Estelle Marufu was one of three joint winners of the Intercultural Conversations Competition run by United Nations Association Coventry in November 2024. She is Zimbabwean and she spoke to Kim, who is Indian.

I spoke with Kim on the 13th November at 18:06, just a few hours before the challenge ended. I debated on whether or not to submit anything as I felt that amount of time would constitute an unstructured piece of work. I pondered about it on my drive back and realised that peace has no structure. While governments and policies are structurally implemented, the act of talking and understanding one another lies in the essence of peace being a fundamentally simple process.

I asked her what her heritage was, treading cautiously in an attempt to not make it seem as though she was an ‘other’. The idea of someone non-white being an outsider and approaching the conversation with “where are you from” felt insensitive. She told me she was from Coventry but her parents came here from India. I followed this by informing her that I, too, was a first generation child. This is a term she understood, being of Zimbabwean heritage and born in Britain often carries the idea that you are the beginning of a new generation for your family. It carries pressure, stigma and pain. We dove into the misconception of being British but often not being accepted as such due to the fact that we are not visibly British.

She explained that she is a Sikh, I had many Sikh friends but transparently I knew little about their religious practices. She shared that she had just celebrated Diwali. It was then that I realised the fireworks the family had set off a little while before Bonfire Night were in fact also in celebration of this festival. It dawned on me that my ignorance had led me to form an incorrect judgment on these individuals. Being a dog owner, I had believed their apparent early bonfire celebrations were causing my pets unnecessary distress. It felt like the answer for the use of this exercise had been established within less than two minutes. Within two minutes, I felt I had garnered a deeper tolerance to my neighbours of almost seven years. We discussed how Diwali centres on light being stronger than darkness and it felt insanely metaphorical as this tiny insight provided the light I lacked. The information I had learnt had shone on a once dark area of ignorance I possessed. Understanding and acknowledging differences in culture serve purpose however that purpose lies on the other side of ignorance.