Intercultural experiences
an interview with Theo Kloppenburg
One of WAJIBU's stated aims is to foster "dialogue between people of different backgrounds, traditions and religions for the promotion of peace and understanding and in order to overcome prejudice, narrowness of outlook and intolerance."
Kenya happens to be a country where people from a wide range of religious, racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds having been living together, peacefully on the whole. However, in the last eight years there have been incidences of some traumatic clashes between people of different ethnic groups. The feeling of most people is that these clashes were, and still are, politically engineered and that, barring provocation for other reasons, most people would have no difficulty in interacting peacefully with persons of different backgrounds. Still, the fact that certain existing prejudices can so easily be exploited for political gain, shows that there needs to be more education for tolerance.
As a contribution to this education for tolerance, WAJIBU is starting a column on "Intercultural Experiences." In this column we wish to highlight people or organisations which have successfully overcome barriers to intercultural living and have, in fact, found great enrichment in the interaction with people of widely different backgrounds. In this connection, if any of our readers know of such people or organisations, we would be happy to hear about it.
In our first contribution to this new column we decided to speak with Mr. Theo Kloppenburg. Mr. Kloppenburg is one of those persons who has found personal challenge and enrichment in living in a multicultural environment. He was interviewed by Mokeira Masita.
|
Early Intercultural Exposure
Mr. Kloppenburg was born into a Catholic farmer's family in the Netherlands. His first intercultural experience was in a secondary school run by Jesuits where he had a chance to interact with students from the various Asian, Latin-American and newly-independent African countries. Subsequently, he joined the Agricultural University in Wageningen studies, where he specialised in land and water management and tropical studies. At this university, again he was even more exposed to intercultual living as it had students from many different countries. Kloppenburg was one of the first students in the university to include sociology in his studies because he realised that the technical aspect alone was not sufficient. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, many projects, though technically sound, were failing, due to a neglect of the sociological aspects. At that time expatriates rarely considered organising the local people to run projects. Most projects were pushed on them: participation of the local people had not yet become the accepted practice.
Kloppenburg gave an interesting example of how projects which do not take people's lifestyle into account can be totally inappropriate. In newly-independent Mauritania, the French had built houses for the newly-emerging class of civil servants, not realising that for a nomadic people, living in tents was much more practical. So what happened to those houses? They became useful as night shelters for goats, although visiting expatriates were also expected to make use of them!
As a student Kloppenburg did his practical work in Madagascar. He went into the country with the idea of interacting freely with everyone only to find a very segregated system in place. "Apartheid" though not legalised was existing, and it was the stereotype colonial approach where the locals were labeled as lazy, or thieves, where women were for sale, etc. Kloppenburg resolved to try and make a difference. He met many different people in the field every day and made friends with them. There was a cinema in the locality where almost everyone would go on weekends and though they all paid the same price, the seats were differentiated according to rank. Kloppenburg chose to ignore this and whenever he would go to the cinema with his friends, they would all sit together on the good seats regardless of the hostile reactions. This may not have seemed much at the time in terms of making a change but when Kloppenburg came back to Madagascar after some years, he found things were very different. The local people had fully taken over and he felt proud that he had not compromised his ideals and had helped in a small way to pave the way for this change. It was his experience in this country which made him realise the necessity for the inclusion of social subjects in tropical studies.
A Varied Intercultural Experience
Kloppenburg's first job after completion of his studies, was in village irrigation projects along the Senegal River in Mauritania. During this period, he discovered that in official meetings, the discussions were formal and centred on their work. However in the evenings, the setting would be more relaxed and social. Persons from various origins interacted freely and this was generally good exposure for the students who would take part in the projects.
Kloppenburg's intercultural experiences have been quite varied: in addition to Madagacascar, he has lived in Mauritania, Madagascar, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya and Uganda; and has worked for extended periods in Somalia. In Madagascar he saw quite a bit of interreligious marriage, as well as interreligious practices. Sometimes, the same persons who went to the Catholic church would attend prayers in the mosque. Some people even had both Muslim and Christian names. In Mauritania, however, the local people were all Muslims and the Catholic church was for foreigners. There was complete religious segregation. Kloppenburg himself became a Muslim while in Mauritania but chose to practise it in the way he saw it in Madagascar.
Currently, Mr. Kloppenburg is residing in Kenya. He first came to Kenya in 1980 (through the Dutch Development Corporation) to work on small irrigation projects along the Tana River. As opposed to the 1960s, Kloppenburg feels that the change process is a lot more positive now. For example, in urban Uganda and Kenya, people are used to living with one another; they are exposed to people from different backgrounds and thus become more tolerant. In his opinion, Nairobi is very cosmopolitan in the way different people interact and in this respect he looks positively at the upcoming generation. However, in the more interior rural regions people are less exposed. He recalls with a smile that in Wajir he was once thrown out of a mosque because people could not conceive of a Muslim with white skin.
