Misunderstanding No-Eye-Contact

Today in my anthropology class, Peoples and Cultures of Africa, one of the students who grew up in Africa told us of a time that he went to an interview for a visa or something like that. Throughout the course of the interview, the student (I have not yet learned his name) never made eye contact with the interviewer because, in his original culture, no eye contact is a sign of respect for authority. Unfortunately, in the interviewer's culture, no eye contact is a sign that someone is lying to you. He did not get the visa. I am learning more and more that understanding fellow humans is harder than I have always assumed it could be. We need lots of wisdom.