Getting to know you

Getting to know you

In 1992 I began a course of study in Dublin that lasted three years. As with many life-events I did not expect the path of my existence to be changed by it. The course was a challenging one that involved staying and studying in Dublin for three summers and travelling to seminars twice a week there for the three-year duration. It has been said that friendships formed in adversity are strengthened by common experience and struggle. Time takes its toll on all friendships but I have remained in close contact with one of my friends from those days. Out of the dozen or so participants in the course, I became close to one of the group who was introduced to me as Hyacinth.

Hyacinth turned out to be male and African. In the course of our friendship we have discussed many differences and some similarities in our cultures and experiences. As the years went by and we resumed our usual duties as priests in our respective settings, I came to know some of his colleagues and more recently, his family. About ten years ago we began an arrangement that allowed a priest from his group to study in Dublin for a two-year spell and work alongside Irish priests including myself. Over the intervening years, six priests have spent time living and working in an Irish parish setting. We have shared a house; cooperated in pastoral assignments; discussed the ways of the world over many meals and began to see the same world through each other’s eyes.

There were periods of adjustment for both of us. The African ‘brothers’ had to adjust to the Irish weather and to the seasonal and erratic nature of our climate. The ‘rainy season’ in Ireland lasts rather longer than in Africa. Our ways of communicating can often differ considerably. The Nigerians, in this case, are given to up-front, direct statement. The Irish are known historically for giftedness with language, to the point where it is hard to pin down what exactly we are saying - or omitting. There is also the occasional problem of local usage, slang and accent. Hiberno-English is a very different language from the English of the text-book. ‘No bother’ needs translation just as much as the African, ‘no, please, thank-you’. I have had to learn the difference between ‘lettuce’ and ‘letters’ in African pronunciation and to cut out colloquial expressions that could be potentially misleading, like saying ‘this weather’ when I mean ‘now’.

The liturgy and pastoral practice of the Irish are foreign to our visitors despite the genesis of their faith in the work of Irish missionaries. The contemporary Western disdain for religion and embarrassment in its practice is in sharp contrast with the unashamedly religious outlook of other generations of our own and of the present populations of other parts and religions of our world. Gaelic sports need some explanation to nations that have been reared on soccer as does our Irish preoccupation with English League Football and our simultaneous disdain for the English National team. The central place of alcohol in our diet and in our social life is not shared by most Africans. Our villages are often centred on pubs while their social life revolves around the ties of family and community and the mutual obligations that bind them. Mobile telephones could have been invented for Nigerians. The constant need for connectedness and networking leaves them vulnerable to the charms of telecommunications companies.

‘The white man has the watch and the African has time’. Time is elastic for many of the Nigerians that I have worked with. It’s not an unusual trait to find that time and precision are mutual opposites in some people’s minds. It is only noteworthy when it affects everybody in an ethnic group. Our own more senior country relatives thought not in hours or days but in seasons. Contemporary western living has taught us the value of efficiency and productivity and we have collectively become time-conscious to a degree that can be unsettling. There is something of a parting of the ways between the Western mindset and that of the African, or those of developing continents, when it comes to how we use our time. The modern mindset of constant self-critical analysis; the search for excellence and best practice that we associate with the West are often lost on other cultures.

The foreign priests I have worked with see and deplore our waste and extravagance. They decry the growing coarseness of our culture and the neglect of community and family responsibilities. At worst, immigrants from other cultures treat the West as a giant honey-pot from which they can draw at will. This can have the effect of inciting resentment when a people’s hospitality is thought to be abused or when their generosity or credulity is stretched.

Overall, however, I found that the non-nationals I met and worked with have been honourable and responsible. As we shared the experiences of growing up in our respective cultures it became apparent to me that many of the same social dynamics occur in all traditional societies. There is obviously much more that unites us than divides us. Issues around immigration, development aid and political malpractice will always be problematic for societies that are affected. The way forward is not one of insult or exclusion but of carefully and respectfully regulated mutual relations.