Written By Shawn O.
There are many ways to establish communication between people. I have always just thought “communication” meant opening your mouth to talk with another person. But I have come to understand that communication is much more than that. There are some lessons and emotions that words will never be enough to express or explain.
In 2015 I met a group of people from the US. Each of them came from different cultures and races. I showed them around my city and we spoke about the similarities and differences of our cultures. I enjoyed getting to know them and building relationships with them. This was the best experience I had before they left my country. I made new friends and new connections with people from a different country, culture and race. While I stayed in contact with them over the next few months, in particular with a colleague named David, I never realised that I would get the opportunity to travel to their country and have a similar exchange.
In August 2015, I travelled to America with my CEO to build a new partnership with an organisation in Tacoma. David opened up his home to me as a guest with his husband, Paul. When he was in South Africa, there was nothing that signalled to me that David was gay and now I was staying in the house of two white men. You have to understand my shock and, yes, on some level, fear. As a Coloured from South Africa and the klein karoo, this does not usually happen. The fear comes from whether they will treat you right because of all the news you see about how people with colour have been treated in America. We hear people say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but not judging can sometimes lead to danger. I am happy to say that Paul and David are two of the most amazing people I’ve ever met and they remain my friends till today.
It was through watching how they related with one another that I came to realise something new about communication. During my time in the US I saw how they treated each other in the house. Sometimes we see things on the TV that are not the same in real life and to have spent time with them and experience such things is something I will never forget.
One late Tuesday afternoon, David offered to prepare dinner for us. I went into the kitchen with David when he started to cook the food for us. Paul came into the kitchen and started to clean some of the things David used. We started to talk and I poured some wine for us in the kitchen while David focused on cooking. We talked about a lot of stuff; we made jokes and laughed. We were happy in the kitchen the whole time when David was cooking. Paul would clean and I would pour wine, and when the glasses were empty we kept talking. When the food was ready for us to eat, I started to prepare the table for us to sit and eat. After we finished eating, Paul and David went back to the kitchen to clean the dishes. Both of them were cleaning and I was so amazed seeing this. They had lived together for almost 20 years and they did this everyday when they came home and made dinner together in the house. They had a rhythm. A partnership.
I had daily meetings to attend and when I came back home with Paul, David would be busy with dinner in the kitchen. Paul would go inside and assist him with cleaning and making David a cup of coffee. I watched how they helped each other in the kitchen and I started to love that. So I started to look at things differently when it came to being in the kitchen and busy with making dinner.
When I came back to South Africa, I told my girlfriend about this and she said that people don’t do that. She had a view about how relationships work and about who serves in a relationship. Her reaction reminded me of a quote I read a long time ago before I travelled to the US, and it goes like this: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
This means for me that communication plays a big role in relationships, marriage and the work environment. Sometimes when your partner speaks with you about something that she is disappointed about, we just want to hear and not listen to the problem. When you start listening to him or her, you will start to see things from the other person’s perspective. So I started to sit in the kitchen when my girlfriend started preparing to cook and keep her company, then make her coffee or tea and just talk with her. Our feelings towards one another started to grow deeper and we always look forward to seeing each other at home. On weekends, when she is off work, we start to clean the house together and take breaks together. When she made lunch for us, I would sit in the kitchen and keep her company. After we finished eating, I would go and clean the dishes, and then she would come and keep me company. I must thank Paul and David for showing me what our relationship needed to be. They have their ups and downs, but when they are in the kitchen and preparing dinner, they change the mood and just focus on what makes them happy.
I started to teach this to my friends and their partners: how to build their relationships. When one of my friends started to implement what I taught him, he told me, “Shawn, wow, this really changed my way of thinking in the house. I started to see things from her perspective and started listening to her when we were in the kitchen. We started to take that into our whole relationship and not only in the kitchen. We have grown closer to each other and we started to spend more time together. My wife sees me differently and treats me differently.”
Everything I learned from Paul and David, I started to implement in my relationship with my girlfriend. So when we have a problem to solve, we talk while we are in the kitchen busy making food and think about how we can overcome the problem. We listen to each other’s plans on how we will solve the problem. So when she feels down and is not in the mood to cook, I ask her to just come and sit in the kitchen when I take on the job of cooking. I start to motivate her when I am busy cooking and she sits and cries. I believe that we need to uplift one another, even in our dark times and the kitchen is that place for us. I saw that with Paul and David when I was in the US, and that keeps their love life happy.
