BERI CONSULTANCY

woensdag 30 mei 2007

Shey EB, one of the guest speakers during the diversity debate/conference held in the Law Faculty of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in March 2007

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My articles

Cultutural awareness and the plight of new Erasmus students in Leuven
09 -2011

As a newly arrived international student, you will be faced with a multitude of changes, decisions and adjustments. How to deal with the multitude of changes around you: a new environment, culture, different people, …? How to deal with feelings of homesickness? How to learn to communicate in this new environment? We will introduce you into this cultural adaptation process starting from his own experiences.

Change. The only thing permanent in life is change.
Resistance to change.
You don’t need to feel self-conscious about your resistant to change. Most people are. Humans are creatures of habit that feel safe and secure by the presence of consistency and predictability.
We get scared of change because it affects our consistency and predictability. (what we are used to)
How we were brought up in our own settings, home family condominium.

When your life is thrown out of balance, you’re more vulnerable to experiencing feelings of anxiety, sadness, even depression. Why? Because when change occurs, an ending or loss is created—a loss of comfort, routine, position in life, role in family, and/or community. Loss then becomes a catalyst to experiencing emotional discomfort and pain.
Resistance to Change and negative loops in earlier phases of life. Ever been bitten by a dog when young? How do you feel now when you see a dog?

While there may be times when you’re thrown for a loop by the changes in your life, other people seem more adept at adapting to change. What’s their secret? Why are some people more adaptable to change than others.
Because they immediately see the positive side of change. For example, when a father is confronted by the wedding of his only daughter, he may say to himself, “I’m not losing a daughter, I’m gaining the son that I never ha d.

But therein lies the key to effectively coping with the changes in your life. Being able to reframe your thinking and attaching positive meaning to the changes you experience in your life will enable you to cope with change. If you view change as a threat, you will experience fear and anxiety and most likely be resistant to the change you are about to undergo. But being able to reframe the meaning that you attach to the changing event or circumstance, you will be able to transform the feelings about and your attitude towards the changing event or circumstance, thereby reducing or eliminating altogether your resistant to the change.

Humans (cultures) as Metaphor of the formatted/unformatted/reformatted disk, and accessibility/inaccessibility to the hard drive.

So, when you’re experiencing a negative feeling about a change in your life, ask yourself what the change means to you. Do you find yourself focusing on the loss caused by the change? Do you attach some meaning other than loss to the change you’re experiencing? What feelings does this change stimulate within yourself? If the feelings that are being stimulated are negative, what new meaning can you apply to the changing event or circumstance that can neutralize or transform those negative feelings?
Think out of the box and be creative (movie basketball)
Intercultural communication.
Signs and symbolism. How universal?
Some practical common examples from here and without
Greetings, hugs, 3/4chick kisses, handshake, smiles...

Home sickness
Checklist to feel relieved of homesickness

1. Commit to reframing the meaning of the change you are experiencing.
2. Allow yourself to feel homesick. Some students may not want to admit how much they miss home. They may perceive their feelings as immature and get angry at themselves. If you feel homesick, give yourself a break and understand that your feelings are normal and not immature. No matter how old people get, major life changes are traumatic, and you are going through a major life change.
3. Communicate (in moderation) with your family. Your family hasn't left your life. Call and email them and talk about how you are feeling. Remember, being a parent of a college freshman can be an emotionally difficult experience as well. At the same time, though, don't use your family as a crutch. Keep in touch, but you need to move in with your new life as well. A visit home can help with homesickness, but don't go home too often or you will have trouble integrating into your new life.4. Avoid rash decisions. When people are depressed or overwhelmed, they sometimes make big decisions that are unwise. This is not the time to drop out, transfer to a different school, end a long term relationship, or anything else of major consequence. Wait until you are feeling better before you make life changing decisions.
5. Design your room to your taste like you never did at home because of parental limitat ion.
6. Do whatever thing you had wanted to do while at home but felt restrained (in my case it was football or soccer)7. Commit to seeking the support of people who care about you.8. Commit to joining support groups that focus on the event or circumstance that you’re trying to cope with.9. Commit to asking for help.10. Commit to allowing yourself to work through the emotions awakened by the change that you’re experiencing.11. Commit to participating in activities that enable you to regain a sense of control over some portion(s) of your life.
12. Keep your language and behaviour normal and cordial to everyone
13. Mind your hygiene, noise, unnecessary guests at odd hours, phone call hours when sharing a room with a mate.
14. Free yourself from xenophobic ideas, expand your club of friends, come closer to fellow students in order to know them better (you can never know someone from a distance, hence you’ll be stuck in your small world which sometimes be very traumatising.
15. At a later stage, get closer to students from other countries and exchange stories, drinks, ideas etc etc with them. That will help the universality of the university go through you as you go through the university itself.

http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/pages/partreplux03.htm

My article about "the usage and social implications of the word Allochton in belgium. When does one stop being considered an "allochton" in this context? findout my opinion in this link.( Written in Flemish) Het woord allochtoon. wanneer wordt men allochtoon af?

http://www.foyer.be/

Afrikaanse vrouwen en “nieuwe migraties”

Emmanuel Beri Ngaikpu

Stafmedewerker Foyer

antropoloog

This article is in Flemish and can be read via this link:

http://www.foyer.be/

Debate

Thursday 22 november 2007-11-22

“Illegals don’t exist”!

Katholieke Univerteit Leuven

Panel member: Emmanuel Beri Ngaikpu

I’ll like to highlight and stress the fact that illegal humans don’t exist and it is illegal to call a particular group of people as illegals. Hence the illegality of categorising some groups of people in the society as illegals should be strongly considered a punishable act. The mere fact of thinking that some legal humans are illegal, immediately pushes these people into the margins of society, thereby creating the illegal situation they operate in. Thus, it is the situation they live in which can be considered illegal and not the people!

If the situation they live in is illegal, then it is as well illegal on the part of the government and other institutions to allow them live in these situations.(not respecting basic human rights) The law stipulates that persons living in precarious and illegal situations must be entitled to some basic services such as medical care, shelter and food (education for children younger than 18 years).

Migration is as ancient as the history of mankind. Through migration, the modern world has experienced several multitudes dynamics of changes. Our capitalist drive, materialism and the thirst to graduate from poverty in this globalising dynamics of our times, have pushed humans to seek for various survival strategies on the fast lane. This fast lane is as deadly as it is curative. To get on this fast lane of survival, some legal human beings have chosen for the illegal means. The illegal means of surviving, at least as linked to migration and migrants, is very complex and hard nut to crack.

To make it more specific and focused, how do these illegal machines and their dungeons operate between Africa and Europe. How these processes interact with each other to create illegal conditions legal people live in a legal entity.

The role of the African woman is gradually becoming more and more visible in the process of constructing illegal avenues through which some people go through. The African woman has been rather late comer in this domain for several reasons. (Socio-cultural and anthropological).

Meanwhile, other women in some part the world such as Philippines, China and Taiwan, and Eastern Europe have been indulged in the illegal business for quite a while. Some of these countries have even been termed “women donors”.

All these global mechanisms are the root causes of the illegal situations of people in places like Belgium.

Despite the difficulty in dealing with this issue at national level, there are, nevertheless some institutions that exist to assist legal people living in illegal situations as the government attempts to harness the situation.