Cultural Synergies and Opportunities
today
i’m going to be talking about cultural
synergies
and the opportunities that they present
as i was introduced i’m sam mortrey
i’m actor entertainer philanthropist all
of that
but i think the one i love the most is
being everybody’s friend
i think that is that one accolade that i
really
love and it is my job and i thoroughly
enjoy it to put smiles
on the face of people on tv and
everywhere i go so
within this presentation or even towards
the end if you crack a little smile
it means i’ve done my job well but if
you don’t it means i fill up my job so i
beg you please
if you find something that’s remotely
funny crack a smile
all right i want to take it back 16
years ago
i remember i was part of the cadet corps
school first small group of guys and
girls
who trained military style and we had a
very very
famous comedian come talk to us he’s
called kwaku sinti misa
i’m sure magenians know of him or we
affectionately
call him ksm he came to give us a pipe
talk at school
and he said a lot of things and out of
everything that he said the one thing
that struck me the
most was the word perseverance
now as a 14 year old that was the first
time i heard that word
it was a big word to me i said wow
that’s a huge word but he explained
feather
and he spoke about the importance
of having passion for your goals
and your dreams and never giving up
no matter what came your way not to be
frank and honest i didn’t really
understand what he said
because as a 14 year old i hadn’t really
faced any real challenges at that time
but five years on this word perseverance
would be my garden motto as i set on
this journey to
korea very uncertain journey
to have my bachelor’s in
computer science and engineering some
people get shocked when they hear it
shinto
a lot of koreans they get shocked they
can’t believe it like oh you studied
computers but you’re on tv and i tell
them well life doesn’t always go the way
you plan it
life is pretty funny but i’m still glad
where i ended up
so it was through the government
scholarship program
that i came to korea and the reason why
i say it’s certain jenny was because
it was riddled with a lot of what ifs
and a lot of questions and i’m sure
every foreigner in this room at least
at one point in time before you came to
korea you probably asked yourself a
whole bunch of questions
what kind of food do they eat there what
language do they speak
what is the culture how are people gonna
perceive me
are people gonna accept me for who i am
these are legitimate questions that you
ask yourself
and sometimes when you come here you
still find yourself asking these
questions
because sometimes you never even get
over that cultural shock
so these are questions that i asked
myself but at the end of the day
i was determined to ride the tide and
persevere no matter what
i don’t know about you guys but coming
from where i’m coming from you can’t
leave
and come back the same you have to
succeed
at whatever it is that you do and i was
determined to do
exactly that
and living in korea
when i first came there weren’t too many
foreigners korea’s a homogeneous society
it wasn’t very easy you had to go to
very specific
places to meet foreigners and
as an african as a person of color
it meant that i had to go the extra mile
it was almost as if you had to prove
yourself
to people everywhere that you went
and that was the same for me even going
into the entertainment industry
it was something that i carefully
planned
and calculated to do because every time
i spoke to my korean friends
i’d often ask them what makes you so
afraid of me
why do you think i live in a hut
somewhere
that i run with lions and elephants
i told them i had to go to the zoo to
see a lion i’ve never seen a lion in my
entire life
so i asked them what informed your ideas
of me
all these prejudices and they say well
the truth is that we don’t have any real
contact with people
um from where you’re from so we watch tv
and this is what tv informs us
it’s like ah tv is a very important tool
i’m gonna plunge into that
now speaking of tv takes me way back
when i was really really young i
remember
my grandfather a very very important
person to me in my life he’s taught me
so many things
when we wanted to watch cartoons
my grandfather never agreed he always
wanted us to watch
culturally centric programs or cultural
centered programs
like oktoberfest in germany or sumo
wrestling in japan
or traditional festivals in china and
the truth is that
being that young i didn’t really see the
importance of that
i just wanted to watch cartoons and just
have fun
but every time we did that my
grandfather would come
and reward us with cookies and give us
delicious
orange juices like yeah you’re doing a
good job little did we know
that subconsciously it was helping us to
be
more open-minded and to understand that
they’re very different coaches besides
those that we know now
down the line here i am working in the
entertainment industry
my main job is to connect two coaches
and i do not take that for granted at
all
honestly um i think it’s a great
recognition
and that is some of the things that you
enjoy from cultural synergy
to be able to connect these two cultures
and opportunities that come with it
now when david the comedian he was
talking about his mom being proud it was
the same thing
now when you type on your phone the most
famous black man in korea my face pops
up
and my mom would intentionally go to her
friends and say do you know korea
not really she shows them where korea
careers do you know who the most
famous black man in korea is they say no
my son
and she shows him a picture of me you
know she’s very very proud
and it makes me proud as well you know
and
these little things they really come to
tell me that
you know the job is going well but
there’s still a lot of things to do
and within the course of living here of
course so many experiences
but of course so many ideas that have
shaped me to be who i am
and i’m going to share these ideas with
you stretch it in the number 572.
