La Korité, Building Community in the Land of Rainbows

I have never lived anywhere with quite as many rainbows as Mauritius. They appear often, rising suddenly out of the sea, arching over the mountains, and soaring across the sky.

Rainbows symbolize diversity and unity, many colors bending together. It is fitting that rainbows grace the landscape of Mauritius. It is a small nation with a surprising diversity of people — ethnicities and religions — who live in harmony. Yet rainbows are fragile and fleeting. So too is diversity on the island.

At a gathering of changemakers in Mauritius, I heard that people have a high degree of tolerance but also live with a great degree of separation. The rich live within the walls of gated compounds, people picnic on the beach but with their own families, expats and locals work together but don’t mix much socially. The growing economic disparity, as traditional industries of textiles and sugar fade, is feeding a steady rise in drug use and petty crime. The lack of belonging is also visible in the trash strewn on the streets and beautiful shores of the island — beer cans and snack wrappers are tossed with indifference within sight of trashcans. What can be done?

Community comes from the word communion, which is related to the words to make common. To build community, we need communion — the mingling of people who have a sense not just of tolerance, but of oneness. Oneness is about unity, not uniformity. It is where diversity and difference harmonize to create beauty and value. Harmonizing differences is difficult but it can be done.

In the US, I repeatedly encountered examples of how bridges can be built across divides. In Greensboro, NC, the Interactive Resource Center (http://interactiveresourcecenter.org/) gets homeless people into jobs by building their networks. It is hard to get a job when you don’t have an address or have been in trouble. IRC recruits professionals who volunteer to teach their clients skills, like preparing a resume and using a computer. Invariably, the individuals connect on a human level and the professionals open up their networks and lend their reputation to vouch for the homeless men and women they have gotten to know. In a different zone, in the face of an epidemic of police shootings of black males in Los Angeles, civil rights attorney Constance Rice realized a trigger was fear (https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/12/05/368545491/civil-rights-attorney-on-how-she-built-trust-with-police). White police officers feared black males, even children. So she created an effort that got the police officers to interact with minority kids, to hang out and play hoops. Here too, interaction erased divisions and mistrust. The police grew to better read signals, reduce their fear, and engage in new ways.

To build community, then, we need safe spaces to connect and interact across the lines of ethic, religious, and economic differences. From these come relationships and trust. Relationships grow networks across boundaries, weaving ever broader webs of relationships and trust that spark new possibilities. These spaces, I want to emphasize, are not the same as public parks, beaches, fairs, and malls that people navigate with those they came with. Rather, they are places where people can interact with those they don’t know in orchestrated, facilitated and structured ways. This then leads to more fluid and ongoing interactions that shift mindset and behaviors. When we get to know others, our biases fade, our trust grows, and community emerges.

There are people all over the world who work to foster community. My colleague Katleho Mohono at the African Leadership University is one of these people. He hosts get-togethers at his home, bringing together Mauritians and expats for potlucks and conversation. Min Lee created the Mauritian Innovators Network to bring together changemakers from across the island and sectors. Stan Gryskiewicz created AMI some four decades ago to bring together innovators across organizations. These gatherings are NOT conferences or committees but are intimate, inclusive, and structured boundary-spanning interactions. Kat, Min, and Stan are rainbow makers who foster diverse communities.

In Mauritius, I encountered the Kreol word La Korité , which means harmony. It is a term that is fading from use and whose ethos is needed the world over, now more than ever. We need to revive the practice of creating korité and community. We need to spend more time with those different from ourselves. We need more rainbow makers who bring us together, even here in the land of rainbows. For though the world is far more beautiful with fragile rainbows, it is utterly fragile without the bonds of a vibrant community.