different from yours. Next you may think your culture is better or more advanced on some scale. Wrong. They can’t be compared like apples and peaches cannot be compared. You may feel that they need education and perspectives to get into the “modern world” and navigate better in the globalization process. Perhaps! But you can’t state or impose it; it has to be a resut of their curiosity vis-à-vis the larger world out there, it has to be seen as their own need, not as yours.

So, my sense is that we only get somewhere together when we listen and dialogue. It’s been said before, but practicing it is not easy. One way of preparing yourself is to read about the culture(s) in the place where you are going to work. I have found two useful books, and I am sure there are many many more. One is Larry A. Samovar and Richard E. Porter, Intercultural Communication. A Reader. 10th Edition, Thomson and Wadsworth, California 2003. The other is Michelle LeBaron, Bridging Cultural Conflicts. A New Approach for a Changing World, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 2003.

They help you focus and concentrate, to be attentive and they help you avoid the worst mistakes...

Next – practise, and be ready to explore and apologise for your mistakes. But also – it has to be said – point out when you feel offended according to your norms and values. I myself is rather tired of being stereotyped because of the colour of my skin, a kind of inverse colonialism or cultural imperialism: He is white so he must have a lot of money. Let’s treat him kindly so we see what we get out of him. Since he is white and from Sweden, he of course pays our beers although he is a guest to our country. If he can repeatedly travel down here to Burundi, this TFF must have a lot of resources. Or, since he is white, he is here to benefit himself and get some status from working here…

Like everybody else, I’d like to be judged by what I do and how I do it and by my personal characteristics. I don’t like to be seen as a mass through stereotyping cultural lenses. And I guess that is pretty universal – and a point of departure for building bridges across cultural divides, bridges built by mutual learning event and processes.

Gandhi of course has stated it both realistically and beautifully…

"I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed.
I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as as possible.
But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any."




PS You can read a bit about a Cultural Seminar Ina Curic and I held with the Amahoro Youth Club on their new homepage here.


JO #1215