frustration and a new love.

Since I last wrote, culture shock has began to set in and I have just been trying to figure out what is actually going on around me and how to approach it (the culture here, the economic conditions, and the missionaries in their approach), to which I have not only been constantly busy but have felt very illiquid to make a post about.


I have come to realize that this internship isn't set up to be like I had hoped and expected it to be (even though I keep telling myself I didn't have any expectation coming in). I came hoping simply to live among the people here and see and be part of their daily lives; to learn who they are and let them know who I am; to build relationship. I wanted to see something different, to see a different culture and maybe a different Christianity. I wanted to get outside myself.

For the most part this hasn't happened. I have been wrestling with a lot of frustrations and I fear I will sound very disgruntled and even harsh when I tell about them, but I feel I need to in order to give reality to where I am now.

One of these factors that I didn't expect is that the missionary families all live in a sort of suburb of the city of Mwanza--which is 1 million people-- and in generally nice houses, even by American standards. They work mostly with people in villages and have to drive one to 5 hours just to get to most of these villages. Bwiru, the suburbish area in which they live and I am staying isn't without difficulty I assure you (after all, This Is Africa), but generally speaking, I feel removed. when I am in their homes I feel no different than if I was in an American home (other than the power frequently and unexpectedly going off). I didn't expect that the missionaries would live in mud brick huts as those in the villages, but I didn't expect to be so guarded.

The far away villages that we drive to everyday are always new as well, so it has been hard to build relationship from repeated visits. Moreover, when we are in the villages I can't speak much of the language other than greetings, so I mostly just sit quietly listening to sermons or conversations that I can't understand and usually go completely untranslated. I also feel the American way of "doing" church and the mission "field" terminology around me and working its way into the village churches here and it keeps me up at night. That's another conversation though.

I wrote in my journal that my time in the villages has been the greatest feeling of a formal environment that I think I have ever felt. This is in part due to the language barrier so which makes me feeling unable to speak-- I am good at not making the effort to have conversation with people and keeping to myself, but I don't want that anymore. But the formal feeling has more do to with cultural customs that are much more prominent here.

The first of these which has really tended to frustrate me at times is that everywhere we go we are received as very formally honored guests. In the Sukuma language the word for "guest" comes from the same word as that of "gift", of which a guest is one of the greatest, along with the honor of being able to show hospitality to one's guest. This includes them insisting we sit in the only chairs while they are on the ground; sit in these chairs in front of everyone during worship service, and eat the choice food, while the amount and quality of food lessens the younger the family member (children just above animals in some ways). This has really been frustrating to me at times when all I want to do is talk to them and play with the kids or football with anyone, and learn about what there lives are like on a daily basis. I can't explain my frustration at times toward this formal feeling in the context of the missionaries coming on church business are honored. I was looking at the wrong way though.

I have also been frustrated in how I feel removed from everyone else (other than missionaries) who live here in Mwanza as a whole. I particularly feel this on Friday nights when I can here the party going on at the near by pub and think about who the people were that Jesus spent time with, while I am safely gated in the christian home. Or how I drive hours everyday to go to villages, when I might be playing with kids from the mud huts right behind our house. So much of the world goes through things everyday that I hardly know anything about, much less can I say I know how they feel; I don't want to feel removed anymore.

But as I have begun to get past my own frustrations and expectations for this trip (many are still there, I have just learned to get past them), I have began to really appreciate their hospitality greater than any I have experienced. They see us as a great gift and the opportunity to give the best of themselves and what they have as a gift just moreover, and I can't get my mind around that when they have so little to give and the adults, and especially their children, are severely malnourished. they farm for their food they eat and for any money it might get them to sell it, and here we are eating so much of it. I have no place to reject their gift though, I realize I am not above allowing them to love in a way I have never emptied myself to, and they don't even think twice about it. I think part of my resistance to this all (and Satan battling against me) is that I am trying to avoid thinking about this difference but rather can comfort myself in thinking about 'how selfish I wasn't' in not taking the starving people's food and gifts right then. Trying to avoid thinking about all that I'm not doing and what of my life and things I'm not really giving, but rather we think to ourselves "keep it, we don't need your gifts, we've got ourselves covered...".

I am realizing how much I do need their gifts. I am humbled beyond words in their honoring me. I have been thinking even further about my own comfort and realizing how much more I still have that I will have to give before I have "emptied" myself as Jesus did.

This hospitality and kindness isn't even so much a Christian custom either, as it is just the way they are. In fact, everywhere I go people treat me with great kindness simply because it is good. almost everyone I have spent any time with are like those one or two people in Sunday school, or social club, or work, or where ever that everyone knows and who is the most out going and good at making new comers feel welcome.

This may be really long and not written well at all, but it has helped me to reflect on all that has been going on and I pray that anyone who takes the time to read it will be as blessed as I have been with what I am learning... Those of you who have skipped through don't get the prayers or the blessing; there's a lesson for you to learn. lol...