Although we aspire to becoming a multicultural congregation, most of the people who attend West Shore Church have not experienced living anywhere that multicultural encounters are a
daily reality. As day tripping tourists to Tangier, Morocco and to Gibraltar, (a British territory that guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea on Spain's southwest coast), we were more conscious than ever of how rarely we experience any routinely multicultural daily life.
American's isolation in our cars makes it even more difficult to experience the multicultural realities that we do have. Europeans of all classes spend more time together on public transportation and in public squares. On one bus ride in Gibraltar, we rode alongside two British working class guys with Cockney accents on their way home, two Spanish speaking moms with five hyperactive little girls in tow, an English schoolgirl in a sharply pressed uniform, and a Muslim woman in a full burka, with only her eyes showing. In Tangier, English is the fourth language in use, below Arabic, French, and Spanish. Despite a significant American and British presence in the city historically and today, the road signs and street names are in Arabic and Spanish.
Everywhere we have been in Spain, in any public square except those surrounded residential enclaves, we have encountered multiple languages and cultures, above and beyond those represented by tourists.
A lot of the world lives this as part of daily life. Only the largest countries with the biggest populations have significant numbers of their people isolated in monocultures. Unfortunately, these monocultural countries have the most people, money, and power.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Gibralter, Tangier Morocco
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