Language capacity is not enough: Be intentional about growing culture and worldview understanding

Abstract

Understanding a community’s culture and worldview and having capacity in their first language are considered essential elements for engaging in contextual cross-cultural ministry. Many sending organizations provide training, time, resources and programs to help cross-cultural workers grow their language capacity. The same provisions, however, are not often made for gaining culture and worldview understanding. The reasons for this are varied, but include: a tacit belief that adequate culture and worldview understanding occurs naturally with the gaining of language capacity; a belief that workers come equipped for gaining culture and worldview understanding; a lack of suitable culture and worldview inquiry programs, as well as a lack of trained personnel to facilitate them. An Australian cross-cultural ministry sending organization is seeking to address this imbalance structurally in their organization by developing and providing cross-cultural workers with a culture and worldview inquiry program, the facilitation of each cross-cultural worker’s culture and language program, and by training cross-cultural workers in culture and worldview inquiry methods. The results of this are that individuals and teams are growing their language capacities and their understanding of their host communities’ cultures and worldviews, and are applying this knowledge to their engagement with the communities with whom they work.

Keywords

culture intercultural competence language training worldview

Introduction

It is widely recognized that competence in a community’s first language and having an understanding of their culture and worldview are essential elements for appropriate and effective cross-cultural ministry (Whiteman, 2008: 6; Adams, Allen, and Fish, 2011: 170–172).

Although such intercultural competence is often agreed upon, there has been a tendency by some cross-cultural sending organizations (my own included, until recently) to provide on-field training, time, resources, and programs to facilitate language acquisition and competence, but neglect to provide the same for gaining culture and worldview understanding.

The reasons for this are multifarious, but include: overlooking the need to develop intercultural abilities in cross-cultural workers, and an assumption that cross-cultural workers come prepared for exploring a community’s culture and worldview (Fantini, 1995: 144). Added to these, and somewhat weightier due to the prolonged consequences, is the tacit belief of many cross-cultural workers and sending organizations that cross-cultural workers acquire an adequate understanding of a community’s culture and worldview naturally and automatically when gaining second-language capacity.

Language competence is not enough

The notion that culture and worldview understanding is gained through language stems from the Romantic period when scholars like Johann Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt emphasized that language and culture were not able to be dissociated (Kramsch, 1998: 11). This notion, advanced further by Boas, Sapir, and Whorf in their theories of linguistic relativity, emphasizes that language determines the way people think (Kramsch, 1998: 11).

The so-called Sapir–Whorf hypothesis has undergone numerous challenges and revisions since its inception. A more moderate version of their theory is generally accepted today by both linguists and anthropologists (Kramsch, 1998: 13; Jackson, 2014: 29). That is, “that language affects and reflects culture just as culture affects and reflects what is encoded in language” (Fantini, 1995: 143; 2012: 266). Furthermore, “although language and culture are not a perfect mirror of each other, a dynamic tension nonetheless exists between the two” (Fantini, 1995: 145).

Despite there being a relationship between a person‘s first language (L1), their culture (Cu1) and their worldview (Wv1), acquiring competence in a second language (L2) does not necessarily lead a person to gaining equal competence in the second culture (Cu2) and worldview (Wv2).¹ Fantini (1995: 150, 151) says that “becoming bilingual and bicultural involves more than mastery of language as a tool.” Moreover, biculturalism is not an automatic result of bilingualism (Grosjean, 1982: 157; Fantini, 2012: 269). “It is perfectly feasible to learn a foreign language without acquiring any of the cultural attributes implicit in that language, though the learner’s resultant behaviour may appear somewhat strange to a native speaker of that language” (Beardsmore, 1986: 23).

The diagrams below indicate that each language and culture community, “languaculture,” has its own worldview, which is similar and different to other languaculture worldviews (Friedrich, 1989; Agar, 1994; Fantini, 1995 and 2012). The worldview differences and similarities that exist between different languagcultures are not, however, uniform. Sometimes the worldview differences between two languacultures are small, which means there is more commonality in the way the two communities see the world. The result of this is that people from these languacultures will generally find it easier to understand each other when communicating in either language. With other languacultures, worldview differences are larger, which can result in greater misunderstanding when communicating.

