My Interaction with Geoffrey

Introduction

During my time in secondary school, I met and interacted with a lot of people with a different set of cultural values the major contributor being the fact that Uganda has over 50 tribes each with their own culture. The interaction that stood out for me was with a friend called Geoffrey Ziwambazza. He is from the “Baganda” tribe and this is the largest tribe in Uganda, but it was not the case for Geoffrey. His father was a “Muganda” (Someone from the Baganda tribe) but he’s mother was from the US. He was born and raised in the US and this is what made our cultural values a fair bit different.

Interaction

Geoffrey came to Uganda to join a boarding school as a punishment from his parents for something I can’t quite remember. He looked different from the rest of the schoolmates primarily because he was at the time what I thought to be a white male, but he kept on correcting me that he is mixed race and not white. He sometimes wanted to be referred to as a Ugandan and was trying to learn as much about Uganda as possible. One thing I remember about him that surprised me and was a bit funny at the same time; there was a time he wanted to ask me why some Ugandans were blacker/darker than others. So he started the sentence normally and when it got to the part where he had to mention the word “black”, he stopped looked over his shoulders and whispered it in my ears. He thought that it would be offensive and yet it is something quite normal in Uganda since their are many tribes and some have particularly darker people than others (my tribe being of them).

Specific Cultural values at play

Geoffrey a times wanted to be treated differently which was understandable, for example he never wanted to shower cold water in the morning and they had to warm some for him, he was exempted from doing certain assignments like East African history because he wouldn’t; know the answers etc. This indicates that in terms of Rules, he leans towards Particularism and not Universalism. It also partly indicates that in terms of time, he is a long term planner since he knew that studying East African history would be of little use a year or two later.

Conclusion

In the end, Geoffrey went back to the US but left a big impact on my cultural awareness and I’m sure he learnt a lot too from Uganda. He’s coming to Uganda was supposed to be a punishment but he liked it so much that the following Summer break, he came to visit Uganda by his own will.