This article reminded me of some of the nonverbal communication codes I learned during my homestay with a Rwandan family. One of them was an eye contact code. Growing up, my mother would always tell my sister and I to use eye contact when talking with other people and that it’s rude to look away when someone is talking you to. Naturally, whenever I’m having a conversation with someone else, especially with my mom or a teacher, I always try to return their gaze because I’ve been taught that it means you are really listening and giving them your full attention and respect. However, during my homestay I learned that in Rwandan culture, it is seen as disrespectful (specifically a defiance of authority) for youth to look an elder in the eye when talking to them. Whenever my host father and mother would talk with me, I would try and remember to avert my gaze to show my respect for them. Another code I learned about during my homestay was a gesture code. In Rwanda, the gesture of using your pointer finger to say “come here” is extremely disrespectful and offensive. Instead if you want to get someone to “come here” you should use both of your hands and arms in a larger and more welcoming gesture.<\/p>\n
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This article reminded me of some of the nonverbal communication codes I learned during my homestay with a Rwandan family. One of them was an eye contact code. Growing up, my mother would always tell my sister and I to use eye contact when talking with other people and that it’s rude to look away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1505,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1505"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions\/505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}