Culture 'shock'
Some people experience 'culture shock' when they live in an environment totally different from the one they have been used to. Asked about this, Kloppenburg explained that whenever he comes into an area where he does not know much about the people, he keeps a low profile while taking the time to understand and learn what they do and why they do it. Kloppenburg himself has not experienced much culture shock, probably because he had sufficient exposure to various cultures during his student days. But he has seen some students that come to work with him, experience it. They would come in with their ideals and sometimes with a kind of positive discrimination; for example, they would approach the farmers with whom they were interacting with the idea that they were all good people but that they had been repressed. But when these people did not live up to their expectations (for example, when they did not show up for a joint project exercise) they would be shattered. Kloppenburg had to explain to them that there might have been a perfectly good reason why the farmers would not show up and that people's needs were often very different from what they presumed them to be. The students could go from one extreme mood to another and they needed to find a balanced attitude.
Teaching Children to Live with Differences
How does Kloppenburg, who has four children, carry out the task of teaching them to cope with cultural, racial and religious differences? He believes that communication, interaction and exposure are the key to this. He feels that communication is very important in creating possibilities for change between people. The different schools that the children have attended have given them enough exposure to understand people of different origins. It was Kloppenburg's own experience in Somalia that when you interact and communicate with the people, your security increases; if the community knows you, you are safe with them. He shares such experiences with his children. His late wife (she died four years ago) although from Garissa, had lived in many different places in Kenya and was very good at advising the children in the area of intercultural relations. They learned to be proud of their mother's culture and religious background. Kloppenburg also encourages his children to interact with their neighbours. Their exposure to the various cultures and languages which they have had (they spoke Somali and Swahili with their mother) and also know Dutch and English) has given the children the freedom to decide later on where they want to belong. Kloppenburg is confident that they will not have problems of interaction wherever they go. This he sees as a great advantage. Exposure to various communities is something special thing but unfortunately cannot be everyone's experience.
Religious Differences
Some people tend to think that religion can be a greater stumbling block than cultural differences in the creation of tolerance. However, Kloppenburg is of the opinion that cultural factors often have a stronger impact on people than their religious persuasion. He mentions how very different Bosnian Muslims are from their religious brothers in Somalia; how very great the contrasts are between Italian and German Catholics and between Afrikaner persons with a Reformed church background and their counterparts in the Netherlands. Culture, in other words, is a very strong factor in the personal working out of one's religion. At the same time, there can be strong individual differences when people have had deep exposure to various cultures and religions. Religion can be, and often is, used either positively or negatively to mobilise people for good or bad ends.
Intercultural Conflicts in Kenya
In Kenya we have had some negative experiences in the area of intercultural relations. Kloppenburg feels that it is time for positive experiences to be fostered so that prejudices may be overcome. Again Kloppenburg stresses that exposure, communication and interaction can improve relations between people: in this way they can find ways of complementing, rather than destroying each other. People's identity and their different cultures should be treated as equal and should be respected. This may be very difficult sometimes, such as in cases of intermarriage. The two persons may have good relations and mutual understanding but their communities may try to impose their customs and their religion on them in given situations, for example in burial rites.
Conflicts often arise because of competition for resources. When Kenya got independence, the resources were more abundant and the people fewer: almost everyone could get a slice of the cake. The situation has now changed: the cake has become smaller and more people are fighting for a piece of it: there is a bitter fight for survival. Kloppenburg feels that there is a way out of this dilemma: people must learn to live in symbiosis, rather than in competition. He gives the example of the Pokomo, a sedentary people and the Orma, a nomadic group. The Pokomo would sell their chickens, maize and rice to the Orma but would also let the Orma graze their cattle on the crop residues after the harvest. In this way, their land would be fertilised and both groups would benefit. In the same way, the Luo and the Kisii trade fish for vegetables.
Unfortunately, culture, just like religion may be used for negative ends. Some of the colonialists brought in their "divide and rule" tactics and these tactics are still being used at times to exploit differences for political gain. However, if people can see through this, they can support and complement each other. Then they will grow together.
A JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONCERN
Published Quarterly by DR. GERALD J. WANJOHI
Likoni Lane - P .O. Box 32440 - Nairobi - Kenya
Telephone: 712632
The Online publishing of WAJIBU is by Koinonia Media Centre.
GO TO WAJIBU HOMEPAGE
|
