GRIP, Internships Abroad A Global City

World Medical Association - Ferney-Voltaire, France

Besides watches and chocolate, Geneva is reputed for essentially bringing the world together. It’s the location of the second-largest United Nations office in the world, the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross, CERN, and scores of other international organizations. There is something transcendent about its international spirit, something intangible that supersedes the chasms between cultures which, elsewhere in the world, seem to stand in the way of mutual understanding. I remember having this kind of exhilaration upon first arriving at Penn, astounded that people from so many states and indeed, countries, could share laughs and interests and friendships. Yet I would still say that in the setting of the American college campus, people tend to see difference as an obstacle and thus gravitate towards those most like them.

Here in Geneva, there are no such rules of social homogenization. While each person I have met brings with them their own unique background and mixture of cultures, I have found it remarkable how simple and commonplace it is for people of different backgrounds to mingle freely. I go on here to profile some of the truly global citizens which I have had the pleasure of encountering here.

First of all, the World Medical Association office is itself a wonderfully varied mosaic. I am most impressed by the multilingualism I find so common here: The language of work is English and that of leisure is French; I think every full-time employee in the office is fluent in both. Yet many of them originate from neither English-speaking nor Francophone nations. There are two Koreans, two Germans, a Chilean, a Slovakian, and a Romanian, in addition to a few native French citizens. The young Romanian woman happens to be a stand-up comedian, and she performs in Romanian, French, English, and Spanish. I realized that she must have command of not only the vocabulary and grammar of each of these languages but also of the highly contextual nuances in language that give rise to humor, something I definitely cannot even achieve in my mother tongue. I felt that she must live the equivalent of four simultaneous lives in her ability to connect with the people and cultures of each linguistic group.

I have learned so much in conversation with the people I have met hailing from varied nationalities. The Indian physician working in an adjacent office told me of her countrymen's perception of nuclear weapons, so different from the Western European ideal, and her Moroccan colleague shared her observation that wealthy people in Europe and in Morocco showcase their riches to very different extents. On multiple occasions, I have witnessed Scandinavians championing high taxation for the quality of stellar social programs, and my roommate, born and raised between Zimbabwe and Scotland, always has insights to share with me about life deftly navigating between cultures.

Here in Geneva, it is as if I am experiencing a microcosm of the whole world.