Seminar Report: March 7-11 2011

The first seminar in Mozambique was conducted last week. I am pleased to report that both the participants and the presentation team concluded that the seminar was a success! Our first seminar was English-speaking and consisted of 10 participants, one presenter (that's me), and two support staff. The participants were a diverse group comprised of Western missionaries (from English-speaking countries such as South Africa and the US), one African missionary (from another African country), and Mozambican nationals. All the participants responded to the seminar positively and provided excellent feedback on ways we can improve the presentation and seminar material. 

When we set up the seminar, we initially wondered how the diverse set of backgrounds possessed by the participants would impact the learning environment. As it turned out, there were several differences due to the participants' experiences, education, and cultures, but those differences didn't create any substantial barriers or hindrances to the seminar experience. Everyone found the seminar challenging – since it is designed to be challenging, we consider this a success – but in different ways, depending on their backgrounds. 

The clearest lines of difference can be drawn between the Western/Mozambican cultural backgrounds previously mentioned. The Westerners found the seminars to be challenging exercises that expanded and reinforces core principles and assumptions they understood as important to personal and professional development. One participant described the seminar as "common sense in a different way". Another noted that while the principles were familiar, the seminar pushes you to get out of your "rut". The Mozambicans, by contrast, found much of the content to be unfamiliar, if not completely new. They were very excited about the material, as it provided new tools and ways of approaching problems that they had not considered before. One Mozambican described the experience as a huge opportunity to change the way [Mozambicans] think, to change the way they impact their environment and how they can change their environment as they go out into their community."

This was exactly as we had expected and reinforces our theory that part of the difficulty facing Mozambicans in their interaction with Westerners is not so much cultural procedures (customs, dress, moral codes, etc.) as conceptual approaches – the two groups quite literally think differently. Note that this does NOT mean that one group is smarter than another – all the participants evidenced a high level of intelligence and insight during the seminar. It only means that the cultural difficulties experienced in Western-Mozambican relations are as much conceptual as linguistic or procedural.

 

Moving Along:

As we move into the Portuguese seminar, we have two distinct challenges ahead of us. First, we must be able to communicate the concepts of the seminar in another language. Anyone who has done translation work knows the difficulties involved in such a venture. Second, as the Portuguese participants will be entirely Mozambicans, we need to make sure that we do not run ahead of our audience. As evidenced in the first seminar, Westerners tend to treat many of these ideas as assumptions, where Mozambicans see them as new information. The tendency, then, will be to assume certain concepts or ideas are already understood. In this context, I think such assumptions would constitute a critical mistake. I am currently working with our translator to determine the best way to communicate our concepts and pace ourselves so that everyone is able to keep up with the material.

Only time will tell if our approach is successful. If we are, then I think we have a great platform for revolutionizing education and training in Mozambique. If we are not, we will need to reassess based on our feedback from both sessions, and try a new approach based on the input we receive. It is always a learning process, even when we are successful, but that's part of the fun.