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4 Remembering Home, Contrasting Experiences Different Worldviews As I argue in the previous chapter, even though Western anthropology has been dominated by the study of the Other, the discipline has and can be used to study one’s self and one’s culture. In this chapter, I give an example of the value of using anthropology not only to study others but also to reflect upon one’s own culture. Two years into my graduate training in anthropology, I picked up a set of analytical tools that I used in critiquing not only the work of other anthropologists but my own culture as well. The more I read ethnographies and anthropological analyses of cultural phenomena elsewhere, the more I became aware of my own cultural contexts and practices. I started making sense of my own experiences and often made more specific interpretations of certain cultural experiences that I had earlier taken for granted. When I spent time with new African graduate students at the university, for instance, I found myself able to relate and understand their frustrations and excitements at a large public American university. I was able to take a more holistic approach to understanding even local experiences and could see that our shared colonial history as Africans had made us more alike than different . I started looking more for subtle cultural similarities than the assumed differences some ethnographies may project about Africa and Africans. Our middle-class values were invariably shaped by French and British cultural sensibilities, and our regard for education and social mobility was surprisingly similar. Coming to America provided for us a big opportunity to see different cultural orientations and worldviews at play and even to express those shared cultural experiences. Anthropology illuminated for me how one’s cultural background shapes one’s encounter with and interpretation of another culture. Generally speaking, one of the main issues that confront many travelers or visitors to a new location is culture shock, and many Africans who come to America are no exception—especially as they try to adjust to a new sense of self. Many Africans, and particularly those who come to America for study, come already socialized into a culture that tends to socially elevate and respect those with a Western education. It is indeed the search for a better Western education that brings them to America in the first place, and for many Africans, their arrival in America is a follow-up experience that began in another education system. In many African countries, Western-educated members of society tend to define the shape that modernity takes in their local communities. A Western education has for a long time been the best avenue through which many Africans access the advantages of modernity, often expressed through the kinds of jobs that are considered fitting for people of different education levels.1 Tilling the land, especially by using one’s hands, is reserved for those who never went to school. House help or bar tending is considered the domain of those with little or no education, and security guards are those who have no education and who still have a strong tie to their traditional cultures.2 Because African formal education is mostly structured within an elitist system that takes on a pyramid shape (the largest number of participants at the bottom and the lowest number at the top), those with a higher education tend to have specific values that dissuade them from engaging in what would be considered “manual labor.” Such labor is reserved for those who could not advance in the education system beyond elementary level. This disparity and the clearly marked boundaries between those with a higher education and those without tend to be reconfigured when Africans move to America. Many Africans are amazed to see people who did not go beyond high school, and who do not work in a white-collar job, driving better cars than Africans with higher education. Others are shocked to learn that they have to do all their household chores for themselves including cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, and even pumping gas into their vehicles at gas stations. Those who were used to having house help back in their homes in Africa are shocked to realize that daycare is very expensive and that they, as a result, may be forced to do the babysitting and cooking for their own children. Others, because of their visa status and economic needs, find themselves working the jobs they would have despised if they...

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