Well, I don’t know if this time title and entry fit so well together. (That’s why I crossed it out.) The exercises in this lesson were more in the aspect of “changing one’s perspective” and had not really something to do with “playing” and “staging”. If I was asked about my opinion, I was disappointed. The “playing” and “staging” had interested me much more. I wonder why this lesson was canceled or was put under another topic. Well, anyway, I don’t want to complain!

During last week the big folder “Global Learning” has arrived. It is a collection of loose sheets of paper with intercultural games and texts (105 pages!). Since I roughly browsed through it for the first time I knew that also university professors only use water to cook the soup. I found most of the exercises we have done since the beginning of the course in that folder. –Very interesting! And so there were also those exercises of today’s lesson.

The first task was to write down some thoughts about what an African development assistant would change here in Germany. This was indeed something what ordinary people here would find paradox I assume: Why should we learn something from “underdeveloped” countries. But actually it is interesting to get an outside opinion. Nowadays this is rather possible than years ago I think. You can see this in how the words changed. First, it was called “development aid”. Later it became “development assistant”. But I am not quite sure what the political correct version at the moment is. So my classmates wrote: stopping the waste of resources (energy, water, food…), promoting the cohabitation of different generations, supporting youth and culture (especially migrants and integration), and increasing the role of church in everyday life. But was it really the opinion from an African perspective or only what we heard about criticism of globalisation in general? When I answered the task I tried to find the problems Africa has and there was lack of water and food. We have those things in excess and that’s why I thought an African perspective would criticise it. For me it was by chance that this criterion was identical with the globalisation critic’s point of view. The aspect of family and church seem indeed to be more individual for Africa. But on the other hand those criteria could apply as well for Asian countries.

To confirm or not to confirm our ideas, a text was read from the ded-folder about the (fictive) experiences of an African development assistant in a German village and what he would change there (p.44f). Everybody should draw a picture of the village Mamadou (the name of the development assistant) described. Actually the German village was meant but some drew the African or both of his narration. I didn’t like drawing. In school I was never good at it and so, according to the teachers, my skills seem to be limited. I thought of imagining it instead. To me the description seemed to be full of stereotypes. The African village is totally traditional, the German village a modern large farm, I said in the evaluation. But the comments of my classmates convinced me. Actually there is no real “village-farming” in Germany anymore. The villages here are only settlements without much more infrastructure and the fields around them are in the hands of big farming companies which are like in Mamadou’s description “clinical” and over-efficient. Individual farming is more the exception here (because big companies can offer their products much cheaper I think). As for the African villages, the only African villages I have been to were in North Africa. In fact they were more rural and one could watch farmers doing their work with their hands. Nevertheless globalisation hasn’t stopped at their gates. There are also big companies and on the markets you’d find goods imported from neighbour countries. Of course Mamadou’s description was exaggerated because it was an exercise which should show people “development aid from another side” and should make them think.

[During class I wondered if the text was really written by (or after the experiences of) an African who stayed in Germany. It seemed to be too exaggerated. I found the answer in the folder: It was written by a German development assistant who stayed in West Africa.]

The next exercise in class (and also in the folder) should be to speak about African proverbs which were handed to us. Each group of three got three sayings where German equivalents should be found and their meaning should be discussed. I hardly could concentrate. It was very loud. The weather was hot and we had the windows open. Because the same day Germany had a football match, many people outside were making terrible noise. –And this for almost 2 hours in that room!

There were quite interesting proverbs among them. But mostly there was not only one interpretation possible. For example: “Only one digs the well, but many come to drink out of it.” Is it meant that one can reach much? Or is it meant that others come and exploit one’s work?

It was interesting to read those proverbs. I wondered if one can conclude from the existence of a proverb about “something” to the value of this “something” in society. Are there other values in African than in German society? Would we find to every proverb an equivalent?

Surprisingly many proverbs were similar to German equivalents although I could not exactly name them. Maybe my German proverb competence is not big enough for this. At the end I wondered about the sense of the exercise. In class there was not spoken about it. The folder says: “Experiencing a different image of man and different attitudes of life; Getting into touch with different norms and values” But unfortunately for me this aim was not reached. –Or it was maybe only in the context that African proverbs seem to be more ambiguous. More? At the same moment I wonder how ambiguous our German proverbs must seem to foreigners in their language.