Seeking Cultural Common Ground

In order to be as effective as possible in Mozambique, it is imperative that we develop a strong understanding of African culture. Toward this end, I have found a book called “African Friends and Money Matters” by David Maranz to be surprisingly helpful.

Let me share some cultural insights that I have realized while reading this book.

First off, many of Africa’s cultural attributes regarding their treatment of money make sense only within their historical context.

Many African cultures did not have any need for money until their colonizers came and required that they pay taxes to the colonial rulers. These taxes had to be paid in the colonial ruler’s currency. Mozambicans were no longer independent. They were required to take Portuguese jobs to earn Portuguese currency to pay Portuguese taxes. As a result, money is seen with a certain degree of contempt; it was introduced to extract power and resources from the continent.

Secondly, for various political and climactic reasons, Africa has endured severe poverty. By and large, Africans do not share Westerners’ belief that they can live independent lives. Life is not a competitive race, but rather a cooperative, interdependent struggle. Survival requires the maintenance of a large safety net of family and friends.

“The ideal of unity in all things … [means that] being the richest man does not necessarily give status. Status is gained by willingness to share the riches with other people” (Maranz, p. 60).

This cooperative spirit of African culture is founded upon the assumption of reciprocity – that I’ll help you with your need today because tomorrow it might be me who is in need.

Introducing Westerners into the equation creates tension on the system for one fundamental reason: the assumption of reciprocity breaks down. In the Westerner’s eye, the African keeps asking for more and more and more. In all likelihood, the African will never be in the position to repay our gifts because we’ll never be in need relative to them.

Because of our relative wealth, the relationship is one-sided. We cannot be fully integrated into this culture without completely cutting ties to our financial and social networks in the West.

Africa’s cooperative spirit has several additional consequences that further strain the relationship between Western and African culture. For instance:

• Africans believe that assets not being used are available for others to use. This makes sense within their context: if there is not an excess of resources in general, then someone having more than needed means that someone else is in need.
  
  In fact, Africans believe that resources are to be used, not hoarded, and that hoarding is a selfish and unsocial act. Why keep for tomorrow what someone else needs today?
  
  In the West, we have a deeply-entrenched sense of individual property rights. What is mine is mine, and only becomes yours if I explicitly give (or sell) it to you. We tend to view Africans’ reciprocity as tantamount to theft.

• As a counter-measure to the above point, Africans often store their wealth in immoveable assets, such as partially-built houses, rather than liquid assets such as bank account balances.
  
  To illustrate this point, one of my African colleagues, Raul, had been saving to get married, but was forced to postpone in part because his brother had a more urgent need for his savings. Now, Raul has accumulated just enough money to build one wall of a house for himself. To avoid his savings being taken again, he wants to build this wall now rather than waiting until he has enough money to build the entire house.
  
  Mozambique is littered with partially-built but already-occupied homes.
  
  In the West, we tend to view these piles of cement block and protruding rebar with a touch of contempt as the fruit of poor planning.

• Sharing resources is the basis for many friendships in Africa, since doing so is vital to survival.
  
  By contrast, Westerners tend to distrust relationships that are based upon (or even involve) the sharing of financial resources. A friendship based on money is no friendship at all, most of us would believe.
  

• Africans tend to be hospitable, sharing their resources spontaneously with those within their social sphere, but tend not to be charitable beyond their known world.
  
  Westerners tend to be charitable, sharing considerable wealth in a planned, anonymous fashion, often using large organizations as conduits for our generosity. We tend to be hospitable only to a point: meals are often shared amongst family and friends, but financial resources are only seldom shared within families and rarely with friends or neighbours.

All of this points boil down into the following understanding to which I’m coming to be aware: Westerners living in Africa tend to look at Africans and interpret their constant requests for money and open-ended “borrowing” of assets as greedy and self-seeking; Africans looking at Westerners, meanwhile, see our very different cultural patterns – our constant planning and budgeting and our weariness of requests for money from friends – as being greedy and self-seeking as well.

Two very different approaches, viewed with the same suspicious interpretation by two very different groups. Ironic, isn’t it?