Hannah Schiman (00:01):
Mr. Elliott Mann is a first year art teacher at Nixa High School. Prior to teaching in the United States, he spent years in Africa gaining a unique perspective about the world. I’m Hannah Shiman, and on December 8th I sat down with him and discussed his personal experience as abroad. Let’s take a listen. Why did you live in Morocco?
Elliott Mann (00:22):
Why did I live there? So I actually grew up in Africa. I moved there when I was six. My family moved there and I lived in a country called Botswana for about 10 years. And then I lived in a country called Kenya for two years, and then I came back to the States for university. It had always been a dream of mine to teach internationally and it had always been a dream to live in the Arab world and North Africa or the Middle East. And so yeah, that’s what I wanted to do and I was able to do it.
Hannah Schiman (00:54):
Do you see a pretty big contrast between your students in Morocco and your students here?
Elliott Mann (00:59):
Yes, it is huge. It’s really big. Culturally, it’s just very different. My Moroccan students there were generally really passionate. They have very strong opinions. I think they’re also very proud people and I don’t know. In contrast, I think people in the Midwest are very courteous and sometimes there’s not really as much a culture of debate. I think we avoid conflict at all costs in the Midwest, whereas in Morocco it’s very normal to debate and critique, and I wouldn’t necessarily call it conflict. They don’t view it as conflict, it’s just having a disagreement. And they’re very passionate. They’re very passionate about what they believe and what they think. As far as another difference, I would say I worked with a very wealthy demographic and my students were very classist.
Elliott Mann (02:04):
Morocco still kind of has a type of caste system. Social class is really important, the way that you treat people who you become friends with, who you interact with, who you marry, social class, education level, even down to in Morocco, there’s multiple people groups. They might have a different culture, different color, different language. And when I say color, I mean there’s certain people groups that have different skin color in Morocco, even though they’re both Moroccan. And so there’s definitely more pressure to marry within your tribe. And also it’s really different to how in the US we have this can-do mentality of it’s very hyper individualistic. You can make anything of yourself. It doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter who your family is. You can become whatever you want. And it’s not that way. In Morocco, they still put a lot of emphasis on social class and the family you come from.
Hannah Schiman (03:05):
Was that transition kind of difficult for you coming from America to Morocco and then back? Was that, I mean, obviously it’s a little different there.
Elliott Mann (03:16):
Yeah, it’s really different. I mean, it was very common for me to speak three different languages. In one day I would greet some people in Arabic because that was the only language they spoke. I would speak to some colleagues in English. I would joke around with some students in French because they also speak French there. I had French friends, Moroccan friends, Italian friends, Senegalese friends, Cameroonian friends coming to Springfield, everything’s in English. Everything there was in French or Arabic. So everything is really different, but I think the fact that I grew up this way, I had tools to adjust.
Hannah Schiman (03:53):
I feel like it’s a really common misconception when you’re like, oh, I’m from Africa. I think my mind, from what I know, I know I’m naive about this, but I’m just like, wow, he just lived in the desert. Can you explain to me what actually living in Africa was like?
Elliott Mann (04:09):
So what’s really different about the West in comparison to Africa is that Africa has thousands and thousands of people groups. It’s such a large continent. We can’t even conceive of the fact that even within one country, things could be really different from one town to another, even more so than in the States. Yeah, Missouri and California are different, but a lot of American values are similar. It’s not the same way in Africa. Africa is so large, it’s so diverse. Depending on which country you go to or grow up in is going to change your experience.
Hannah Schiman (04:44):
I’m trying to put this in perspective of something I’m familiar with. So 50 countries, 50 states, it’s pretty easy to get around the United States, whatever. Is that something that was common to travel a lot or have you traveled a lot?
Elliott Mann (04:58):
Right. It’s very hard to travel In Africa. It’s very, very hard because of the lack of infrastructure in Africa. Once you arrive and they see that you’re a westerner, they’re going to upcharge you. Most of the time, pretty much in almost every African country, you’re going to be up charged. So people will think, oh, Africa should be cheap. It’s actually pretty expensive to travel there. As a westerner, the likelihood of you not knowing the language and being ripped off or taken advantage of is incredibly high.
