African Friends and Money Matters, Second Edition. David E. Maranz

place an individual in.

      Vernacular names may be difficult for outsiders to pronounce or even to spell. In such cases it will be much appreciated if a serious attempt is made to master a person’s name. Asking the person to pronounce his or her name slowly and even coaching the outsider in its pronunciation will be much appreciated as it shows a real concern for something important to that person. Writing down the name for future reference and practice in pronunciation is also a good habit. A child of a Cameroonian acquaintance of mine named one of his children after me. I felt honored until I asked the father why he had chosen my name. He said because it was the most difficult name to pronounce that he knew. I never understood the thinking involved or if my friend had given me the true reason behind the naming.

      Referring to individuals or groups as “Africans” is offensive in some areas. This comes from the perceived colonial history when Africa was called the Dark Continent and Africans were considered to be primitive or backward. It is much better to refer to people as Cameroonians or Kenyans, as the case may be, and so avoid any negative connotations. On the other hand, when the subject refers to regions or the whole continent (as is the case in this book), the general term “African” may be appropriate and unavoidable.

      Social space

      When you are eating with the devil use a long spoon.

Igbo proverb (Nigeria)20

      20 www.gambia.dk.

Typically people live and work in close proximity to one another in Africa. In many occupations they prefer to work in groups. While Africans certainly can work alone, they seldom express the need to “be alone,” the way that Westerners, including extroverts, sometimes talk. So expats living in an African context may feel they have little privacy and even wonder about Africans’ sense or need of privacy. Many rural Africans typically live in small houses with many people sleeping in the same room. They seem to always be in close proximity to one another. Africans certainly have and value privacy, but privacy in Africa is very different from what it is in the West. The boundaries of African privacy are not defined by space, as in the West; but rather, boundaries are defined by rules of interactions with others. “African social life involves institutionalized restrictions on social contact between age and sex groups.”21 “Privacy” in African terms means freedom from unwanted interpersonal involvement—it does not mean being apart from other people in physical separation. Privacy can be thought of as being left alone in your space rather than being in a separate space. In fact, in many African cultures, going off to be alone is suspect behavior. Those who want to be alone are looked at as possibly dangerous, or even accused of being greedy, or of being witches.

      21 LeVine 1970:284.

      Privacy includes limits on conversation, e.g., not bringing up subjects that are off limits in particular situations and between particular categories of people. The rules governing this kind of privacy may vary greatly from one African culture to another. They are often very formal and may involve avoidance patterns between individuals of certain relationships. They may include segregation by sex or age, and many other prescriptions and proscriptions that constrain people in the ways they interact. Westerners are often surprised at the formalities that apply even within families. I once asked a young man how old his father was. He said he did not know and could not ask. His father had never told him and he was not allowed to inquire into such personal matters. One African man invited an expat to eat with him, complaining that he was tired of eating alone. He was surrounded by his family at meal times, but avoidance rules prohibited his wife or his children from eating with him.

Probably most surprising to Westerners are the seeming barriers to intimacy between individuals, even within a family. Unwritten rules that govern African behavior, even within families, would seem normal only in organizational or bureaucratic settings in the West. Such formal rules limit free and personalized behavior. There is little “sharing of innermost thoughts and feelings, the giving and taking of emotional support….It seems that intimacy in this sense, and the individualized relationships that accompany it, are of less importance to Africans than other goals of interpersonal relations.”22 The kind of intimacy in personal communications now so common in the West was not always the norm. In many ways, this is a modern development, even in the West, and even now, is not found in all families.

      22 Ibid., 286.

      Social distance

      If you climb up a tree, you must climb down from the same tree.

African proverb23

      23 www.worldofquotes.com.

Social distance and space can also be thought of as systems of communication even though we don’t usually think of them in this way. On an individual level people sense the proper distance others should maintain with them. The “proper” distance is determined by the level of the relationship and also by culture. The distance in an intimate relationship is shorter than one that is formal, in all cultures. Likewise, for any degree of intimacy or formality, different cultures unconsciously set different distances that seem natural and comfortable for those who grew up in that culture. Edward Hall considers the use of space by humans to be a “hidden dimension.”24 He points out that humans’ use of space can be better understood if thought of in terms of the distances typically maintained in different social settings: intimate, personal, social informal, social formal, public, and psychological. This discussion will not pursue the details Hall associates with each of these; suffice it here to alert the reader of the need to be sensitive to how space or distance is being used by Africans with whom he or she is interacting. Any sense of uneasiness that develops may stem from their different uses of space. For example, at a reception, if one party is backing away from the other, it may mean that they have different culturally determined senses of the proper distance that should be maintained in that circumstance.

      24 Hall 1966.

Power distance

      A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness.

African proverb25

      25 www.allgreatquotes.com.

Another type of “distance” has been described, unrelated to the physical space between individuals. This is “power distance.” It can be defined as “the extent to which the less powerful person in society accepts inequality in power and considers it normal.”26 Cultures can be placed on a continuum from high to low power distance, in effect evaluating the influence and sway that leaders and followers of a particular culture exert on one another. For foreigners living and working cross-culturally, the concept can help them focus their attention on those who may enable their project or work to succeed.

      26 Mani 2010:4–5.

Joseph Mani describes marked differences in how power is exercised in different cultures. In some cultures, those who hold the power and those who are affected by power are significantly far apart in many ways (high power distance), while in other cultures, the power holders and those affected by power holders are significantly closer (low power distance).27 For expats working in a foreign culture, this raises questions such as: Is power distributed equally or unequally (whether by individuals or institutions)? Do individuals accept the exercise of power by leaders as normal, or do they resent it? Do superiors consider others to be different from themselves, or do they consider everyone to be intrinsically equal, leaders only occupying their positions under temporary or fortuitous conditions? Do leaders believe they are entitled to their positions? Etounga-Manguelle finds that in many African societies, people in subordinate positions