IV. Do cultural differences really exist?
Very small plane (not more than 20 people of capacity) of Royal Swazi National Airways is taking off from Joburg and in around 1 hour is landing in Manzini the largest city of Swaziland with population slightly over 100 thousand inhabitants. This story happened back in 2007 and since than many things have changed. Even Swaziland changed it’s name to Eswatini in 2018. What didn’t change is the fact that Eswatini is a unitary absolute monarchy for more than 2 centuries already. What also didn’t change since 2007 it’s His Majesty King Mswati III, who ascended to the throne in 1986 at the age of 18, thus becoming the youngest ruling monarch in the world at that time. And of course another thing which hasn’t change is a famous Umhlanga Reed Dance. This is the story about “African time” and The Dance.
The plane is making few rounds under picturesque hills of Manzini and finally landing. Me and my friend and colleague Mthobisi leaving the plane and moment after finding ourselves in the absolutely empty airport. We came to see our Distributor Mbono for couple of days, visit stores, market, observe consumers and work out go-to-market strategy for this part of the world with population above 1 mln people. We (at least me for sure) expected purely business visit and as it’s happening very often in Africa it turned to completely different way not matching our expectations at all. The first bell ringed at the reception of Europcar rental desk where we were getting our car keys. The lady from Europcar while giving us our keys said “welcome to Swaziland, I see you came for The Dance?”. She kind of asked us, but it was rather a statement not a question. “Aha!” — Mthobisi slapped palm on his forehead, “I did not know that The Dance is today!”.
Mbono met us in the airport I jumped in his car and step by step I started to understand what is it all about. In a very short version — during Reed Dance the King is selecting and choosing his next wife. By the moment of this story he already had 13 and was about to obtain 14th one. If I’m not mistaken by now he has 15 wives and 35 children. But the real story is much longer and full of symbols and mystique. It’s very old tradition rooted in the Umchwasho — traditional chastity rite.
Every year earlier September “all the virgins girls” of the Kingdom (later I witnessed around 20–30 thousands of them) begin the rite by gathering at the Queen Mother’s (her mystic name is “She-Elephant”) royal village. The girls are getting together by school classes and walking 10–30 km to the village. After arriving to the Queen Mother’s royal residence, the girls disperse the following night to surrounding areas and cut tall reeds. The following night, they bundle the reeds together and bring them back to the Queen Mother to be used in repairing holes in the reed windscreen surrounding the royal village. After a day of rest and washing, the girls prepare their traditional costumes consisting of a bead necklace, rattling anklets made from cocoons, a sash and skirt. Many of them carry the bush knives, which they had earlier used to cut the reeds, as symbols of their virginity.
Me and Mthobisi by accident came on the 5th day of the ceremony. Obviously is was the day off for the whole country and on this 5th day of the ceremony all girls were getting together at the big field to sing and dance as they parade in front of the royal family as well as a crowd of chiefs, diplomats and other guests.
Mbono is from quite wealthy family and close to the King. So after brief conversation and quick understanding that technically no any business is possible today in the whole Swaziland we happily accepted his invitation to join the group of guests and watch Reed Dance live. September is spring in this part of the world. I remember it was hot and we were chatting while waiting for the start of the ceremony. I was trying to understand the process and itinerary (the habit I brought with me from Europe) but none of the people around was responsive. Finally I rightly decided to approach one of the guards and asked him “when exactly the ceremony will start?”. He was like a big rock, turned very slowly to me and said phlegmatically “African time”. “What???” — I wondered again, “what does it mean?”. “It means — ANY TIME FROM NOW”.
It was one of the first cultural lessons learnt by me in Africa. No jokes there is significant meaning and tradition behind this “any time from now”. “Things will definitely happened, we do not know when exactly, but they will happened for sure and we need to be ready to accept it at any moment of time, it makes no sense to worry about any specific timing, just be ready. Always be ready.” — this is probably the meaning I adopted.
