Most Achievements of our Daily Life We Owe to Foreign Countries

In our work we recognize more and more how many people suffer from becoming suppressed culturally as they or their parents have migrated or escaped from wars or starving because of the climate change in the countries of their origin.

The main culture will tend to impose on them a lot of judgements as they just can't be the same as the local people, and integration will mean that they have to deny their personality which includes they have to suppress themselves continuously.

Living in a surrounding culture different from the origin will imply to speak in a language to which one is not at all emotionally connected, it will always be difficult to express oneself correctly in grammatical terms, and opening the mouth to speak will almost always immediately show by the accent one reproduces the non-belonging to the predominant society, which will determine the further communication and chances in the predominant society.

It will imply to eat and drink food one is not used to, to wear clothing in a dressing order one may not appreciate, to follow a legislative maybe even opposite to the one of the origin, and meet communication rules e.g. in public transports one has never heard of - altogether to meet completely unknown conditions, and to experience continuously that the personal way to communicate, to move, the personal needs and skills, the personal professional training degrees will never fulfill what the predominant society wants individuals to be.

Some of our patients will also have gone through xenophobic or neo-fascist attacks towards them, so they live in constant fear of what others might think of them or even of another violent aggression, only because of the colour of their eyes, skin and hair, and also if they grew up with the predominant language because maybe one parent forms part of the predominant society, so they even have no accent when they speak in the predominant language, but will have trouble e.g. to rent an apartment or to apply to an employer as soon as they give their first or last name, or their address which is a very clear and constant experience of rejection.

Awareness of the presence of multiple achievements from which the predominant culture benefits, contributes to the patients' self confidence and self-esteem for a lot.

Extremely small would be the choice if one would have to reduce oneself on eating and using only what is exclusively originally generated by a main culture.

It is most effective e.g. in group work e.g. to point at the multiple types of food which everybody might consider as normal in everyday life, such as coffee, wheat rolls, rye, sugar, chicken eggs for breakfast, fruit jelly/marmelade, bananas, apples, grapes, peaches, prunes, potatoes, Tomatoes ,carrots, pumpkins etc. which came to the predominant society from foreign countries.

E. g. coffee becomes cultivated in Brazil, wheat first became cultivated in Egypt, and imported to Europe by the Romans, the same happened to rye, and from there to America.

Sugar is a product which is present in many fruits, and first became extracted and concentrated in Siria, and the original marmelade became produced in Persia, where the word "mermela" would signify "quince" which used to be the first kind of fruit known to become processed in order to transform it to marmelade, because of its sweetness, it's wonderful scent, and because of their high pectin content.

Wheat is a Sweet grass from the Middle East, as well as rye is, also if nobody ever would suspect that the breakfast roll is an invention from a substance gained by the grains of a plant coming from a foreign country, which had to become ground, mixed with water to become a dough, which in the sun started to ferment forming bubbles, and then, when it became baked, became bread.

Malus pumila is much sweeter than malus sylvestris -the first type of apples is sweet and watery, and comes from Asia, the wild apple malus sylvestris is very hard, and becomes sweet only in the winter when stored in the attic in the straw. It was previously used to make jams because it has a very high pectin content, and it exudes a beguiling scent when ripe, and today's apples are a cross between the Asian and Germanic ancestors.

Grapes first come from Persia and became brought to other countries by the Romans in their military invasions.

The Romans have assaulted, invaded and enslaved their neighboring peoples and appropriated their cultural achievements, and exported them to their military colonies, including peaches, sweet apples, sweet prunes, apricots, grapes, their most elaborated bathhouse cultures, their religion, their way of administration which until nowadays continues to exist almost in the very administrative structures of those ancient times.

No New York sky scraper would ever exist without the invention of cement, which the Romans have brought to Europe from Asia Minor, where some shepherds experienced that the white stones they used to group around their campfire, would first crumble, and then, if it rained afterwards, were baked together into a tightly clumped mass - quicklime was born, the basis of any modern building and in ancient times the most important substance of all the roman villas, thermal baths and aqueducts.

Most steep house roofs of nowadays will consist of tiles, an achievement from Roman times - before this houses had straw roofs.

For breakfast, in many countries, chicken eggs or pancakes containing chicken eggs are necessary, just as much as in baked biscuits, cakes and many other dishes.

The modern house wife would never be able to dispose of such a thing, if not the red junglefowl would have been domesticated on the Indian subcontinent and become transported to Europe 3000 a.c. It is obvious that also nowadays foreign kitchen cultures such as Italian Pizza or Greek Gyros have become part of our gastronomic food, whilst on the other hand immigrants resp. guest workers from these countries are treated like second-class citizens, and many times we meet as sirian bus drivers people who had studied medicine in their home countries, or medical technical assistants who have completed a university degree in aircraft construction in Romania.

Pointing out at all these achievements is a good contribution to the integration and the healing of those who were born different from the main culture and contribute to the respect of those who may concern other cultures as pitiful or disdain them.

It is also useful in political discussions when society becomes fascist, intolerant or hostile towards other cultures, against refugees and migrated people to do so, as it will change the atmosphere immediately.

Sabine Mattner | Social Worker in Cologne, Germany and Member at Large

Xxx

Xxx

Ulrich Sollmann | Member at Large

Xxx

Xxx

Ulrich Sollmann | Member at Large

Xxx

Xxx

Ulrich Sollmann | Member at Large