Elliott Mann (05:28):
Have to be very sharp and savvy. So I speak French really well, and I would travel outside of my city in Morocco, not just traveling in Morocco, but almost daily. People would try and take advantage of me. They would try and rip me off. They would if I entered a taxi, they wouldn’t use the meter and
Elliott Mann (05:49):
They would try and upcharge me. But because I knew the culture so well and spoke one of the languages, I could be like, yo, no, it’s normally this much. You’re overcharging me. And then the other factor that makes travel difficult in Africa is actually danger. There’s bandits in some places, like I backpacked a country called Moria. So I crossed the land border from Morocco into Mauritania, and they have military checkpoints where you have to give, we printed out 20 copies of our passport. We said where we’re going, how many days we’re staying there, why we’re there? And we printed out 20 of those. And at every military checkpoint we had to give one out and
Elliott Mann (06:33):
Then they would check us and then they would let us go. You can’t even drive on the roads at night in the country because of the threat of terrorism.
Elliott Mann (06:42):
They have Al-Qaeda cells in Mauritania. So that’s another privilege we enjoy in America is the freedom of movement anywhere in America, at any time, I can go whenever I want.
Elliott Mann (06:56):
There’snot going to be a military checkpoint. I’m not going to be harassed to give a bribe. When we lived in Botswana and we would go to South Africa because they saw our Botswana license plate, the police would stop us and harass us almost every single time for a bribe. Yeah, roads are not good. I’ve traveled throughout South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya. I went to Egypt on a trip. I backpacked martinia. And generally things are expensive. I takes a long time to travel, and it’s dangerous, especially as a single female.
Hannah Schiman (07:36):
That’s another question I had is that in America I will probably never experience what it’s like to be a minority. And I was just wondering if you were the minority, and if so, did that kind of change how you were treated? And not only that, your perspective on just people in general.
Elliott Mann (07:59):
Right, and every one of those countries, I was an ethnic minority, but depending on the country’s history and the culture of the country, it was more or less difficult. And Botswana, it was not hard to be an ethnic minority. Botswana was a protectorate of the uk. It wasn’t a proper colony. And the people were not treated poorly by the British. They were in South Africa, South Africa, they had an apartheid state. There was a lot of tension between race and a lot of crime is racially motivated. When we would go to South Africa, we wouldn’t walk on the street. You would be immediately targeted just because it would be assumed that you were of a higher social class. And what’s unique about South Africa is it’s very segregated. And I didn’t like that because Botswana was not racially segregated at my school, with Indians, with black Africans, with my other white friends, European friends, we didn’t have the same racial history and attention in Botswana that they do in South Africa, in Morocco. I mean, Morocco is a very racialized society. I don’t even think we know in the United States how most of the country thinks race is a really important factor. But in a lot of the world, and especially in Africa, instead of judging people solely off the base of their character, we have built that culture in America.
(09:26):
You use race as an identifier of what I think about you, how close I’ll get to you. And actually we don’t realize this as Americans, but a lot of countries are racialized like that. It’s not even that to be racist is to think you are either ethnically superior or that another ethnic group is racially inferior as much as considering race every day.
Elliott Mann (09:57):
What does that mean? Well, a lot of people, I still remember, I was in the northern part of Morocco. A lot of people think I’m French just because there are French people there. And I was walking on the beach in Northern Morocco and I know a little bit of Arabic and I walked by a young group of boys and under their breath he went, Fran, which means Frenchmen in the us. The way we would filter that through our lens, we wouldn’t necessarily say that’s racist, but it’s a racialized way of viewing people. If I were at harder house and a Chinese man or a Chinese looking man walked by me and I went a Chinese man, we would say, oh my gosh, that’s racist. But the role was reversed. I was an ethnic minority in Morocco and people were judging me based off of my race. I don’t think those young boys thought they were racially superior to me. But it’s a way of viewing everything through a racial lens that makes Morocco a racialized country.
Hannah Schiman (11:04):
I think it’s a really unique opportunity to get to talk to somebody who has had such a vastly different life. For me. I mean, I’ve lived in Nixon my whole life, this new house my whole life. I think it’s just really interesting to get a different perspective and somewhere else. So thank you so much.
Elliott Mann (11:22):
Yeah, you’re welcome.
