Finally there was a lesson which can be titled like this. We were playing for almost the whole time. Christin had developed a simple dice game. To play it, our course was split into a few groups with one member per group having the game instruction. It was not allowed to talk. The game leader of each group read the instructions aloud. Then the game started. Unfortunately she read pretty fast, or maybe my brain is just too slow that I didn’t understand completely how the game has to be played. I only knew that each player in my group has three tries and then has to pass the two dices on. The game leader took notes of the player’s scores. After some time the course leader picked out some people in the groups who had to interchange with other groups. I was among them.

My first idea was that the game instructions must be different from group to group. – Or else, what sense shall the game make? So I knew that there was something different in the other group but I didn’t know what. I took a seat and it was already my turn. I only had a brief glimpse at my neighbour’s and her way to dice. She did it only for once – the first difference maybe. So I did it also only for once. (In the back of my mind I thought: “What if the rules are that only every second player must dice for once?!”) The other difference was that the dices were passed on counter clockwise. Other differences I did not find but was uncertain if this really was all. (In my family we sometimes played with dices too and then from time to time we argued in which direction to pass the dice on. So I didn’t take it as a necessarily specific change in the rules, but only as something incidentally.)

The game continued and it seems I was not so wrong with guessing the rules. In the end I even won a round. The next round we couldn’t finish (unfortunately) because our prof asked us to go back to our initial position. Just as (not without pride) I told my dicing result to a friend, the teacher called me up to give my assessment of the exercise. I was a little bit surprised and had not evaluated it for myself yet. Therefore I probably gave an unsatisfying answer…

Of course this exercise was transferred to intercultural situations. What happens when you come into a new surrounding where you don’t understand the rules? And what do the others think about a “stranger” in their rows? Is the “stranger” disturbing or will they help him to integrate?

The change between my groups was not that strong I think. But others had more problems with understanding the “new” rules. And this also led to misinterpretations. There was for example a girl who cheated because all the others in her group diced a six. So she thought she would be out if she has no six. Others tried to explain the rules to their new member through gestures.

All in all I think this game helped to get aware of social and psychological processes in intercultural contexts. The only difference is that real intercultural situations are far more complex. Maybe it is even impossible to find out all the new rules in the other culture. And perhaps we will only familiarize with a small part of them. And because of this complexity it will be impossible to prepare for those new rules or all possible eventualities.

After this exercise we should hear a text, actually a letter, about a German development assistant in the Sahel. At the end of the read out we should finish the story from the perspective of one of the characters in the text. The German development assistant should help growing plants in a village. He has an interpreter of English to the African dialect who shall help him to negotiate with the elder of the village. One day there are goats on his plantation and eat all the small plants. He gets very angry and becomes loud in front of the elder of the village who seems not to understand him. [See the full text in the ded-folder.]

I needed several minutes to think about which perspective to choose. Probably the prof would expect us to show empathy for one of the African characters. But I didn’t. I took the guy the letter was addressed to. My story ended with that the German guy in the Sahel has vanished and his German friend (the letter recipient) decides to find him. At the end of the lesson we only compared our story-endings.

Somehow I was glad being out of that room. It was very hot and there are no air-conditions in our university. But it shall become slightly cooler. Maybe it will be next week when there is the last class for this semester.