So, finally it had happened. Ceremony started slowly following some pre-set pattern. We were accompanied to our dedicated places just in 50 meters from the King’s spot, next to the Minister of Culture dressed in a very traditional Swazi dress of leopard skirt and a big military spear. Diplomats and “ordinary” guests took their places, than “highly ranked” guests came by the black limousines. I spotted Jacob Zuma (he still was the head of ANC back than) dressed in leopard skirt and nephew of Nelson Mandela in the nice sky blue outfit. His Majesty King Mswati III came the last surrounded by Chiefs of Eswatini tribes. Chiefs tooks their places at the bottom of the stands and King went on top. King gave some sign and Umhlanga Reed Dance started.
It was fun first of all. Girls were coming from somewhere outside of my visibility area, they were coming by groups. Obviously each group represented some school and school class. But in some groups girls were of very different ages, I spotted even 3–5–6 years small girls dancing and singing. You see, I used the presence of Minister of culture next to me in full and he explained my all the details on the go. Each group had different color coding. Very colorful indeed. In some groups I spotted the girls with the crowns of red feathers. These were the King’s many daughters and royal princesses also participated in the reed dance. Every group was approaching the King while dancing, then stopped in front of him and performing a special dance for the King. Then group was doing detour and taking it’s place behind at the back of the field.
They were coming and coming, dancing and singing and dancing. On their feet they had rattling anklets with cocoons-bells and while dancing all the bells were rumbling brroom brroom brroom brroom creating the sound I can’t describe. When few thousand people stomps to the beat at the same time, it’s something, trust me. They were coming and coming, dancing and singing and dancing. And by the end of third hour the whole field was filled in by the girls and flow of new comers has dried up. The field was alive, girls were stomping and singing all together and now it was the King’s turn to dance. He jumped out of his place, went down and surrounded by the chiefs in a dance started to move around the field. Girls were parting giving them a passage. The Minister next to me explained, that now King is choosing his wife and chiefs are also choosing their wives. “Of course”, he continued, “it’s rather a ritual, He is not choosing the wife every year and when he is choosing the choice is not happening here at the field, it’s rather pre-agreed selection process in between the richest families of the Kingdom”. “But” — he added, “many girls believes that one day King may choose them in the field”….. “by the way he may”.
The next day was just another normal day in Africa. People came to their daily routine. All the necklaces, rattling anklets, sashes, skirts and crowns of red feathers have been changed to the strict English school uniform. All the colorful leopard skirts have been changed to suits and ties. Nothing reminded the rampancy of the Reed Dance. This change was just unbelievable. Indeed, the Eswatini is a very advanced Kingdom with 90% literacy rate (https://www.macrotrends.net/), modern infrastructure and GDP per capita the same as Ukraine, Vietnam or Shri Lanka and by far larger than that in Kenya, Algeria, Morocco or Nigeria (International Monetary Fund (2020 estimates)).
Thirteen years later I still feel the vibe of the Reed Dance, I still can physically smell the grass, dust and the atmosphere of joy, happiness and unity. And I’m still puzzled by how so different cultural traditions came together in one place. How the fact that 90% of population are quite religious Christian Protestants can co-exist with 15 wives of the King and polygamy of the Chiefs? How 90% literacy and strict English school uniform may co-exist with the crowns of red feathers. To what extent semi-naked girls dancing on the field in front of males is a joyful fun for everybody, tribute to tradition and local culture or shouldn’t we consider it rather as a harassment and compulsion? Yes, we saw all the girls been happy and excited, but what is happening if some girl doesn’t want to participate? Is it at all possible? Is it totally voluntarily?
So, don’t ask me if cultural differences really exist, of course they do. Let’s talk more about it and try to understand how to deal with them.