Because different languacultures have different realizations of the world, cross-cultural workers need to develop both second-language capacity and second-culture and worldview understanding in order to grow their intercultural competence in a second languaculture community.

Worldview commonality between two different languacultures

The linguistic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein identifies this problem when he says,

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given mastery of the country’s language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them. (Wittgenstein, 1963: 223)

The problem that Wittgenstein and others identify has also been my experience as I have lived and worked in Malawi with the Yawo for more than 20 years. It is also a common experience for many of my cross-cultural worker colleagues.

A real-world example that shows how second-language competence and second-culture and worldview understanding are not always evenly matched will hopefully highlight this point further. About five years after arriving in Malawi a Yawo friend told me the following story in Ciyawo about a situation that he and his sister were facing.

The case of the property-grabbing brothers

My friend’s sister married a man who owned a small roadside grocery store in a large village in the Mangochi District of Malawi. The two had been married for some years and together they had several children. Unfortunately, the store-owner, the husband of my friend’s sister grew sick and died. Immediately upon hearing of the man’s death, the brothers of the store-owner came and took the keys to the store and forbid the store-owner’s wife entry. The brothers of the deceased store-owner told the woman that she had no part to play in the store, as it was now theirs. The brother of the store-owner’s wife, however, came to intercede on behalf of his sister at her request, yet without success. The woman’s brother knew that according to the laws of Malawi, property grabbing is illegal. Because of this he took his complaint to the district government offices, where his complaint received a positive hearing. After returning from the meeting, the brother and the sister met again with the brothers of the deceased store-owner, at which time my friend and his sister were told that, “If you continue, then you will see something strange happen!” Following this confrontation, my friend said that he and his sister “immediately dropped their case” and as a result did not receive any portion of the deceased store-owner’s estate. (Dicks, 2012: 19)

I first heard my Yawo friend tell this story in the presence of several Yawo men. I sat and listened along with them. I recall feeling incensed at the injustice and disappointed with my friend for not taking the case to court. What was more surprising, however, was that my feelings and my response were so very different to those of the Yawo men who were also listening to the story. Like me, none of them were happy that the brothers were getting away with all of the property. However, from their responses they showed that they understood the logic of what took place. They even praised my friend for making the right decision in stopping his pursuit of a settlement. (Dicks, 2012: 19)

My response was different to the Yawo’s response, not because I did not understand the words of the story, but because my worldview is so very different to my friend who was telling the story and the other Yawo men who were listening.

If I had known the answers to some of the following questions at that time, I would have been in a better position to appreciate the situation and the reasons why it had produced such an outcome and responses in my Yawo friends.

Questions such as:

With whom do the Yawo have their strongest allegiances in life? Is it to blood relatives or marriage partners and children?

To which side of the family do children belong? The woman’s, the man’s, or both?

To whom does a person turn when they are in trouble? Is it to their mother or their father, or does someone else have this responsibility?

Can a Yawo woman make any decision that she wants concerning herself and her children, or must she consult others before she does this? If so, who are they?

What do the Yawo consider to be the most powerful force: the law of the country; the law of the chief; or some other force that is spiritual, such as sorcery? (Dicks, 2012: 19)

Clearly what I needed was not just second-language competence, but a more holistic intercultural competence, which requires intentional culture and worldview inquiry, along with growing language capacity.

An overview of (name withheld) organization’s language and culture history

The organization that I work with, (name withheld), began sending cross-cultural workers from Australia in the late 1800s. Language competence was always recognized by the organization as a central and important requirement for cross-cultural work. Cross-cultural workers were expected to gain competence in a second and sometimes third language by participating in language schools, undertaking language study programs, and undergoing language assessments before undertaking cross-cultural work. Culture understanding was also expected. However, from the beginning and until recently there was no formal, structured program or schooling at the organization’s international work locations that would facilitate cross-cultural workers’ understanding of a host community’s culture and worldview, apart from occasional seminars in several locations (Ros Gooden, 2013, personal communication).

