I find it cool that in my company’s cultural tolerance / unconscious bias course, they kind of call out how everyone’s going to have their initial struggles of possibly saying the wrong thing, and just accept that it’s a part of learning something new.
If you’re visiting an African family and end up saying something insensitive, you can apologize while still continuing to engage; as long as your hosts are good people they’ll likely accept common flubs as long as you show signs of improvement.