Unfortunately there is no ultimate recipe for peaceful co-existence of different cultures, but one important lesson I learnt from Africa is a “rainbow nation” concept. Very first time Rainbow Nation as a term was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1994 and then elaborated by Nelson Mandela. Let me quote the part of his speech he gave after been one month in his role of President of South Africa — “Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld — a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.” Very poetic indeed and in 2 year this concept put down the roots in the new South African constitution of 1996 (https://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf):
“We, the people of South Africa … believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity”
“The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, color, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth”
“Everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion… marriages concluded under any tradition, or a system of religious, personal or family law”
You may tell me — “very nice wording, all the Constitutions nowadays designed in a very nice way, but how exactly this works?”. To answer you, let me bring to the table another quote this time from the Bible (Matthew 7:12, Contemporary English Version (CEV)) — “Treat others as you want them to treat you…” It’s very common, I would even say basic paradigm of the modern world. I spent quite some time reflecting to this quote, thinking why intuitively I feel uncomfortable with it. Of course I don’t pretend at all to correct the Bible it would be too arrogant from my side. But I have my observations I need to share. Treat others as you want them to treat you — works perfectly well in the society of the similar culture. If culturally you are all the same or similar — it’s just perfect. You just do to your neighbor whatever you would like him/her to do for you. “I like people to be nice and kind with me and I’m nice and kind with the other people too”, “I do not like people to lie to me and I’m saying the truth”. Or it may come to smaller things, for example: “I like to drink wine — let me treat you with wine”, “I like pork — let me bring you some crunchy pork knuckles”, “My most productive hours are from 6AM till 8AM, let me wake you up at 6AM”, “I like when people are asking me about my kids — let me ask you about your kids”, “I like to celebrate Christmas — let’s celebrate together”.
The trick is that your counterpart may belong to complete different culture with complete different believes and habits. I clearly remember myself at some training in Geneva where among Americans and Europeans one guy was present. In the evening it was a reception, people took wine and started to chat and as it’s very normal way to keep “small talk” running, they started to show each other the pictures of their spouses and kids. It was fun, but the guy I mentioned was staying quietly in the corner with no drink and obviously felt not too comfortable. Somebody approached him asking why he is not drinking and would he mind to share picture of his wife and the kids. “You know” — guy answered, “I’m from Saudi, I do not drink wine and there are no any non-alcoholic drinks here, I have 2 wives and 7 kids and we do not take pictures, it’s not good for the soul of the person if you take his or her picture”…
Another story happened when I just arrived to South Africa and was arranging my first off site meeting with the team. The hotel manager arranging the lunch and the dinner asked me how many people will be present, but then immediately continued — “how many halal’s, how many Buddhists, how many kosher spots would you like to arrange?”… What is my take away from those two stories? It’s absolutely right thing to “treat others as you want them to treat you…” but very often especially with people of other cultures we may need to move one step further and “treat others as THEY want to be treated…” What I found in South Africa and in many other African countries is that readiness and openness to understand the needs of the others, needs of the minorities and attempt to treat people in the way they prefer to be treated. If the whole nation believes in this simple approach, than this “… united in our diversity…” really works perfectly.
Now let’s do step aside and talk a bit what is the best way to learn cultural differences and diversity. For me personally 5 ways works the best: Observation, Listening, Eating, Learning, Reading
First one is Observation. Being on the market I always go to see stores, observe people, trying to memories all the small details I spot on the streets while driving, walking.
First time I came to Malawi by very small propeller type plane from Lusaka to Blantyre via Lilongwe. All the way through Zambia there were many good looking farms and fields full of crops. This is the place where farmers resided when they were kicked out of Zimbabwe by Mugabe. We are crossing Bua river and now no crops any more but the very red African soil and standing along big green trees. Small villages. Very hot and dusty. We are landing in Lilongwe for fueling and some passengers supposed go out and some to come on board. Our small plane is full and it’s hot, well above 40C. Keep waiting for the take off. Waiting. The captain is announcing that the plane is full and it’s too hot indeed, so we are too heavy to take off. So the decision is to leave in Lilongwe a part of the luggage. I see in the window the airport workers opening the plane and taking out the luggage. No any worries for me as soon as we can take off and safely land later, I’m the light traveler and I have only small back pack with me in the cabin (my long lasting learnt habit to travel light).
