Critical Reflection 2: Cultural Humility and the Ethnographic Approach

Cultural humility involves consistently working on “self evaluation and self critique” (Tervalon, Garcia 117) combined with the willingness to learn from others, accepting their beliefs, customs and their values. Cultural competence involves a detached mastery of theoretically finite body of knowledge — meaning it deals with the ability to both understand, communicate and interact with individuals across cultures. This includes learning more about different cultural practices and world views.

In the article “Close Encounter to the Human King,” Abraham Varghese uses very descriptive language about what he saw with the refugees to help the reader envision exactly what he was seeing at that time. For example, Varghese describes one of the men he assisted as “A man in his 70’s with gray hair and beard came in looking fit and vigorous. One eye was milky white and sightless, but the glint in his good eye was enough for two.” (Varghese 2) Here, the reader is able to envision the physical characteristics of this man, and be able to understand more of Varghese’s perceptive view. Varghese is able to demonstrate the conditions of his patients in the post-colonial hierarchy by not only using his descriptive language to exemplify the kind of conditions that the patients gone through, which already somewhat explains the disparages experienced by these people, but he also quotes one of the patients he assisted in saying “Doc, they treat refugees in other countries better than they treated us", which seems to point out the power imbalance quite clearly without having to repeat himself for the reader to understand. Some strategies and tools that I might want to practice in my observations and documentations of community engagement this semester includes: hearing out the community I am helping, closely to Varghese. This article showed me that sometimes even though we can heal physical ailments, the emotional ailments are important too. I think that speaking with the community and hearing what they have to say would be a positive outlet for them, and maybe make the environment their in a little better than it was before. I will also try to be a more attentive listener in these times. Although I very much care about what people have to say, sometimes I might miss things that are being said, which would allow me to understand the full picture about what's going on. The more I practice on being a more attentive listener, the better I can help the community I serve.