if you’re not familiar with what it is
i’ll break it down so 572 is basically
my name
numeralized in korean 5 is for o
seven is for chill and two is for e o
chil e that’s my name 572.
yeah karen’s like oh my god it’s so
interesting when you talk about
connecting coaches right
because when you look at ghana and korea
on the map
so far apart so you travel a lot of
kilometers to come to korea
you go to language school you open your
book you’re learning korean
the first thing you see is kana you’re
like what
i came all the way from ghana to korea
and i’m seeing ghana
it’s like everything is connected
everything is connected and then my name
if i want to put sam that’s three so
three five seven two some ochiri
and those are the last four digits of my
phone number
i did that on purpose so i want to break
these ideas down
now the number five the five represents
the five things that i believe in the
first and foremost
is believing in yourself i believe is
the one thing that nobody
can do for you who you
are is what makes you unique i believe
that
a lot of people have accepted me
they like me because i’m true to who i
am
i don’t pretend to be somebody else and
believe in yourself provides you an
opportunity
to tell people about where you’re from
your culture and to share things with
them
so it’s so important to believe in
yourself no matter where you go
it’s the one thing that nobody can take
away from you
the second thing is respecting cultures
and ideas it’s important that sometimes
when we come to korea
we often find ourselves projecting
things that we
know from our cultures and always
complaining about career over and over
again
but we need to respect different
cultures the third thing
is that you cannot fight you cannot
fight ignorance with ignorance
you have to fight it through dialogue
it’s why when somebody comes at you and
you talk to them
they get shocked and it provides you an
opportunity to have a conversation
the fourth one is don’t be afraid to not
know
a lot of people want to pride themselves
in the fact they didn’t know it all but
you cannot know it all
and in fact when you tell yourself that
you do not know it all
that’s when you’re able to learn and get
new information
the last thing that i want to talk about
is that you have to continue learning
life is a non-stop learning process
nobody gets it all you have to keep
learning and learning
number seven talks about the days of the
week
monday through sunday i believe that
every day is a new opportunity to meet
new people
to get a lot of inspiration to get new
ideas
so make every day count two
represents morning and evening my most
important times of the day
have you guys taken the subway really
early in the morning
i have and not one single soul was
smiling
because people don’t want to go to work
they just want to be in bed and sleep
but how you wake up in the morning
really sets the tone for how your day is
going to go
if you get up and you’re happy and
you’re positive
when you meet people you say hi you
greet them
you extend that positivity that comes
out of you
in the evening is when i just recount
and assess everything that i did in the
day
mistakes lent and it counterpoints me
to make better decisions moving forward
now there are a few things that i want
you guys to take away from today
the first thing is language nelson
mandela once said
that if you talk to a man in a language
he understands
goes to his head but if you talk to a
man in his own language
it goes to his heart hence when you meet
koreans and they say
oh they get so excited
and all you said was one word that’s how
powerful
of a two language is is that one thing
that when you learn
you never lose it it’s a great skill and
it brings you
endless endless possibilities so if
you’re in korea even if you’re here for
one month two months six months one year
i really encourage you to learn the
language
it’s gonna open a whole lot of doors for
you that you never knew existed
i would not be if i didn’t speak the
language and
learn the culture so please language
forever important
the second thing of course diversity
i believe that what
culture does for us is that it allows us
to embrace other coaches
and not losing and not lose our
identities
you want to be able to learn about new
coaches but not forget who you are
and where you came from it’s also about
defining our differences looking for
similarities
and above everything else coming
together
as a group i think is so important and
personally
some of the best moments for me have
been being a cultural ambassador for
different agencies
here in korea i believe that there’s
unity and diversity
so we have to embrace that don’t look at
somebody’s culture and say well this is
different from mine so
it’s bad no the fact that it’s different
does not mean it’s bad
it’s just different just learn it and
move on
now impact i believe that
the results of cultural synergy
eventually is to create a legacy
and leave an impact in your community
whatever platform you have whatever
opportunity you have
be it big or small i believe that you
can make a little impact
and as for this reason that i partnered
with world vision
to start the 572 school foundation
in ghana two years ago we just completed
the second school
and i believe some of these things are
very important in
giving the community a sustainable way
of creating new leaders for the new
generation now before
i end my talk i want you to ponder over
some of these questions ask yourselves
what do you represent
what is your cultural identity
enrich yourself on a scale of one to ten
how intercultural you are and when you
ask yourself these questions and you
answer them you’re gonna find that
everything is to connect even all the
speakers who are
spoken before me talking about how to be
a i want to be a great dad like you when
i grow up someday
and have fun with my kids and create
beautiful memories
we often try to find the differences
that put us apart as opposed to the
similarities
that can keep us together once we search
more for those things
we’ll realize that we have more in
common
than we have in differences and we
realize that at the end of the day
whether you’re from ghana you’re from
korea you’re from mongolia wherever you
are
you find out one single thing about you
which is human
and makes the other person human as well
thank you guys so much for having me
appreciate it