How to Teach Culture

How can I facilitate group learning about culture?

Bafa Bafa

This activity is designed to allow participants to experience cultural misunderstanding in a fun and engaging manner, allowing an important debrief in which participants can take their experience in the activity and apply it to real life. This can be done as an introduction to further study, or as a stand-alone activity. Other versions of this activity exist for corporate training, but this version is especially suited to educational settings.

Planning Considerations for Bafa Bafa

• This activity can be completed with groups aged 11 (or so) and above, including adults, in groups sized from 15 people up to 150 people or more.

• Bafa Bafa requires about 90 minutes to complete.

• Participants should be divided in 4-6 groups.

• Each group will be given a different "product." Products can be objects available in your environment. For example, paperclips, cups, books, really anything. It is important that the number of products each groups receives varies widely. For example, if you have four groups, one group might be given 3 cups, the second group 15 paper clips, the third group 7 books, and the final group 25 ping pong balls. As the number of participants and groups changes, these numbers should be altered (more participants, more product) but it is necessary to have a big difference between the number of products given to each group.

Preparing your Group

• Participants should be divided into 4-6 groups. Select "presidents" for each country. In general the job of the president is to teach 5 words in another language to the other members of their group, which are referred to as countries. If possible, one can choose presidents who know five words in another language, but if this is not possible, presidents can look up five words online (or even make up five words in a new language.)

• These groups should be a place in which participants will be comfortable. Generally, it is a good idea to let groups self-sort into "countries" by letting them choose which president to work with. It is okay if the "countries" have different numbers of participants. If participants self-sort by first language, friend groups, or even race, it is okay for this activity.

• Plan for a "trading zone" where all trading will occur. During trading, all participants will be in this determined space, so it is ideally an open space that allows for free movement.

• During the debrief you will need a white board or poster paper or the ability to project written ideas on a screen for all to see.

• Give each group one sheet from the BafaBafa Game Guidelines Sheets. Advise groups of their goals:

  1. 1. First, they need to learn five words in their country's language and they need to learn the cultural attributes of their country. (Allow time for this BEFORE sharing the second goal.)

     2. Second, they need to trade with other countries in a "trading zone" with this goal: to get an equal number of each country's product. (If at any point in the activity, a team achieves this goal, let the know that they must try to get the most of each product, but still in equal numbers)

Trading

Trading occurs in a series of "rounds," usually around 5. The following rules apply to all rounds:

1. All people and product must enter the trading zone every round.

2. Participants can only speak the "language" of their country.

3. Participants must practice the cultural attributes of their country.

During each round all participants enter the trading zone with their products. After each trading round, groups should return to their home countries to see the results of their trading, and to strategize for the next round.

In the first round, most teams have no strategy. As the rounds progress, teams will usually have a clear strategy to try to get certain products. Participants may complain that other participants are not being fair or they may ask if "XY or Z" is allowed. Remind them of the three rules, the ONLY rules. It is VERY common that by the end of the activity some participants resort to stealing. As much as possible, remind groups that they are required to speak only their country's language and to use their country's cultural attributes. In most cases, there is a lot of laughter and silliness during trading.

The Debrief

Start by having teams return to their home countries. Give each country one copy of the Bafa Bafa Refection. Allow 10 minutes for groups to fill out questions 1 through 5 on their reflection sheets. For question 5, groups should fill in the name of each country across the top of the chart, and then list adjectives that describe the behavior of members of that country.

After groups have had adequate time to complete the five questions, read each question aloud and record group responses on one large format where all participants can see (poster paper, white board, projected, etc.)

Generally, groups will answer question 1 by saying they felt uncomfortable, stressed, anxious, frustrated, and other negative emotions. When answering questions 2, they will likely report feeling comfortable, safe, and at ease in their home country. This is intentional. Questions 3 and 4 provide a great opportunity to talk about when and how we shed elements of our culture or even adapt/abandon our language.

Question 5 reveals the big idea of the activity. Take turns have groups describe the behavior of each country. Generally, groups will use negative words to describe the behavior of other countries in the trading zone. It is important to draw a direct connection between the feelings that they reported in question 1, how the felt in the trading zone, to how they describe others. It is human nature to default to negative words and emotions when stressed, frustrated, and anxious. Being out of our "cultural safe zone" activates those feelings.

After revealing the descriptions of the behavior for each country, ask each country to share their cultural attributes. Give participants several minutes to answer questions 6 and 7. Share out responses. In general, participants will see that negative feelings about other countries were at least partially a result of a lack of understanding the cultural attributes.

Extend the activity to real life

Point out to participants that in real life, cultures have way more than 3 cultural attributes. Lead a discussion with participants asking them to extrapolate their activity experience.

• Imagine changing the names of the "countries" at the top of the charts they completed to world religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc.

• Imagine the names of columns to be regions of the US.

• Imagine the names of the columns to be towns surrounding your location.

It is important to help participants recognize that though there are real differences between cultures of different countries, we all have a culture, and cultural attributes can vary from one home to the next in addition to one country to the next.

But what are real life cultural attributes?

In the activity, "countries" were given cultural attributes, but what are real cultural attributes that cause people to differ?

Pass out Dimensions of Culture handout. Ask participants to consider where they sit on various continuums of the cultural dimensions. As a facilitator you might share an example of a time that you thought differently from someone else about something. For example, here are two stories I share.

"I found myself engaged in an argument with a close friend. During our argument she used the phrase, "universal truths." This caused me to think about the Cultural Dimension of universalism vs particularism. I realized that I sit in a different place from her on this continuum. In her deeply rooted belief set, there are indisputable rights and wrongs. For me, I always want to know the particular context of a situation to think about right vs. wrong. This difference accounted for our whole argument."

"During the pandemic, there was a huge tension between various groups of our population around masks, vaccines, etc. This was a very explicit illustration of the tension between individualism and collectivism. In the US, individualism has surged in the last few decades. Societies and individuals who are individualist believe that individual freedoms and beliefs are paramount. On the contrary, collectivist-oriented societies and individuals believe that the group's needs come before the individual. During the pandemic, individualist leaning persons saw masks and vaccine mandates as limitations of their personal freedoms. Collectivist leaning individuals saw these same measures as necessary public health measures that would help society. The tension between the two was a very clear illustration of people who think differently on this cultural dimension."