A Two Way Street

Many times, in conversations with people who have not lived overseas, I hear the same words/ sentiment expressed – Jim and Dawn, it is so great that you are living in Africa. You have so much to teach people about God, about medical stuff, and about community development. It must be a hard job- trying to bring people out of the dark ages in regard to knowledge.

Honestly, it would make me frustrated, except that I have to confess that, at first, I had a bit of the same sentiment. And when I am not careful, it can creep back in. There are nuggets of truth in that idea. Certainly, as Christians, we have walked with Jesus for many years and have learned a lot of lessons (and are STILL learning) on trust and what God is doing in our lives that we are anxious to share with people.

And medically, most of what I find here in the village is about 100 years behind where we are in the US right now. So we ARE thankful that God has allowed us to grow up where we did, and that He brought us here – for such a time as this. We believe that here are things that we can share with people here that will improve their lives- be it mentally, physically, or spiritually. And we are thankful for this opportunity.

On the other hand, the longer we live here with our friends, we realize the vast amount that they have to teach us about living in community and trust in God and sharing, etc. Let me give you some examples.

TIME – People here are MUCH better about taking time for each other than anyone else that we have EVER seen. Going to visit people is huge here and they think nothing of sitting for a LONG time, chatting or just sitting in silence as a way of being with someone else. Frankly, this is something that I am NOT good at. Usually I have a big list of things that I want to accomplish, and while, I am happy to go out and say hi, after about 5 minutes, I want to be done. I am working to take more time with people.

This is something that Jim is MUCH better at than me. Perhaps because of his personality, or perhaps because he is a faster learned than I am, he has realized the value of taking time with people. Every morning, he enjoys sitting on the porch with the 2 believers here, chatting and drinking coffee and visiting with anyone else who wanders up to the porch. He will go and sit for hours at a funeral or meeting – that would drive me insane. But he is great at it! Honestly, (confession time) for me to feel good about spending long amounts of time with people, I have to write it on my list of things to get done. :^(

TOGETHERNESS – In the US, we seem to value time alone. That is not something that is sought after here much. Perhaps that is a village thing – their whole lives are such a constant jumble of people in and out that there is rarely a moment alone. We might go out into the woods to get away. Here, if you see someone sitting on a bench by themselves, you go and sit with them, so that they will not be alone. Rarely do they just sit around by themselves. I saw a great example of this on my porch a few months ago.

On many days, the daily crowd was getting out of control. On days like Thursday, it is not uncommon to have 50 people waiting out there. People were getting loud and arguing over who would be seen first. So we decided to take the benches where people sit, and put them out in the yard, giving me some distance from the crowd. One bench was left on the porch, and the system is that the child that I am seeing and their parent, and the next patient in line, are allowed to sit there. Everyone else is supposed to be on the benches in the yard.

For the most part, this works okay, and they have just accepted it as one of the MANY strange things that I do. But often, when a sick person comes, several people come with them –to walk them to the house and to be with them. When that patient is called, EVERYONE who has a vested interest in the patient wants to come to the bench – which results in a small crowd, defeating the purpose of the benches in the yard. When I explain that only the patient and the parent should come, they give me kind of an odd look, like, Why would you do that? You want them to have to sit there alone?

Recently I saw a little boy who had a cut on his head. I bandaged it and told him to come back the next day. The next day arrived and he showed up with 2 little friends. They dutifully sat on the bench in the yard, and when I called his name, they each grabbed a hand and walked him up to me. They sat there quietly when I looked at him and put medicine on, and then quietly grabbed his hands and walked him home. (I was not really paying attention to the whole thing as I had a porch full of people but Jim watched it transpire and said it was just the sweetest thing to watch. These little guys chose to take the time to sit with their injured friend when they could have been out playing. Jim said it was a good reminder for him to take time for people).

Frankly, the togetherness aspect usually works in my favor with medical issues. Like all of us, when a new idea is introduced, it often takes several times of hearing it for it to take root. So, when I am giving instructions on the porch, I have a captive audience of people hearing what I am saying (since they usually study me intensely, trying to see what I am doing). It hit me several months back that I have a GREAT opportunity to teach many people at one time. Here is an example…..

One thing that usually scares people to death here during an illness is that the sick person won’t eat. And here, by eat, they mean consume mass amounts of rice in a sitting – twice a day. So, when they bring me a sick kid, they will often say, He won’t eat anything. Usually, with questioning, I find out that the child is drinking water and eating bread or maybe crackers or porridge.

So, when I give them the medicine, I add the following teaching – you know, often people get scared when a sick person doesn’t eat a lot. But when you don’t feel well, you don’t usually like to eat a lot. So, even if this child is not willing to eat a lot of rice, if he is drinking well and eating porridge and bread and bananas and crackers, that is SO great. And as they start to feel better, they will want to eat. So I don’t want you to worry. If the medicine is done, and they are still not eating well, you bring them back. (This rarely happens).

Of course, as I am telling the parents this, I usually have 5 – 20 other sets of ears taking in the information as well. Also, when I go to visit new moms, I talk with them about breastfeeding, and since a new mom is never at home by herself, several other women are getting the same teaching!

SHARING/GIFTS – Our friends here seem to be very good at sharing. Even if they are short on food, if someone comes to visit, there is ALWAYS an invitation to come and eat. If you have company, they always get the best choices. If you have something that someone needs more than you do, you share. That is partially why you see half built houses all over the place. When people get enough money to start a house, they try to take it and start building right away because if you have money, and then someone comes along and asks for it, you really should give it to them. But if you quickly buy bricks and put them in the wall of a house, then the money is gone and you are on your way to getting a new place to live. This principle makes getting ahead very difficult in this culture.

We have friends here who want to get ahead, but this principle sometimes makes this hard. For example, we have a friend who borrowed some money to go a buy his wife a present. Later in the day, after the market has gone, I asked him about what he had bought. Well, he said, not as much as I wanted to. You see, my daughter had a fight with her husband and moved back home. They made up, but I had to buy a gift to give to them so that she could go back to her house again. WHAT? REALLY? I was so mad at him, thinking that he had shorted his wife in favor of his daughter, but apparently, culturally, he needed to do that.

Over and over, we see people teaching us the important of putting relationships over other things. The US has a long way to go in this aspect. Usually, we are all so independent that we don’t have a great need for each other. And that is a loss for us. That sometimes translates into our relationship with God. We like to say that we trust Him, but really, I think that sometimes we have more trust in our bank accounts and in the medical system to make things okay. It was a big lesson for me when we moved to Africa.

As a nurse, I had a lot of fears (still do sometimes) that something will happen to my family when we are so far from medical help. But as I thought about it, it made me realize that, in the US, I had a lot more trust in the fact that Lutheran Hospital was sitting 15 minutes away from me with great doctors and a great facility, than I had trust in God to care for us – in whatever way that transpired. Really, every day, no matter where we live, is an exercise in trust for all of us – because God is ultimately in control, not matter what continent we live on.

While I wouldn’t want to be forced to go backwards in time and technology to live like our national friends, there are certain aspects of their lives that they seem more advanced than we are. We have so many lessons to learn from them. What a privileged to have those lessons being lived out in front of us on a daily basis.