Cultural Sensitivity

We’ve had quite a few lectures on cultural sensitivity during our training, both here and before we left England, so, the other day, when we came across a large gathering walking slowly down the road we assumed it was a funeral procession. Remembering what we’d been told about how to show respect, we pulled the car over, switched off the engine and sat quietly with suitably serious faces on. As they were ahead of us, we didn’t actually see anyone, just the backview of the crowd as they made their way over the hill. A couple of men pushing their bikes came past us, and gave us a bit of a funny look so I wondered if we were doing the right thing or not, but then an ambulance came up too and stopped just ahead of where we were and so we were reassured and just sat tight. After a while we thought we’d creep and peep to see how far they’d got so we drove on but there was nobody there! There wasn’t really anywhere they could have turned off and no church around so we were a bit puzzled, and more so when a matola minibus came whizzing past from the opposite direction too! We carried on, nice and slow just in case, but there was no coffin, no mourners, no big crowd. Round the next bend though, all became clear…there was a group of ladies but they were now walking single file along the edge of the road – as we came up behind then we noticed that many of them had extraordinarily big bums - so we concluded that the ‘crowd on the hill’ had probably just been the slow but sure progress of some big-assed mammas on their way home!