We spent the full day visiting different stores. In the local Cash and Carry (format is very popular below Equator) I noticed huge amount of big plastic bags with the corn. Normal corn, but in one bags colored by red and in another bags colored by green. I investigated all the bags in details, but didn’t get the point why. So I asked Peter, he is our Distributor, travelling with me and he is a farmer in 4th generation, his ancestors came to Zambia from Greece. He is explaining, that this corn is not for consumption and not for cooking, it’s for farming, for sowing. And those corn grains have been treated with some chemicals to kill bugs and diseases, so simply in this condition it may be dangerous to eat it. So the manufacturer colored the grain in red to signal to the people that it’s not eatable. Different colors simply mean different producers of grains. “Ok” — I continue to ask, “but why than on some bags there is a drawing of lion, on some other bags monkey and other animals?”. “You see” — Peter is answering, “the literacy rate is very low here, people can’t read. But the grains have been pre-treated depending on the type of the soil. For sandy soil you need the treatment with one type of chemicals, for silt soil another and for clay soil you need something else. It’s difficult and time consuming to teach local farmers on different types of soils but the agronomists noticed that some specific animals lives at the places with some specific soils. So, they simply teach farmers — “if there are many lions in your area — buy crops with the lion of the bag, if there are many monkey around — buy bags with monkey and so on.”
It was big cultural learning indeed. I came from the culture where people read the packaging, it’s much more important what is written rather than the visual on the bag. It’s so stable mindset, that you can’t even imagine that this may be somehow different, Since that moment I started to focus on understanding what is really needed to be communicated on the bags — visuals or text and in what proportions. Helped me a lot in my marketing communication in different countries…
There are mountains in Blantyre and many beautiful Jacaranda trees. Hot. The country is very rural with many open markets and traditional spaza shops. Water is a big issue, hawkers are selling water on the streets, water is packed in a small sealed plastic bags and cooled down in the box with ice. The same water I saw in Angola, Zimbabwe, Mozambique… One day I will tell you the story about Roque market in Luanda (Roque Santeiro Market) the biggest market in the southern hemisphere, which does not exist anymore, but for now just one learning from there. Once going throw the Roque market I noticed a women in a raw sitting and selling small (0,5 cm in diameter) balls made from plastic bags with some white powder inside. After I asked it came out it’s a bleach inside, one ball costs 5 Angoleese Kwanzas (half a cent) and if you put it in a water it’s just enough to disinfect the bucket of water and then you can drink it. The importance of selling very small packs, the importance of water saving solutions came so obvious at this moment.
Observation is not separable from asking questions and active Listening. Once one of my colleagues Neil (British, by the way) made a thoughtful note, he told me: “The big issue of all the Russians it that you are not native English speakers and you do not fully understand what’s been said to you. But you don’t feel comfortable to re-ask and thus to show your ignorance, so you assume something and you react according to this assumption, which very often is wrong and leads to the wrong behavior. Always ask again and again till the moment you understand the meaning completely…” — than Neil took a pause and concluded: “honestly it’s not just about Russians, everybody is like this”…
It’s really a shame that I discovered “Ethiopian time” only after almost half a year of being on the ground and visiting Addis already few times. When you come to Addis Ababa first, second or even 10th time as a foreigner nothing will ring the bell and nothing will trigger the discovery of “Ethiopian time”. With me such a trigger was the visit to EIC (Ethiopian investment committee). We were chatting with some officials (“chatting” here means that my Ethiopian colleagues were speaking in Amharic and I was looking around trying to catch some words from their speech). So, looking around, I noticed the wall clock on the wall were wrong, showing 8:00 o’clock instead on 14:00. Of course my first reaction was “nothing special, I saw it many times, clock are not operational, they probably need to change the batteries in the clock”. Then we moved to another office for another discussion and there I also discovered “wrong clock”. After the 5th office with the ““wrong clock” finally I dared to ask my Ethiopian colleagues — “sorry, but what is wrong with all the clocks?”. “Nothing wrong” — they explained, “they just showing Ethiopian time”. It came out that in Ethiopia they start counting hours of the day from 6AM. The daytime cycle begins at dawn 12:00 (6AM) and ends at dusk 12:00 (6 PM). The night time cycle begins at dusk 12:00 (6 PM) and ends at dawn 12:00 (6 AM). So 7AM is 1 o’clock “Ethiopian time”, 14:00 is 8 o’clock and let’s say 20:00 will be 2 o’clock night time. The point is, if I would not ask I may never discover it. Ethiopians are very polite and they are totally aware of uniqueness of their “time counting system”, so they communicate to you European time always, they schedule all the meeting with you in the way convenient and familiar to you.
