Interaction with someone new - Kenneth

I have met so many new people in my life and I always see to it it that I am helped or help them in so many ways. Yesterday 25th February 2020 in the evening, I had to talk to a local and find out more about the transport system in Kigali. Me and my teammates have been spending so much money on transport just because we don’t speak the local language, people always take advantage of us. During my interaction with this girl, I noticed how her local language accent mixes up with the English she was speaking, I always think this is the case for me too so I always slow down while speaking and make sure I speak one word at a time so that my words are clear. Since this her her home land I let her be the driver and just listened while asking important questions if need arose. I have studied some history of Rwanda so i know there are certain topics that I shouldn’t be asking her. After talking for a few minutes, I invited my teammates to listen to what she was saying because we all needed her knowledge about using buses. She took us somewhere where we got bus cards and directed us to the bus park. Now we wont be spending much more on transport anymore.

Generally, when i interact with new people, I sometimes need a strategy because we might pronounce certain words differently, we might speak english in our local accents for instance while I talking to Julius my new teammate, he pronounces the word bus and bos, so each time i say bus he couldn’t get it so I resulted to saying “bos”, this way, he was able to quickly know what I mean. its always better to know a brief history of their countries so that you know what topics are off limits. It’s also better to learn how they greet, do they bow, shake hands or something else. This is what I generally do when speaking to someone from a different culture.