DEAR YOGESHREE
In my last letter I asked the question whether we had images, metaphors or models that will give us windows through which to get a glimpse of the meaning of children's behaviour in Africa. I did this because all the metaphors to do this seem to come from Europe and the most significant image I thought for Africa was the 'cultural frame or house' into which all these images and models need to be put if they are to be relevant to our understanding here. This came from the writing of Leon Fulcher who worked with the Maori peoples in New Zealand. We set a lot of store on the Circle of Courage as a model in this country; a model based on the rearing of children among Native American children. It has a strong cultural basis. But then again we still have to encircle it with our African cultures to make it really work for us.
So what is this 'cultural context' that becomes the spectacles, the lenses through which we have to interpret , what seem to be any model or metaphor hat we may develop or have in out vocabulary of models in Africa.?
Prof Gary Weaver was brought to South Africa as a key-note speaker t one of the NACCW's bi-ennial conferences. (1991)... (I'm not an 'elder' for nothing !) . He wrote that wonderful paper, gave that stunning address, Child and Youth Care Institutions: Melting-pots or Cookie-cutters . This was his metaphor.
I can remember Leslie du Toit saying " We have brought out Gary Weaver before the right time. We are not ready to hear him now., but I think we will be going back to him in a few years time."
Gary stayed with me and my family for about two weeks. I took him around Gauteng, Soweto and the regions. He visited, agencies, gave workshops . It was my privilege to have two weeks of intense waking-hour experience of Gary Weaver.. In that time and over that period, he left me with important conceptual thinking around the cultural context and cultural competence.
Put very simply , Gary brought it to consciousness, that it is not enough to think that we are culturally competent if we know how to greet, shake hands, know patterns of eye contact , know rituals and rites of the culture food and some words of the culture. To be culturally competent you have to grasp how people unpack their thinking processes, how thinking processes unfold and so how problems are solved.
In his 1991 paper on staff working together and coming from different cultures he says," I also want to point out that people think differently. They don't just have different values. They have different ways of thinking and solving problems, and of course one way is no better than another" (p90).
So maybe when we have to take the idea of finding meaning in the behaviour of our young people in care , when we take seriously the cultural frame in which all behaviour occurs, when we try to answer the question, "What is really going on here?" We have to take all that we know makes up the culture and to distill it into a grasp of the way people think.... their thinking processes and the way thinking and so feelings and behaviour unfold.
Gary gave some practical examples of interpreting behaviour in our situations when he said we need to grasp through the understanding of thinking, when conflict is really conflict.or when it is a lively vehicle for problem-solving. We meet and work in situations where we have to know through the understanding of cultural thinking processes whether behaviour is escalating or de-escalating .
It seems that whatever models, metaphors or images we may use to try to understand, "What is really going on here?", we we have to focus on understanding the thinking processes that are determined by culture.
My original intention in writing these two letter to you on cultural context, metaphors, models and images, was to ask the question whether we have a "window" in Africa through which we help us to find meaning in the behaviour of young people and children in our African context.? Perhaps the question now has to be posed somewhat differently. How in our multi-cultural African cultural context do we capture an understanding of our different ways of culturally driven thinking ?
For me, this embraces all we know about culture and peoples and becomes the essential pinnacle of cultural competence.and so meaning making.
Love
Barrie
Weaver.G, Child and Youth Care Institutions: Melting-pots or Cookie-cutters? in Gannon.B(Ed); Old Limitations, New Challenges. NACCW Capetown, 1991, (pp 6-11.)
Weaver. G: Working with a Multi-cultural Staff. in Gannon. B,(Ed), Old Limitations, New Challenges. NACCW. Cape Town. 1991 (pp86-90)
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