Wycliffe UK blog

“The Visitor” (2008) is a film about a professor who arrives at his apartment in New York, only to find Tarek Khalil, a Syrian musician, and Zainab, a Senegalese street vendor living there.  He sympathizes with the situation of the illegal immigrants and invites the couple to stay with him.  It’s a rich story of friendship across cultures, with many insightful one-liners and cameos that effectively needles Western ignorance. 

One amusing scene that stands out is about a New York woman buying wares from Zainab at the market, and trying to make conversation.  She notes Zainab’s african background with, “Oh, where are you from?”  To which Zainab replies, “I’m from Senegal”.  The New Yorker stumbles on with, “Ah yes, I was in Cape Town last year.  Lovely, isn’t it?”

As the New Yorker departs the market, Zainab’s neighbouring stall holder asks, “How far is Senegal from Cape Town?”  “About 8,000 km.” replies Zainab, with a sigh.

Trying so hard to ‘connect’ but failing catastrophically. 

It can be a real challenge for churches in the West to connect with individuals from different cultures.  Even with the variety of nationalities living in towns and cities across the UK, it’s really easy for us to fall into the trap of labelling groups of people rather than considering the experiences of individuals.  How often do we talk about the, ‘situation in Africa’, without giving a moment’s thought to the fact that the 54 countries that make up this continent each contain a variety of cultures, languages and social conditions and a total population in excess of 1,000,000,000.

An idea

Next time you are speaking about connecting with different cultures, whether it’s in the context of encouraging individuals to consider going overseas, or simply trying to help your church reach out to the local estate; you could use the market scene from The Visitor as an effective illustration.  It’s an excellent scene for highlighting that we can often make assumptions, or speak from a position of ignorance, when we would be better to take some time to ask questions and listen to the experiences of the other person.

Could you play a part in making the connection?  Give the Story.

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Tags: Cross-cultural experiences, Film review

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Africa, Culture, Multimedia, Short-term. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.