In the 1990s, (name withheld) organization began to reorientate itself to the task of working with least-reached communities. This change of focus also meant a change of modus operandi, including a shift to smaller teams. The unexpected result was that a lot of the formal and informal help previously relied upon for establishing people as functioning cross-cultural workers was absent in these new teams. Teams did not have enough experienced people to run language schools, language acquisition programs, or workers who understood adequately the cultures and worldviews of the host communities (Ros Gooden, 2013, personal communication).

The organization continued to value language competence, as well as culture and worldview understanding for contextual work. However, it was slow to recognize that as an organization it was really only providing help in the area of language acquisition, and this in a limited manner. In regard to language acquisition, (name withheld) organization looked initially to programs such as “Language Acquisition Made Practical (LAMP)” and “Guidelines for Barefoot Language Learning,” and then more recently to the “Program in Language Acquisition Techniques” (PILAT), “Maximum Impact Language Learning” (MILL), and “The Growing Participator Approach” (GPA), to facilitate cross-cultural workers in gaining second-language competence.

In 2009, after experiencing ministry failures in several cross-cultural teams, (name withheld) organization recognized the need to refocus on language and culture as foundational building blocks for cross-cultural work. At an in-house Language and Culture Conference, the organization affirmed that competence in a host community’s language, culture, and worldview was required for authentic and engaging interaction with a chosen people group. “Language competency and cultural understanding provide the vehicle which enables intercultural workers to participate most fully in the world of their focus group” (name withheld, 2009). This reaffirmation resulted in (name withheld) organization insisting that cross-cultural workers be involved in some form of language-acquisition program until they reach a required language competence according to their role or job description.

The reaffirmation of language and culture as foundational building blocks led the organization to make a number of structural changes that facilitated staff to build capacity in languages.² However, at that time there was still no structured or formal process to facilitate cross-cultural workers in understanding the cultures and worldviews of their host communities.

The GPA and its associated “Six Phase Program,” by Greg and Angela Thomson, was adopted at this time by (name withheld) organization as the primary method for gaining second-language competence. The GPA promotes the notion that people are not just learning a language, but are growing in their ability to commune with people belonging to another languaculture community. All of the phases of the GPA program work towards this goal. A large component of Phase 4 in the program, however, is directed toward growing the participator’s knowledge of a host community’s world more explicitly, including their history and culture. In many of the contexts in which we worked, we found that Phase 4 was being undertaken in the second or third year of a cross-cultural worker being in a country, which meant that culture and worldview understanding was occurring later than is ideal or even intended. Cross-cultural workers from our organization were also viewing GPA primarily as a “language learning” program and were not giving intentional focus to the cultural aspects of the program because this was not their immediate need. Moreover, the approach suggested in Phase 4 is largely unstructured inquiry, which, although having many benefits, could also leave significant areas of a community’s culture and worldview unexamined by inexperienced cross-cultural workers.

Because of this, in 2011 (name withheld) organization initiated a formal, semi-structured program for culture and worldview inquiry that is to be undertaken, along with the GPA, by all cross-cultural workers during their first three years of living in a cross-cultural work setting.

The following steps were identified and undertaken in order to bring this program to fruition:

Develop a program that would help cross-cultural workers participate, observe, inquire, and reflect on different aspects of a community’s culture and worldview.

Develop a “how-to-manual,” outlining the basic methods of culture and worldview inquiry, which would facilitate workers to use the basic tools of culture inquiry including, Participant Observation, Ethnographic Interviewing, Reflection, Establishing Meaning, as well as Application for life and work.³

Train Culture and Language Facilitators from each team who would encourage, coach, and oversee cross-cultural workers in undertaking the culture and worldview inquiry program and the Six Phase Program associated with the GPA.

