Bridging a gap: All World Languages and Cultures president says awareness is key

He was born in the African country of Cameroon, educated in France and has been a resident of the United States for more than 30 years. So it’s obvious that Emmanuel Ngomsi is well suited to his job.

As the president of All World Languages and Cultures, Ngomsi has dedicated his life to cultural and diversity education.

For almost a decade, Ngomsi, who has written columns for the Lee’s Summit Journal, was the chief language and cross-cultural coordinator for the United States Peace Corps. He prepared teachers to train volunteers assigned to Francophone African countries on cultural differences. From this experience, he said he realized the need for cross-cultural training and intercultural communication.

“When I moved to the United States as a French teacher, no one trained me to understand the cultural differences, and that was a big shock. Everyone assumed you would understand what was going on here,” Ngomsi said. “That’s why, with the growing number of international exchanges, I wanted to (bridge) that gap.”

On Ngomsi’s second day of teaching in the United States, he discovered how wide the cultural gap could be when his third-grade students asked him if they could use the restroom.

“There was this boy who said he needed to (go) number two, and the only number two I knew was a number two pencil, and so I gave it to him, which only resulted in more shouts,” Ngomsi said with a laugh.

“When he came back from the bathroom, I used my fingers to teach the class how to say, ‘Can I use the bathroom?’ in French. I put each word on a finger and when my middle finger was by itself, they did not repeat the word after me. They were reacting to the middle finger, which in my culture, didn’t mean anything.”

At the end of the school day, the principal called Ngomsi to her office and asked him why he cursed an entire classroom by “flipping them off” with his middle finger.

“I asked her why the middle finger was bad, and she thought I was having an attitude and told me to ask someone else, so I asked the gym teacher who explained to me what ‘flipping someone off’ meant,” Ngomsi said. “I share this story a lot because it shows how easily you can offend someone if you don’t understand their culture.”

As a more serious example of the importance of diversity training, Ngomsi recounts a time he was pulled over for speeding.

“The police officers asked me for my driver’s license, so I reached down to my socks, which is where I keep my billfold. I did not know I was doing something wrong,” he said.

“I still have the scar on my face from when, a fraction of a second later, they opened my car door, pulled me out, handcuffed me and stepped onto my neck. They searched my car looking for a gun and only found a ton of binders and books.”

A cultural norm for Ngomsi since his days playing soccer in France was to keep all of his valuables in his shin guards. Also, Americans have a right to bear arms, but in France they do not.

“I did not understand if you go down to your socks the officer thinks you are going to grab a weapon,” Ngomsi said. “The officers didn’t understand my culture, and I did not understand theirs. Both sides were doing everything perfectly right, but the result ended up being totally wrong and tragic. It was a blessing that night that they did not shoot.”

Whether it’s in healthcare, in universities, in the police force or in a business, Ngomsi explains if an organization can understand other cultures, it will be able to better serve its customers as society becomes increasingly more diverse.

“If people change their mindset about those from other cultures, they can improve their own bottom line by attracting more clients,” Ngomsi said. “I also want to help the community understand that your neighbor might not be of the same mindset as you, whether it is ethnically or politically, and you can breach your culture with their culture.”

Since he starting All World in 2000, Ngomsi has offered an assortment of services to businesses, including intercultural communication education, cultural diversity and inclusion consulting, racial profiling education solutions and language services.

But along with other small businesses, his company has suffered over the past year.

“I have been extensively affected by COVID-19,” Ngmosi said. “As a consultant, I am paid to speak locally, nationally and overseas for diversity training. I have lost almost half of my income and it continues as people are not traveling and companies are not able to offer seminars.”

Political issues had already started to affect the business, even before the pandemic hit, he said. Training classes were already being canceled at universities, at a time when they were most needed, Ngomsi said.

“I only had one cross-cultural training at a university in the fall of 2019 for international students and in 2020, I had none.”

His hope is that President Joe Biden will bring training back into the federal government agencies, due to his stance on social justice and equality. It can’t come soon enough, Ngomsi believes.

“There’s a lot that the Trump administration has done to hinder racial progress,” Ngomsi said, adding that law enforcement is one area where his group can help. The amount of time officers in Missouri are required to take courses in racial profiling and cultural competency has dipped dramatically, he adds.

“What do you think someone can learn in one hour in social sciences? You can teach someone to boil water in one hour. But to learn to interact with citizens and a variety of cultures and languages is impossible with one hour,” he said.

“In terms of the philosophy of education, it is demonstrated that the more you learn and internalize a concept the more you will be inclined to use that concept when the time comes.”

This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.