For a number of years my wife and
I were heavily involved in AFS, a high school student exchange program. The
first year we hosted, we had the pleasure of having Wing Man Ma from Hong Kong
stay with us. In 2002-2003 we hosted Shirley Mensah from Ghana as well as Jiraporn
(Noon) Tabtimdaeng from Thailand. This is the story of our interactions with
Shirley (at least from my perspective) and the things I have learned through my
involvement with her over the years.
I remember reading Shirley’s application – there were two phrases in
her description of herself that struck me. One was “I am fairly tall”. I hadn’t
yet become sufficiently skilled in knowing how to read things like this in the
context of the other person. And the few pictures of her were with friends and
family members that reinforced this view. So when she arrived and was shorter than
my wife or I, it helped me with this learning. In research later, I found that
the average male in Ghana is 5’6” and the average female is 5’2”. Since both of
those are several inches shorter than the US averages, that accounts for
Shirley’s perspective.
The other phrase of note in Shirley’s application was “I am fair
colored.” I could see from a picture of her with her good friend, Grace, how
she might say this. Grace was very dark-skinned, and Shirley was definitely lighter,
but compared to everyone else with whom I was acquainted, including a few
African-Americans, Shirley was pretty dark. I thought this was an interesting
perspective for her to have.
When Shirley arrived in August we had the typical adjustment of getting
to know each other and making her part of our family. A few weeks later school
started. Since we had sent our biological children to Lehigh Valley Christian
High School we had arranged for her to go there as well. Being in a smaller environment is helpful in
the task of making friends. But we were concerned that she seemed not very
happy and wondered why. It took a while and we had to talk through things quite
a bit before we figured it out.
Shirley had experienced other students from the US or Europe coming to
her school in Ghana. These students, having considerably lighter skin than all
the Ghanaians, were viewed as quite different and special and thus all the
Ghanaian students wanted to make friends with them. So Shirley was also expecting
the same type of reaction to her being in a US high school. But because the US
is so diverse, that was not her experience – she was simply one more
dark-skinned person and didn’t stand out like she had expected. She was simply
being viewed as an African-American instead of being an African. This lack of
being “special” was quite a blow to her expectations and one that took a lot of
getting used to.
I’ve written in an earlier blog (*1) how often people want to be
with/associate with others who are “like them.” That is especially true in the
US where there are so many aspects to our diversity that we feel a certain
amount of comfort in being with others who are like us in some aspects. But in
Ghana, where the population has a lot of homogeneity, having a few others who
are different makes for a richer experience. Shirley was expecting her differences
to make her special but did not find that here in the US.
There was one more aspect to Shirley’s adjustment that was interesting.
Despite our accepting her into our family she was still not feeling a part of
it for a long time. I had tried to work on this by being especially kind and
accepting of her, but it was not working. Then something quite interesting
happened. In the spring (yes, it took that long), there was an activity that she
had been invited to and had accepted the invitation. But that day she began to
resist going. Our initial talking to her about it was not working, and finally
I lost my patience and yelled at her. But to my surprise, instead of this
having a negative impact on our relationship, it improved it. Again, looking at
it from her perspective, I was able to learn why this was so. In my constantly
treating her with respect and acceptance, she felt that I was treating her like
a guest rather than a daughter. When I lost my patience and yelled at her, she
felt that I was finally treating her like a daughter!
I now look back on that year as one of a lot of learning on my part. I
recall the end of her stay. I had been scheduled for a business trip and had to
leave home and was not going to be there for her final few days. I had to drive
to the airport very early in the morning. I was up before everyone else, loaded
up the car and was in the driveway getting ready to leave. As I looked back
toward the house, there was Shirley with the front door ajar, peeking out at me
with a wistful look on her face. It only deepened my love for her.
In my autobiography, My Life,
I gave an answer to the question, “where would you like to go that you have
not?” I said there,
One of these is
Ghana where our exchange student daughter, Shirley, lives. I would enjoy seeing her in her home
culture. It would not bother me at all
being the only light-skinned person in a crowd of people with darker skin. I would enjoy both seeing and feeling the
culture and being surrounded by it is exciting, not frightening at all.
I wrote that in 2014. I had thought at that time that such a trip would
be unlikely to ever happen since I was by that time retired. But it was only
the following year that my dream came true. In the spring of 2015 I was
selected as a flight chaperon for AFS and chose to chaperon the exchange
students returning to Ghana at the end of their year in the US. Since part of
the requirement is that the chaperon stay in the country for a week, I stayed
for an extra nine days and spent the time with Shirley. I asked her for a
recommendation for a hotel that was near where she lived and told her that I
didn’t want to do the typical tourist things, but to spend time “with the
people.” I have recounted some of my learnings from that experience here (*2).
As I noted above, I enjoy being in other cultures where I am the only
one “like me”. In my various
international travels, I have had the chance to do this several times. I can
recall experiences like walking on the beach in Ashkelon, Israel with no other
westerners around, being in the airport in Hong Zhou, China, surrounded by
Chinese with no non-Asians in sight, sitting in an open-air building in Rome
watching the locals playing bocce, and riding a local bus in Costa Rica where I
had to take two seats and sit sideways because my long legs wouldn’t fit. My
experiences for the entire week in Ghana were much like this.
Shirley wanted to be “different” because it made her “special”. In
contrast, my motivation is because I want to understand things from other
people’s perspectives. Surrounding myself with others “like me”, while
comfortable, is not conducive to learning. I’m not sure that I could take a
steady diet of it. Being in a different environment has a certain amount of
stress to it. But I have always been willing to take advantage of the occasions
that I have had to engage in these learning opportunities.
Notes:
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