During the early 1990s I travelled to Lagos, Nigeria to meet
the head of a regional organization with which my Canadian donor organization
was about to ink a three year, million dollar project. Although the focus of project activities would
be at the Port of Cotonou, Bénin, the co-sponsoring organization was
headquartered in Lagos.
I arrived mid evening on a flight from Europe and
encountered my first snag: a customs officer
said that I would have to pay import duty or surrender my laptop. I opted to
leave the computer at the airport for the night and sort it out with the help
of my host the following day. (There’ll be more about this in a future post
about West African airports.)
My host had sent his driver to meet me. By the time I
emerged from customs and immigration it was much later than either of us had
anticipated. I was collected in the morning by the same driver and my host. It
took my host about five minutes to spring the computer. We spent the rest of
the morning talking about the project, went to lunch with senior members of the
organization and worked until mid afternoon on project related issues.
In the car on the way back from lunch I leaned forward from
the back seat and thanked the driver for his hard work and having stayed up
late waiting for me the night before. Seconds after settling back in my seat my
host spoke to me in French—a language he knew I spoke. His message was: “don’t
praise my driver.” His approach seemed
harsh to me, though I said that of course I would respect his wishes. It left me feeling like I’d been reprimanded
and the rest of the car ride was made in silence.
My host was a well educated, very well travelled,
experienced international public servant who interacted with regional as well
as international organizations all over the world. A Gambian citizen, he had
lived in Lagos for a number of years.
By that point in my career in the foreign aid business I’d
been working and traveling for nearly ten years. Interacting with drivers, secretaries,
administrative assistants, security guards and gardeners is something I always
made a point of doing.
Had I brought my North American penchant for praising and
thanking people directly into a culture where relationships between managers
and their subordinates were governed by a rigid hierarchy? Had my host felt that I was undermining his
authority; or was the incident in the back of the Mercedes mostly about my
host’s relationship with his subordinate?
I guess the safest type of advice to offer someone who
anticipates having to deal with this type of situation is to tread carefully,
observe the way people relate to each other and avoid alienating your hosts
and/or coworkers. Let the nonverbals
speak to you.
Does working, living or just plain communicating with people
of other cultures require a person to submerge their core beliefs?
Then there’s the equality thing.
I’m someone who habitually kicks against barriers raised by
people who wish to limit the economic, political and educational mobility of
others.
I welcome your comments.
Interesting predicament. You raise questions that might have been answered by the host. Was it an option to talk to him, privately, about what happened? Or would this have made matters worse?
ReplyDeleteDear Woody265,
DeleteThank you for submitting a comment. Your questions are right on the money. I guess I could have talked to my host later, though his status was significantly greater than mine. At the time I felt the issue was not important enough to warrant further discussion. There was also a practical matter to consider: I needed his support to move our project from the pilot phase to the full three year project. Best wishes, etc.
J