Train all cross-cultural workers in basic methods of culture and worldview inquiry, including ways of participating and observing, styles of questioning, as well as how to record important information and write a “thick description.”⁴

Seek a paradigm shift across the organization from focusing solely on language competence to focusing on and developing culture and language competence.

Engaging culture and worldview inquiry program

The “Engaging Culture and Worldview Inquiry Program” (ECWIP) is the result of this process. ECWIP is a program that is being developed to help cross-cultural workers in (name withheld) organization explore the culture and worldview of their host community in a directed, semi-structured manner.

The goal of culture and worldview inquiry

The goal of culture and worldview inquiry in general is to move a cross-cultural worker towards understanding the insider’s perspective of common social situations in their host community.

Observation alone of what people are doing does not lead an outsider to gain an insider’s perspective of a social situation. This is because people with different cultures and worldviews can undertake the same activity for different reasons and apply completely different meanings to the same activity. The result of relying solely on observation is that people who live cross-culturally often misunderstand actions, events, and situations and come to completely different conclusions about them than people from the host community. The converse is also true. People from host communities often misunderstand the actions and activities of foreign visitors and cross-cultural workers. This occurs because people interpret actions, events, and situations largely through their own grid of assumptions and experiences.

An example of this can be seen in the following cross-cultural incident recorded in Malawi:

Several years ago, an expatriate colleague who was living and working in a rural area of Malawi rang to tell me that on his day-off he had taken his family for a picnic in a field on a tobacco estate owned by an expatriate farmer near where he lives. In the morning, he drove their car into the middle of a field and set out their picnic rug. After this, his wife rested on the rug with the children, while he went for a walk around the edge of the field looking at the colourful birds with his binoculars. After doing this for some time, he came back, took some lunch and then rested with his wife and children before going home.

The next morning, a Malawian friend from the host community came to visit me. While visiting, he told me that the previous day his friend had seen the expatriate tobacco farmer and his family go into his field and lay charms around the edge in order to ensure a good harvest in the coming season. “The famer,” he said, “paced slowly around the field, stopping every so often to lay the charms. Once he had finished, he went back to where the rest of his family were waiting and then they prayed seeking God’s help for the charms to work.” (Medson Elliot, 2008, personal communication)

It is not uncommon for members of two different ethnic communities to see the same event, but interpret it differently, as the previous example shows (Spradley, 1980: 7; Rynkiewich, 2011: 32).

ECWIP is meant to enable cross-cultural workers to move towards gaining an insider’s perspective (emic) of a social situation (which is what a person from a host community would have (Geertz, 1974: 28), rather than drawing their own conclusions based on their previous experiences, culture, and worldview.

A multi-dimensional form of inquiry

ECWIP is a multi-dimensional form of investigation and inquiry and uses recognized anthropological methods of culture inquiry to move cross-cultural workers toward understanding what is going on in a social situation from an insider’s perspective. The main tools for culture and worldview investigation include participant observation, ethnographic interviewing (inquiring from various actors involved in the social situation), reflecting on the social situation, and writing a thick description. That is, detailing what was seen, what the actors did, what the actors said about a social situation, and what the situation or event means to the actors and other members of the host community.

The goal of ECWIP

The aim of ECWIP for cross-cultural workers is slightly different to the general aim of culture and worldview inquiry undertaken by cultural anthropologists, because the end goal of ECWIP is to apply what is being learned to life and work in the new context, rather than just describing it.

Therefore, with help from Malinowski (2005: 19), the goal of ECWIP is

To help cross-cultural workers grasp the perspectives of their host community, their relations to life, to realize their visions of their world in order to participate deeply in their life with them and communicate God’s message of hope in Christ meaningfully in that context.

