Intercultural Mis-Communication

We as a family had to this week painfully experience how an intercultural, inter-regional pupil exchange between our daughter and a pupil in the northern French region of Lorraine, barely 60 kilometres from Trier completely collapsed.

For 12 days in September, we played hosts to a homesick 12-year old French pupil from a migrant family in Loraine. We thought we did our best: investing time, energy and money to make her time in Germany special. Every day there was an activity: an outing with French and German pupils or visiting some of our eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One day they had a home-made pizza and film party with 12 French and German girls here in our house. On the Saturday we did a day-trip to Eltz Castle, 100 kilometres away.

(c) Anli Serfontein 2009 Eltz Castle

After receiving no thank you note from her, she deemed it fit to write my daughter an email this week, less than a week before my daughter was to go to France to tell her how she hated her time with us, that my daughter did not suggest any activities, undertook nothing with her, and made no effort to give her a good time in Germany. Therefore she refuses to undertake any activities with my daughter when she comes to France. All blatant lies as our French pupil probably did and saw more than any of the other exchange pupils.

An intercultural exchange is taxing on all involved - also on the parents. And I, as a former exchange pupil always take great care that pupils see and experience Germany in a wide range of ways – language; food; history; music and culture.

We were all reeling under the shock of her email. My husband was philosophical saying her sojourn did improve our French, as she refused to even say the simplest of sentences in German. Bitte and danke never crossed her lips. My older daughter now a student who had to keep her busy the last two days when her younger sister got sick, was wondering why as a third generation migrant she did not want to break out of the mould. Normally, in her experience of Germans with a migrant background, she said, the first generation comes for the money; the second try and adapt and the third generation break loose.

With so much intellectual analysis going on all around, I had to think positive too: Her stay with us did give me an insight into an Algerian migrant extended family in France, that I would normally not have had. She has 32 cousins in France alone and we lost count how many in Algeria. She was texting them all the time. What amazed me was how they are content to only have social relations within this extended family and are quite insular. It reminded me of my mother’s childhood in a rural South African family in the 1930’s and 1940’s. But these were third generation migrants to France in the 21^st century.

After we received the email, my husband called the fairly hostile mother, who told us she absolutely supported her daughter’s decision not to have anything to do with our daughter when she visited. However, as an afterthought our daughter may still come if she wishes so. Fearing that she will be treated like a leper we decided to keep her here.

We have had exchange pupils before and we did have contact with the parents when there were minor hiccups, which invariably in a long intercultural exchange can pop up. We had to conclude this time it was not the language that hampered communication, but the cultural communication framework.

To put it bluntly, the educated bourgeoisie communicate within a certain globally accepted framework, no matter what the language is, that is understood among each other. We reflect, we analyse and we set certain values for our kids. This week my husband and I were incapable to reach a common language with people whose horizon is a small village in northern France and a small village in Algeria. People who do not reflect. Having had their daughter in our house we could read that it was people for whom books have little value. People for whom the normal polite phrases like thanking your hosts have little value.

As all her friends are packing for a fortnight in France, my daughter is staying and that is the hardest part. It breaks my heart, knowing how she made such a huge effort to make A’s stay pleasant, especially when she was sad all the time. Now she is sadly the duped one. A. cried from the first day because she did not want to be here but was forced by her parents to go to Germany.

(c) Anli Serfontein 2009. My husband, daughter and the French pupil at Eltz Castle. According to her we did not undertake anything with her

My daughter wanted to go to France to experience school life there. She had organised who would send her homework; what books to take along; what magazines she would like to buy in France, what television she would like to watch. In hindsight we should not have put all our efforts and energy into trying to make a spoilt French pupil stay and only pandering to her needs in order to keep her happy; we should have let her go home after two days! We have wasted our energies completely. Unfortunately our daughter will now not benefit at all!

Read my blow by blow account of our Intercultural Nightmare