Sometime it’s difficult even imagine how many things we can learn about different cultures via food and drinks. My first observation — the eating habits are much larger that the countries boundaries and very often reflects the relationships existed between people long time ago.
Canteen in Geneva office, Creek chief is cooking traditional coffee in jezve. Somebody is coming and asking “can you please cook a Turkish coffee for me?”. “We do not serve Turkish coffee here, we have only Greek coffee”…
I brought some nice baklava from Turkish shop to my Bulgarian friends. “Wow, great, how did you get authentic Bulgarian baklava?”…
There is no “Russian salad” in Russia, it’s known as an “Olivier” (French) salad.
You can meet similar type of coffee, kyufta, dolma, manti everywhere from Balkans to Armenia and down to Israel. You can study the history of Ottoman Empire thought its cuisine.
It may be a topic for separate book — traces of national food traditions on the global map.
One of the most amazing stories is a Cape Malay cuisine. It’s much more than just food. It’s a story which started back in the 1600s, when people from Indonesia, Malaysia and India first arrived to Cape Town as well as Dutch and Brazilians. Thus Cape Malay community were born. The Cape Malay community is a Muslim community and their cuisine grew from and still maintains deep roots in the Islamic tradition of cooking. From the variety of spices used, to the way in which one consumes a meal, that is, with the hands.
One of my favorite cuisines is Lebanese. It’s one of the most sophisticated cuisines full of great ingredients, spices, souses mixed together in fancy way. What is equally amazing is that you can find the traces of Lebanese cuisine all around the Middle East and beyond. Equally somebody may say that Lebanese cuisine has absorbed many different cousins from all around Middle East. Indeed been very old tradition Lebanese cuisine can be traced back thousands of years to eras of Roman, Greek, Persian, Byzantine, Arab, Egyptian, and Phoenician rule. In the last 500 years, Lebanese cuisine has been influenced by Ottoman Turks and largely France. And The Lebanese diaspora who live worldwide have introduced new ingredients, spices and culinary practices into Lebanese cuisine, keeping the cuisine innovative and renowned both beyond and within its borders. Such a dishes like falafel, shawarma, hummus, baklava, different mezzes, tabbouleh, kafta, dolma, aubergine-based dishes, pastirma may be found even in the places where you would never expect to find them.
Very short story happened with me in Ethiopia. Ethiopian cuisine is delicious thought not sophisticated and very unique mainly due to the fact Ethiopia was never colonized and never been a part of any bigger empire. The base of the cuisine is a meat and chicken stew eaten with the hands and injera, the sour fermented flatbread with a slightly spongy texture, traditionally made out of teff flour. What was always surprising for me is a lack of sweet cuisine in Ethiopia. No desserts at all despite the fact there are a lot of honey and the sugar in the country. So far nobody could explain it to me. Now you can imagine how surprised I was to find in one of the restaurants in Addis dolma, tabbouleh and kebabs. Immediately I run to see the owner. It came out that the place belongs to Armenian family, it’s already 3rd generation residing in Addis, they actually came from Beirut 3 generations ago and brought with them all the traditions of Armenian and Lebanese cuisine with the significant influence of Ottomans of course.
You may ask me why I’m so passionate about those things? Why it really matters for me? For two main reasons: first of all it’s just interesting life long discovery for me. Richness of the life and diversity is what drives my passion. Second reason has some business background. The worlds is becoming more and more fragmented, so consumers do. From outside you may think South Africans are all the same, but indeed digging deeper you will discover endless amount of pieces of the puzzle like Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Ndebele, Venda, Tsonga, Swazi, Afrikaans, Indians and many many others. You may think Turkish are all similar, no, not at all. Even officially more than 30% of Turkish population belongs to the ethnic minorities such as Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Arabs, Albanians, Bosnians, Greeks, etc. I can continue with Russia with over 190 ethnic groups and China which is officially composed of 56 ethnic groups. So the matter of fact is — consumer is fragmented, the elements of puzzle are not going anywhere and just becoming wealthier, more demanding and recognize their specific needs more and more. Probably it’s a good business strategy to look at the needs of all the minorities, not just the majority and build “local hero” brands to satisfy their specific needs?
With this one I’m making a break till the next week. Cultural differences is too heavy topic to cover it in one go
(to be continued)