ECWIP is designed to be a three-year program with 30 topics for observation, participation, and inquiry. Each topic is to be undertaken during the span of a month. The program is not meant to cover every aspect of a community’s culture and worldview. Each topic provides cross-cultural workers with a snapshot of a social situation and how particular members of the community view it at that time. When taken together with other thick descriptions it leads towards understanding the world from an insider’s perspective of that community. An overarching goal is that the program will stimulate and provoke cross-cultural workers to participate, observe, reflect, inquire, and apply their new knowledge, with the end goal that they are better equipped for cross-cultural work.

Developing culture and worldview understanding

Due to the initial barrier of language, as well as a lack of relationships, participation in the world of a host community and cross-cultural inquiry are limited during the first year. It is expected, however, that people will grow in their ability to inquire over time. Therefore, during the first year, cross-cultural workers will be involved mainly in observation, participation, recording, “limited” inquiry (from a host community nurturer), thinking and writing about what they have experienced and heard. In the second and third years, cross-cultural workers will return to some of their earlier inquiry topics (according to the program), seeking more of the insiders’ perspective of the situation, activity or event. This is accomplished by adding to the inquiry task the component of interviewing some of the actors involved in a social situation. In the third year of the program, cross-cultural workers will take their inquiry broader and deeper into more sensitive and less visible areas of culture and worldview.

The program has been designed so that the topics of inquiry move from more easily observable situations, activities, events, and aspects of material culture that require less host-language competence, to topics that require greater host-language competence.

The topics and questions for ECWIP have been developed drawing on numerous sources, including: A Language and Culture Learning Program for Independent Learners (Purnell, 1993); Notes and Queries on Anthropology (the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1951); Globe Trotting in Sandals (McKinney, 2000); and Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge (Haviland et al., 2008). The methods of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing are taken from Participant Observation (Spradley, 1980); The Ethnographic Interview (Spradley, 1979); Ethnography: Step by Step (Fetterman, 2010); and the “Growing Participator Approach” (Thomson and Thomson, 2007).

Facilitation of ECWIP

In (name withheld) organization ECWIP is undertaken by all new members of a cross-cultural team in the first three years of residence in a cross-cultural work setting. More established members of teams are also encouraged to participate in the program in order to continue their culture and worldview learning while living in their host community. The facilitation of ECWIP is carried out by a Culture and Language (CAL) Facilitator in each work location, in consultation with the Team Leader. Each monthly thick description (observations and reflections) is sent to the CAL Facilitator and the Team Leader. These reflections are also being used as the basis for wider team discussions on culture, worldview, and the implications for contextual work by some teams as a way of sharing and increasing a team’s overall culture and worldview competence and knowledge.

CAL Facilitators are usually regular members of a cross-cultural ministry team and are chosen for this role because they evidence a desire to grow their culture and language understanding; have a caring spirit; want to see others develop competence in these areas; are willing to be trained in the GPA and ECWIP and implement them in their teams. They do not usually have formal training in either linguistics or cultural anthropology. Facilitators are trained and refreshed in methods of culture inquiry and how to use the programs ECWIP and the GPA at a yearly training course run by the organization.

Although ECWIP is designed to be a generic program and suitable for most cross-cultural settings, it is envisaged that teams will adapt ECWIP specifically for their own contexts.

Time expectations

It is expected that a cross-cultural worker will undertake 10 topics per year, allowing time for sickness, holidays, and other commitments. Each topic will require approximately 12–13 hrs. per month (3 hrs. per week) in the first year, and 14–15 hrs. per month (3.5 hrs. per week) in the second and third years.

The value of ECWIP for teams

ECWIP has now been running for six years and there are many indicators which show that it is helping to increase cross-cultural workers understanding of their host community’s culture and worldview, as well as influence the way they are living and interacting in those communities. A simple example of this is the way that some cross-cultural workers are changing the way that they dress in their host community. One team previously tried to enforce appropriate dress for living in their host community through a set of rules. Some team members found this onerous since they saw many people in their town wearing different styles of clothing. After doing the ECWIP topic, “What clothing do people wear?” team members began to adopt a style of clothing that was more in-style with the host community who they are getting to know, rather than just copying “town” clothing culture, which was worn mainly by people in the town who were not part of the sociocultural and religious community with whom the team were primarily engaging.

