A little intercultural competence training ...
... is how Marlene Altebockwinkel (ELM) describes the preparatory seminar for travelling to the Global South
There are many reasons to travel. The Ev.-luth. Mission in Lower Saxony (ELM) offers some of these reasons with its programmes such as "Kirche gibt's auch anderswo", the volunteer exchange Seitenwechsel or partnership meetings between German and foreign congregations. An ELM seminar prepares people for contact with people from other cultures when travelling. The seminar is structured around a number of key questions and leaves room for individual questions and counselling.
The iceberg and the culture of the albatrosses
The contents of the seminar are presented imaginatively and using good examples.
If you want to learn something about others, you have to start with yourself and so it is important to reflect on yourself and realise your own role on a journey. To this end, the speakers confront the participants with questions such as: What are we like? What am I like? What has shaped us, what drives me? What are our partners like? What has shaped them and what concerns them? What makes the country we are travelling to tick?
Participants are prepared for the fact that they cannot judge people in a foreign country as well as they can at home and how they can deal with this. For example, a short role-play about the fictitious albatross culture is performed by the speakers. This is followed by the - really not easy - categorisation by the participants. The experiences of their own culture make interpretation more difficult and motivate self-reflection.
The image of the cultural iceberg model rounds off this unit and makes it clear that only a small part of a culture is immediately visible. The larger part is hidden. Just like an iceberg: only the tip peeks out of the water.
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
How we are is also the subject of discussion in the next unit of the seminar. It is about:
Self-reflection and self-awareness
What roles do we have? What roles do others see us in?
Grandma, grandad, mother, father, child, grandchild, nephew, pupil, teenager, pensioner, white, black, man, woman, tennis player, member of a partnership group and vegetarian are examples of roles that people can take on and by which they define themselves or are defined. However, each of these roles only shows a section of the personality or a current activity. The seminar clearly demonstrates this. We often reduce people in encounters to one or a few roles. But it is not only others who form an image of us, we also form an image of others that is worth scrutinising.
Travellers make an impact and create images
Travellers have a responsibility towards their destination, as they convey images of their destination through their reports
Travellers gather many impressions, especially in foreign countries. This often leads to narratives being focussed, subjectivised and reduced in comparison to reality. This undoubtedly makes stories more pointed and catchy. Focussed stories are not fundamentally bad and can be a lot of fun. Statements like
There are giraffes in Africa.
are certainly correct in terms of content, but reduce the implication - perhaps unintentionally - that Africa is a country. The seminar uses a short film example to show how reductive and prejudicial narratives are constructed. In particular, it is pointed out that a broad and differentiated range of sources improves the overview. However, this sentence is universally valid and can also be applied to Germany and whether we all know our way around there so well?
Did you know, for example, that the Baden giant earthworm is only found in Germany and can live for up to 20 years and grow to a length of 60 cm?
With this in mind, we wish you a safe journey and lots of openness for your next trip: Wherever it takes you.
What the participants say
We asked: Did you benefit from this seminar?
The seminar today has definitely helped me. First of all, I thought it was great to see so many people setting off for the Global South. But many questions that I wouldn't have thought of on my own were also asked by others, which made me think: Ah! It was good to do something like this in a large group and not set off on my own to answer all my questions.
What I really like about the seminar so far is that we can really exchange ideas here and that somehow a lot of people come together here who perhaps have similar questions or are similarly excited about their journey and that there is a really lively exchange.
