Debriefing...

“Human beings draw close to each other by their common nature, but habits and customs keep them apart.” — Confucius

I have learned so much here about myself and my culture as I’ve learned about Africa and its culture. There’s only so much you can learn from lectures and stories, I know. The real experiences of making huge cultural gaffes are going to be the real teachers here. Just pray I am intentional about being first a learner.

I’ve heard a lot of stories about how missionaries or the UN especially have completely screwed things up and would have done much better for themselves and the people they were trying to serve if they’d just taken the time to be students of the culture.

Take this example.

Some aid workers came into a village and, being the heroes they are, built pit latrines for every family in order to increase sanitation and reduce disease. They left so happy with themselves, so happy to report to their organization that they’ve helped these poor, poor Africans.

A group of missionaries comes through later and finds the situation of sanitation and disease to be worse. How can this be? They get in the culture and talk to the people about what’s going on. They ask them, what do they think they need, how can the situation be made better? (You wouldn’t believe how often organizations tell people what they need as opposed to asking them. But that’s a whole different issue.)

A man stands up and says, “Unlock the pit latrines.” What?

The aid workers who came in were good enough to explain to the villagers how the pit latrines worked and how to help keep them clean. Lock the doors was one of the tips.

So what’s the problem?

In that particular culture, no one talks about going to the bathroom. It’s not culturally appropriate. You’re just not supposed to know. So of course they weren’t going to ask someone for the key for the bathroom. It just doesn’t fit into their culture. So they simply went to the bathroom behind the pit latrines, leaving a more dire situation than they began with.

Had the aid workers only asked, only observed, they would have done so much more for the people there. Instead, they left them worse off. And I doubt they even know, to this day.

Or short-term missionaries who come in and give gospel presentations to whole churches and do altar calls and are amazed when dozens and dozens of people raise their hands to accept Jesus as their Savior. The short-term missionaries go home happy, sure the Lord has done an incredible work in these people. But what they don’t know, what they didn’t take the time to learn, is that in that particular culture, you always agree with a visitor. So of course they raised their hands when they were asked. And they’ll be there next time a group of visiting short-termers comes through, raising their hands.

Or when groups come in and use a village as a model, teaching them how to produce more rice than they can even imagine, more than enough rice to provide for the entire village. But then the organization leaves and someone comes back a couple years later to find the whole thing in shambles and the people back to what they were doing and struggling. But they had trained the villagers. They had left the project in capable hands. What happened?

The village did have a lot of rice, more rice than any village around it. But they didn’t want that. They knew if they had too much food, the surrounding villages would get angry.

It’s the idea of limited good. The mindset that, if I have more good than I need, then I’m stealing that good from someone else. This is why projects like this fail all the time. Not because Africans are stupid, but because we’re not meeting them where they’re at in their culture.

Take the idea of limited good and apply it to African Christians. The idea of an infinitely good God is nearly impossible to understand. That’s sad.

Go ahead and think Africans are dumb. I think most people see them as ignorant and stupid.

But I’m learning that there’s right, there’s wrong, then there’s different.

We’re quick to categorize anything that isn’t familiar as wrong and what is like us as right.

Now, don’t pin me as a complete cultural relativist—that I think right and wrong are determined by the culture. Certainly, there are things that are biblically right and wrong. But more often than not, we take what is traditionally or culturally seen as right and wrong and assume those stances are mirrored in the Bible. Since I’ve been here, I’ve been forced to see a lot of my stances for what they are—based in culture and tradition. It’s been at the same time interesting and frustrating, exhilarating and humbling.

I have about a zillion more stories, a zillion more things I’ve learned and ways I can apply that to other experiences I’ve had. I even have a completely different perspective on the war in Iraq, an insight into the culture that makes me see the whole thing in a new light. (I’ll share it with you sometime if you’d like.)

Anyway, I could go on forever. But I’ll spare you. These last few posts have been more about me processing things than you reading anyway. (No offense.)