Important to the success of the program is the training in methods of culture inquiry that is given to the Culture and Language Facilitators, as well as pre-embarkation training given to cross-cultural workers. Part of this training includes communicating the importance of culture and worldview understanding, demystifying culture inquiry, and showing that the practices required for undertaking it are accessible and achievable for workers with limited cultural and missiological education.

One initial problem that some long-term cross-cultural workers experience when undertaking ECWIP is that they tend to draw on their previous knowledge and experience of a topic when writing a thick description rather than seeking new insights from a fresh encounter with a social situation. Drawing on their preconceived notions of a topic does not allow them to encounter new understanding. To help established staff to appreciate this issue we use a short two-minute video that shows two people from the Yawo tribe “greeting and taking leave from each other,” after teaching them the methods for practicing intentional observation. After watching the video and stating what they observed, cross-cultural workers are often surprised by the complexity of what they have seen in the two-minute video, as they have taken “greeting and leave taking” to be a simple and well-known task that they have done unconsciously many times before.

Another issue has been to help cross-cultural workers overcome their fear of writing “thick descriptions.” Some people were intimidated by the process of writing a thick description because they felt that they were not good writers. Because of this some cross-cultural workers had four or five partially finished thick descriptions sitting in their computers. Added to this, some cross-cultural workers’ thick descriptions were initially too long, which was not only time-consuming for a cross-cultural worker to write and for a facilitator to read, but also intimidating for other team members who felt that their writing skills were more limited. To overcome this issue, we emphasize that the ideal length of a thick description, for our intents and purpose, is one-and-a-half A4-size pages. Recently, we have also begun encouraging cross-cultural workers who struggle with writing thick descriptions to record oral thick descriptions instead, which allows greater accessibility to the program.

We also emphasize that the topic questions used as a guide for the investigation also be used as a guide for writing a thick description, giving people who are less proficient at writing an outline to follow.

An unforeseen, yet ultimately vital aspect to the success of the ECWIP program is the support of the team leader. Teams in which the team leader is supportive of ECWIP undertake more topics and hand in thick descriptions on a more regular basis. Moreover, many supportive team leaders use these thick descriptions as the starting point for team discussions about a culture topic, which is creating a shared knowledge within those teams.

Finally, we are seeing the fruits of this knowledge working out in the way that cross-cultural workers live and interact in their host communities as well as contributing to their thinking on their cross-cultural work.

Conclusion

Communities with different languages and cultures will remain an enigma to cross-cultural workers unless more is done to help them gain culture and worldview understanding along with language capacity. It has been shown that adequate host culture and worldview understanding is not a one-for-one equivalent or a natural or automatic outcome of gaining speaking and understanding ability in a second language. Although language and culture profoundly impact and affect each other, different effort is required to grasp the semantic meanings applied by a host community to their world. The language gap is usually the most obvious gap that cross-cultural workers experience when first arriving in a new setting. This is one of the reasons why organizations give cross-cultural workers time, training, resources, and programs to help them gain traction in the language of their host community. Culture and worldview, on the other hand, are usually not dealt such a generous hand. This is because understanding them is not often seen as an immediate and urgent need, but something that can be, and will be, gained in time. Unfortunately, unobserved, unaccounted-for, and largely misunderstood culture and worldview cause many problems for cross-cultural relationships and can lead ultimately to the failure of the work that a cross-cultural worker is trying to accomplish. Because of this, I believe that it is time to think again about being as intentional about understanding culture and worldview as about building language capacity.

Example of first-year ECWIP topics

— How do people greet and take leave from each other?

