An International Cultural Meeting of Youth

Cultural mediation helps local and foreign citizens relate better with each other. It helps them understand their different backgrounds and interact positively with each other. “The main characterizing elements of cultural mediators are communicative competence, empathy, active listening and good knowledge of both the hosting country and country of origin (culture, laws, traditions, etc.)” (“What is,” par. 1). Cultural encounter is the experience of meeting and interacting between people in a cross-cultural visit from different cultural backgrounds. My first cultural encounter occurred when I volunteered in the first International Cultural Meeting of Youth, which happened in March 2011 for the first time in Qatar. There were around 15 to 20 French students who took Arabic and came to learn the language better, and some of them wanted to work in Qatar. My social role was to guide them during their visit and host them through this voluntary organization.
When they arrived we greeted them and asked them, “ What do you want to see in Qatar, and what did you hear before about Qatar?” They told us that they didn’t know about Qatar until their Arabic professor told them about it. They visited, and they were thinking that Qatar is so boring with sand and that they came only for an educational purpose. Also, they came because of the big attention that Qatar has for sport. Perhaps they were feeling some cultural shock.

We took them to several places in Qatar because this meeting was supposed to exchange cultural values and norms. We took them to Katara, The Pearl, the Islamic Museum, Fanar, Cultural Village, malls, Doha Land, and Souq Wagif. While we were doing these tours, social interaction happened between us because we were presenting ourselves as a model of Qatar society, so they started to ask questions about our customs, traditions, symbols, and why we do certain things. They were really open-minded and smiled and said hello to everyone. When we were in the bus some of the girls opened the window and said hi to everyone in the other cars, so the others (young boys) understood their greetings differently and chased us, and we had a big problem. I explained to the girls that we don’t do this here in Qatar because it will be understood in not only friendship but as an odd invitation because our cultural expectations are different.

The French people really loved Souq Wagif the most because it combines many different things: shopping, entertainment, showing different performers, and it is multicultural where there are many things from outside Qatar. Souq Wagif represents the cultural heritage of Qatar. This imaginative place has an awesome scene for taking pictures. While we were there some of them took pictures of us, and we told them not to put our pictures on Facebook but to keep them for themselves, yet we weren’t really comfortable with that. They were violating our private boundaries. One week after they went back, all our pictures were in Facebook, and we are not allowed to put our pictures on public display, so we told them to remove them. It was really trying because it took a lot of time to check on every single one of the 35 of them who were displaying our pictures. If our parents had known about it, we would have been facing a big problem because we save our pictures, and no one can view them online. The French people didn’t understand that because our public and private boundaries are different than theirs.
They really enjoyed their time, and they were shocked that we are really kind comparing to the other people from other countries, but I really find them kind, also. I think they still have some wonders and unanswered questions about our country. They didn’t understand the cultural structure because I think they stayed for a short time. They had many questions for me about Qatar, about our society. There isn’t enough education outside about Qatar. That’s why our cultural exchange showed them that Qatar is really a beautiful, unique country. In addition, we spread our cultural religion, identity and showed the right picture of Qatari people.


Work cited:
“What is cultural mediation.” Immmiweb. n. d. web. 2 Nov.2011.