Cultural Competency

This is the writing assignment our professors gave us to do for today. 

After visiting the north and interacting with native Namibians, how do you see your experiences so far impacting your cultural competency and how you will interact with students and people back home?  

Before coming on this trip to Namibia, I had little exposure to cultures other than those of the United States. I had traveled to Mexico in high school for one week's time, but felt that wasn't time enough to learn much about the culture in the capacity in which I went and the experiences I had. The greatest way I had previously learned about other cultures was from interacting with and talking to foreign exchange students who had come to study in the United States. I always enjoyed talking with them and learning anything I could about where they had come from, how they did things at home, and the languages they spoke. Prior to this January, I would have called myself culturally interested, but not culturally competent.

When embarking on this journey, I knew my cultural awareness and knowledge was going to change and grow, but I did not realize how quickly it would begin to happen. Being as life is conducted very differently here in Namibia than in the United States, I was immediately immersed into life here and rapidly began noticing the differences and embracing them. For example, I had been told of this idea of Namibian time and thought before arriving here that it was going to be irritating to me as I typically operate best when things happen when they are said they are going to happen. Also, my personality is one that enjoys knowing what the plan is and having everything set out in a linear fashion neither of which happen very typically here in Namibia. The first few days I was frustrated by these realities, but when I took some time to think about these frustrations, I decided to embrace these differences in ways of life rather than try to fight them. These experiences and new learnings have cause me to and I feel will continue to cause me to have a more open minded way of interacting with people and a more go with the flow, flexible mentality.

I thoroughly enjoyed the trip we took up north as it showed us several different ways of life. As we traveled down the old dirt road to the mobile schools, it felt almost as though we were going back in time. It was interesting to think about how these people lived now in comparison to how people all over the word lived throughout history. I found myself pondering these thoughts as we passed people in the seemingly middle of nowhere herding cattle and goats and saw children running around in traditional clothing with no adult in sight. These are ways of life I feel like most students in the United States think of only as ways of the past. I think that my having experienced what I have here and having seen the different cultures will affect how I teach for the rest of my career. I am growing a passion here for the people of Namibia and more widely the people of the world. It saddens me some that it took till this point in my life for me to realize these realities of different cultures that exist today and I long for this not to happen to my future students. I think the knowledge I will gain here will fuel a fire of passion for teaching my students about other cultures in hopes to open their eyes at and early age to the world outside the United States.

This trip especially my interactions with and hearing stories from Uanee have made me realize how differently life and situations within it can be viewed by people from various backgrounds. It was eye opening sitting next to Uanee at dinner in Etosha and having him explain his feelings about how we as students spoke to our professors and especially to Steve. We think of it as normal to joke with and talk informally with Steve because of the context of our casual relationship with him as Paula's husband. Having no formal connection to him, brings about a different level of formality in our interactions than would be present if we worked in Steve's school as one of his staff members. This context of relationship determining interactions is something that is present in the culture in America, but in the culture which Uanee comes from, a young person would never speak this way to a senior male in the community because it would be culturally unacceptable. Having my eyes opened to the existence of even these seemingly subtle differences has made me realize I need to be more aware of the cultures in which the people I am interacting with come from. This is important because my actions, though they may seem normal and acceptable to me, may offend or be unacceptable to those I am in interaction with. This new enlightenment will go with me for the rest of my life and will further affect my awareness with dealing with others be it in the school environment or otherwise.

I think the more different types of people with varying ideas which you can encounter in life and interact with the better. New perspectives are gained and old perspectives are challenged and grown best through experiences that cause you to think and see things in a different light. Having my cultural competency developed I feel will help me to remember to take the time to see where other people, especially my students, are coming from. To put on their lenses in which they see life through for a moment and consciously decide that it is okay for people to think and do things differently than myself is key. I realize now after taking the time to think about it that I have grown so much already from being here in Namibia, but I know that only a short time has passed so far and there are many more experiences for me to have and I know without a doubt that by the day I leave here, I will be far more culturally competent than I am today.