Observe how people greet friends/relatives/children/opposite gender/strangers. When do they greet each other? How do people take leave from each other appropriately? Do people greet groups of people differently to individuals? Do opposite genders greet each other differently? If so, how? Are gestures a part of greeting and leave-taking? If so, what are some of these gestures? Do people greet while standing or sitting? If standing, are they always stationary or can they be moving? Who initiates the greetings, the person arriving or the person being visited? Is it different in different situations? How do people show respect and honor to each other when greeting and leave-taking? What titles do people use for different people such as elders (man and woman), peers (man and woman), younger man and woman, and children? How does the way people greet in your new context differ from the way you greet and take leave in your home/passport culture?

— What clothing do people wear?

Observe what women/men/children typically wear each day in your context. Are some articles of clothing only worn by people of a certain age/status/religious affiliation/marital condition/ethnicity/occupation, or something else (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1951: 235)? Do men and women wear head coverings? Are some clothing articles gender specific? Do people have several sets of clothing? What clothing do people wear on religious days/other occasions? Which parts of the body are covered during religious activities? Are these parts of the body covered at other times such as at home/market/work/social occasions/exercising?⁵ Discuss why this might happen. Which people/groups do not cover up these parts of the body? Do those who cover up and those who don’t relate to each other/treat each other differently? Describe any ornaments or amulets that are visible. On which part of the body are they worn? How do you think you should dress in your context and why? What do you want your clothing to say about you? What ornaments do you wear and how do you think these are interpreted by the people with whom you live? Does this challenge your identity/individuality? Reflect on what the Bible says about wearing clothing in different contexts, your rights, personal freedom, and the conscience of others.

Examples of second-year ECWIP topics

— Important relationships: benefits and obligations

Ask your nurturer to take you to his/her family home and introduce you to his/her extended family using appropriate kinship terms. (If this is not possible choose someone else with whom you are relating.) Refer to the kinship diagram above. Expand the diagram and include extended family kinship terms. Try and include terms for mother’s brothers, mother’s sisters, their spouses and their children, as well as father’s sisters, father’s brothers and their spouses and their children. Draw a map of the area around your nurturer’s family home and inquire how people and households in this area/village/town/city are related to one another. A concrete starting point for this discussion is to ask your nurturer where his/her relatives live. Ask your nurturer where he/she considers home. Is this a different location to where they are currently living? If so what makes a certain place “home” for people in your host community? In what ways do your nurturer’s relatives help each other? Ask your nurturer to tell you which of his/her relatives have helped him/her in the last few months or year and whom your nurturer has helped and why? Which relatives are the most important to your nurturer and why? What is the relationship of these people to your nurturer in kin-relationship terms? (I.e. father, mother, mother’s brother, father’s brother, mother’s sister, and so forth.) Do certain relatives have more responsibilities and obligations to members of their extended family than others? If so, when? Is it at the birth of children/funerals/initiation/other times? Which kin relatives are these? What is the status of your nurturer’s spouse in his/her extended family?⁶

— Traditional knowledge and skills

Identify traditional skills and knowledge that people have in your host community. For example do certain people have special medicinal knowledge, hunting skills, gathering and foraging skills, fishing skills, craft skills, such as pot-making, weaving, blacksmithing, and so forth? Observe and participate where possible with people in practicing one or more of these skills or crafts. Describe the activity as much as possible. Inquire how people acquire these skills/knowledge. Was this skill/knowledge passed down from a relative? If so, from whom? Did they pay to acquire the skill or knowledge? If so, how much? Do other people pay for the products they make or for their skill or knowledge? If so, how much? Were there other factors that influenced the person to acquire this knowledge and skill, such as a dream, an illness, divination, influence from a relative, or some other factor? Has your attitude changed to the person or people in your host community after participating with them in this activity? If so, how has it changed and why? How have people in the host community responded to you wanting to know about their traditional skills and knowledge? Has being explicitly a learner in this situation changed your relationship with people? If so what are the benefits of being viewed as a learner rather than an expert in your host community?

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Ian D. Dicks has lived in Malawi for more than 22 years where he has worked as a cross-cultural worker, culture and language facilitator, and senior editor of a bilingual dictionary project. He is currently based in Melbourne and is a lecturer in intercultural studies and a culture and language consultant for an Australian sending organization.

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