Hospitality 1

During our visit to South Africa in March 2004, all four members of our "pod" – the Sharing Cultures Project Teaching Team from Chicago – sat around the fire at Tsitsikama National Park and discussed our own personal revelations in terms of one particular word. For me, that word was hospitality, one that came to mind almost immediately upon landing: we were met us at the airport, wined, dined, dubbed experts, and revered in ways different than anything I had ever experienced. In addition to the warm welcome shows us by our hosts, I found many of the folks we encountered to exude a sensibility of hospitality foreign to me. We were given rolls, tea and juice following our visit to Ubumbano, the child care center; Suzanne and I were presented with warm pineapple Fanta following our purchase of many folk prints from a local artist. Overall, the country of South Africa and its people seemed tuned into the notion of hospitality – the welcoming of strangers – in a way I had not ever experienced before.

This initial attachment to a word or idea incited interest as I examined what I saw happening not only during the time of our South African visit, but also in the larger patterns of communication and behaviors that both students and instructors engaged in. Almost immediately, with only the most basic Martha Stuart-like definition of hospitality, I began to argue that hospitality would help us better understand what the Sharing Cultures Project was about. Hospitality was somehow at the root of what we were doing and hospitality would, then, provide us with a new way of understanding why sharing cultures really matters.