Citizens of the World

By Gregg Ramshaw

Gregg Ramshaw is a retired television news and
documentary video producer living in Pittsburgh.
 For many years he was an editor and writer of
the PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C.

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood of bungalows, two-flat apartment buildings, and three-story walk-ups.  Everyone we knew was white; the only differences among them were second-generation ethnic groups:  Irish, Italians, Polish, some Germans, and some English.  Some of the grandparents still spoke their native languages or pidgin English, but the kids my age playing on the streets, parks and vacant lots spoke unaccented English. 

I did not have the opportunity to join a program like Luminari’s when I was growing up.  Fortunately, my parents and grandparents set good examples for me to follow in their relations with relatives, friends, neighbors and strangers.  They and I had little chance to meet people of other nations.  We could not afford to vacation overseas.  On rare occasions, my father would bring home to dinner someone who was visiting his company on business.  I remember being painfully shy on those occasions, not knowing what to make of someone from another country who looked and spoke differently.    

Eventually, when I went to college, I was exposed to a larger world than my neighborhood elementary and high schools.  But even then, the student body at the university I attended was homogeneous.  In the 1960s, there were few international students in my field of study – journalism. 

I was 15 years into my career in television news before I had a chance to have some foreign assignments.  My first was to Japan where I worked with a Japanese anchorman who spoke English fluently.  My job was to cover the American President’s visit to Japan from the vantage point of the Japanese.  The Japanese journalist agreed to narrate my video report.

Upon my arrival, I made the cultural faux pas of not bringing gifts for the people I would be working with.  That was an important Japanese custom I was unaware of.  It was pointed out to me in a friendly way, and it was a lesson I never forgot.  On subsequent trips to Japan, I always remembered to bring an extra suitcase full of small, nicely wrapped gifts.  The gifts didn’t have to be lavish or extravagant; it truly was the thoughtfulness that counted. 

I developed a lasting friendship with that Japanese anchorman, so much so that he asked me to publish the English language version of a book he wrote.  It contained excerpts from his sister’s diary entries made during World War II, when American bombers were decimating Tokyo. 

The diary conveyed the innermost thoughts of a teenaged girl who had begun life in the US and had to return home to Japan just before the war broke out.  In a way, it was a gift he gave me -- to observe the privately guarded life of his family at a terrible time in history.  It was something he might not have freely shared with someone who had not established trust and rapport with him. 

On another international trip, I bought a hand-woven oriental rug on a working visit to Doha, Qatar, during the second war in Iraq.  I remembered to politely drink tea with the merchant whose store I was visiting.  I listened patiently as he outlined for me some of the teachings of the Koran, the holy scriptures of Islam.  After buying a large carpet for our living room, he threw in two beautiful prayer rugs as a bonus.  I attributed it to my being a good listener!!

Also on that trip, I was waiting for a hotel elevator.  When it opened, it was filled with conservative Qatari women, all wearing abayas and veils.  Given the separation of men and women in that culture, I declined to board the elevator and waited for the next one.  I felt it might be impolite for a Western man to impose himself into a cluster of Arab women. 

On a documentary trip to China, we had to be accompanied everywhere by a “minder” – a guide who also kept a watchful eye on our activities and reported them to his headquarters at the Ministry of Information.  China was a much less open country at the time, and Westerners were regarded with suspicion.  We tried to maintain our professionalism as journalists while also being respectful of our Chinese hosts’ wishes and guidelines.  In time, our crew won the trust and respect of our “minders.”  Bit by bit, they let their guard down, and we were able to gain access to more places and information than we had originally expected. 

A year or two later, the President of China at the time, Ziang Zemin, made his first formal visit to the United States.  Shortly before he arrived, the Chinese Embassy called me to say that the President would give my news organization an exclusive broadcast interview, the only one he gave during his visit.  I attribute that to the respect we showed in the television news documentary we produced.  Now, you might question whether we pressed hard enough to report on the more controversial human rights problems China had then and still does now. 

We were able to do that reporting outside China and produce stories about human rights and the government’s sometimes cruel, one-child-per-family law.  But inside China, we played by the rules, wandering off only a couple of times to do things we were not supposed to do when our “minder” wasn’t looking. 

Hiring childcare givers who had been born and raised in other countries provided me, my wife and two daughters a range of intercultural experiences.  We had “nannies” from the Philippines, Ethiopia, Central America, China, and Jamaica.  Although they had become “Americanized” in many ways, they nevertheless taught us about their customs, governments, cultures, dress and especially their food, since they often cooked us dishes from native recipes with ingredients we were not used to tasting.  And by living in the Washington, D.C., area we encountered many embassy-employed parents and their children through the public schools our daughters attended. 

It was a way of life we loved.  When we moved to Pittsburgh 11 years ago, we returned to a population more homogeneous than Washington’s. But Pittsburgh is evolving into a more cosmopolitan city each year.  Our new next door neighbor is a native of Lebanon who is a child and adolescent psychiatrist.  His sister and her doctor husband live across the street.  Another doctor, a cardiologist who is also Lebanese, lives two houses down from us.  Another neighbor is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, who has taught us a great deal about his faith and customs.  This enriches our lives and makes us feel like citizens of the world, not just of one city or one state or one nation.  I’ve discovered so much more to life just beyond the horizon, but, if you look for it, sometimes it’s just beyond the fence of your own backyard.   

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(Gregg Ramshaw is a retired television news and documentary video producer living in Pittsburgh.  For many years he was an editor and writer of the PBS NewsHour in Washington, D.C.)