A few months ago, I was sent to a meeting on gender and HIV.
The group was trying to decide upon the next steps required to launch their
coalition.
I had (what I thought to be) a great idea, and decided to
share it. I structured my argument in the same way I would in Canada:
I stated my point concisely (I think we need to do X first,
followed by Y and then Z) and then provided the necessary rationale (because it would be more challenging to do Y before X first for
this reason, and it would be in our best interest to do Y before Z for this reason).
After what I thought to be a pointed intervention, everyone
in the room looked at me perplexed, it was as if I had been speaking another
language.
I listened as the conversation continued. It was clear that
they had either completely disagreed with my recommendation, or I had failed to
communicate it in a way that my colleagues would understand.
I listened to how my colleagues formed their arguments. They
didn’t actually directly say what they thought most of the time – rather they
indirectly brought their colleagues to certain conclusions by asking questions
and speaking around the answer.
After about half an hour, I decided to try again, as we were
still on the same topic.
Instead of stating my point and then backing it with facts,
I took my time.
I posed a question to my colleagues, then asked which task
needed to come first, eluding to the reason why I thought one thing should come
before the other.
My colleagues listened intently, and gave me the time I
needed to finish. At the end, instead of the perplexed looks, tongues started
wagging! ‘I agree with Chifundo’s (Chifundo is my Malawian name) point!’, ‘Let
us proceed in this way!’…
I realized that it was the delivery, rather than the content
of my message that was lacking.
Malawians communicate in a way that seems indirect to many
Canadians. Oftentimes the answer is not
contained in an explicit statement of facts, but can be found within context,
verbal and non-verbal cues and proverbs.
I find myself missing a lot and feeling very simple minded because of my
difficultly in decoding proverbs (my mind feels lazy and seems to require explicitness
and directness to understand things).
Proverbs roll of tongues here and are a great way of
communicating and receiving consensus. I accidently dropped the old ‘Grass is
always greener on the other side of the fence’ once and was surprised at the
positive response and solidarity it rallied.
Another facet of Malawian communication is that although
‘no’ is technically in the vocabulary, it is rarely used. As a direct Canadian, I have found this
confusing when the actual answer to the question you are asking, if it were to
be stated directly, is ‘no’. If your
‘no’ detector goes off, you need to re-pose the question in a few ways to get to
the root of the answer and determine if there is a ‘no’ at the bottom.
For example, if I ask my colleague if they are available to
discuss something that day, they may say ‘yes, let’s discuss later today’. When
I ask when they are available, they may indicate that they have a meeting that
afternoon. If I then ask if they can meet that morning, they may tell me that
yes, we can meet, but they have a report to write. It becomes clear that the
meeting isn’t happening that day.
I may then ask if another time later this week would be
better, and they will say yes and recommend a time when they are actually free
to meet.
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