Judgements and Assumptions

Hello Everyone!  


As I will say for everyday from now on, a lot as happened here in Namibia so far, and its has only been a week!


I started my internship on Friday, and met many amazing people!  I will be working with women at the organization, and interns from all around the world and the US.  We work out of a back office and we have a strong community in the space. Also I walk to my organization every day because it is so close to the house, which is really nice. 


Today, we met young adults from the group young achievers.  This group works with high school to college students to be able to succeed to the highest amount and to be positive role models in their community to bring access and resources.  They also maintain some small businesses in order to raise funds for their programming. We went to one of their meetings to sit in and to see what they were working on, to get to know each other, and for them to get to know us.  We also had a good conversation about politics and access with education in Namibia and the United States. 


What I learned from the conversation, is that we are really not much different, which sounds simple, but let me elaborate.  Even though our systems, structures, cultures, and traditions are very different, the problems we face and the challenges are similar.  We all have challenges, we all have triumphs, we all have failures, and we all have joys with in our own countries. 


From both sides, we often make assumptions about each other and about where we are from that then turn into powerful judgements that remove the humanity with in the relationships that we are able to have. For example, Americans often make assumptions about "Africa" as if it was one country, and that it is the same everywhere.  We must know that our assumptions and our expectations need to be expanded beyond what we know the stereotype to be. In order to remove these stereotypes from being such powerful assumptions, we must automatically start to assume that there is more to it, there is something else behind our assumptions. 


So as we were talking about standardized testing, and the movement of teachers in Minneapolis, and schools being funded by property tax in the United States, some of the students from Namibia started to realize that this media portrayed picture of the United States was not at all accurate, and the same could be said visa versa. 


What does this mean?  We must remove our assumptions and expectations as much as possible so we can push beyond the boundaries that they create. 


This weekend has been full of more exploring, socializing, getting homework done, and of course trying lots of good food.  


Peace, 
Angela