Cross- Cultural Learning

Here I am, again, at a Peace Corps conference with the rest of the PCV’s. Last night, I was invited out with a group of them. I went. After being amazed (I had not gone out with them before—during the whole time we have been here) I really had to think. I couldn’t even sleep because I was thinking. I don’t exactly know why I hadn’t gone out with the group before; some excuse just came up every time they asked me (Even though they went out every night for ten weeks during training). The same thing happened with the six other IPSD students during my master’s degree last year. I don’t think I ever really went out with them.
I realized that I don’t know how to get along with white American young people. The other peace corps volunteers, for the most part, are from a completely different culture than I am. Whether it was Middle Eastern culture (when I was very young) or African- American (specifically Pentecostal African American) culture during high school and undergrad; I was not formed by, or comfortable in, white, middle class, secular culture. White men, in particular, are very difficult for me to get along with. In high school, I avoided them. In undergrad and in Lesotho, they weren’t around. In Rutgers, I realized my inability to talk with my classmates and basically avoided all personal interaction. I walked to training every day with a fellow PCV and do not ever remember having a personal conversation with him. The weather, politics, Uganda, etc. were all fine professional topics. But it stopped there. There was nothing else, nothing deeper, nothing in common. Music, movies, childhood activities, values, hopes, dreams, visions of what is good—they all seemed to be so different.
So, last night, I sat between two PCV guys and we were talking, laughing, communicating, and not just about professional stuff. Granted, the conversation was not as deep or as funny as one I could have had with my sisters at the convent. Maybe, however, I will learn a culture much harder than that of the Banyancore in southwestern Uganda. Maybe, I’ll learn about white people.