The Story Is About the Pilger Family
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The story is about the Pilger family, which has to relocate their lives out of the country for Mr. Pilgers job. The family of four whom we will be talking about is Dale, Nancy, Eric, and Christy. Dale gained the job of being the managing director for General Motors Corps the downside to it; its out of the country. The family all had to attend cross-cultural classes and trainings before they could make there move to Kenya. In doing the training, it helped provide them with information so they could prevent any foreign-transfer flops. Although they had theses trainings, the instructors did not always know how to teach them everything for the preparations. They also had separate trainings as well; Nancy was also instructed on the safety of the region. The kids were taught about more things from their parents; like sampling of foods that are popular there, how to ride the public buses, and speak some of their language.
The Pilgers son Eric seemed to have an ethnocentric attitude from my stand point. He seems to feel that his home countrys ways were the best and did not want to try anything different. Eric is a 16 year old boy who just received a new car, was not very happy about the transfer. There was one time he flat out said “Youll have to arrest me if you think youre going to take me to Africa.” (Lublin, 1992) This stands out to me as the young boy was not ready for the move and would rather stay in Ohio. After all the food samplings and the trainings on the country he reluctantly accepted. He was even thinking about becoming a volunteer possibly for wild game reserve. Although, his father did tell him if after a year of being there and he did not like it, he could return to his home state for his senior year of school. Christy his 14 year old sister, whos on the swim team, was also not happy about the transfer to another country. This meant that she had to leave her friends and the swim team to join the family. Like her brother, she also reluctantly accepted the fact that they were moving. She finally was thinking that moving to Kenya “no longer seems like a death sentence”. (Lublin, 1992) Christy did not complain like her brother did. She was more quite about her feels towards the move.
In Kenya I find it to be a monochronic culture based on the evidence of the first paragraph in the article. Mr. Pilger was thinking that he could just raise one finger to ask for a minute. As in Ohio this is acceptable to use, raising your index finger to show one minute. But, Dale was informed by a Kenyan Mr. Midamba that this was very offensive to his culture. Monochronic cultures enjoy being able to do one thing at a time. They do not value disturbance or any kind of interruptions while they are working on something. It is disrespectful to them. Some of the things that they do value are systematization and having precise timing and place for everything.
Mr. Pilger