Back to Africa

Back to whole-starch meals ... yea, I'm back in Africa!

So I flew out of Africa…to visit the Biblical “Land of milk and honey,” then to the modern “land of milk and honey”…. And now I am right back in Africa.

I love traveling to new places and figuring out the similarities and differences between cultures. Each culture has its own little twist on table manners or conversation etiquette.  But Africa is just in a category of its own.  There are almost no similarities between the culture here and the culture in America – for example there are no “twists” to table manners here – there simply are no table manners here – Ghanaians with forks just don’t happen.

Going on my walks and runs the past few days the culture here has been shocking – and I know, I have been here for months before – and I can’t really make any sense of why it is so shocking this time.  I knew exactly where I was going this time – right?

Even so, I came home almost in tears today, after walking through some of the surrounding streets.  There is literally trash everywhere.  The streets are lined with people tired and tattered by life looking to sale their few goods to maybe make a few pesewas (like cents) a day – which is barely enough to buy fufu for dinner.  They sit. They talk. They laugh.  They laugh a lot.  They call me obroni. They laugh when they call me obroni.  The men say to me “I like it” or “May I join you, but tomorrow?” or “Are you making excersize?”  They laugh again.

I run on and off the streets, around the open gutters, full of the most disgusting mix of bodily fluids and trash, I try not to look, I try to stay far enough away that I am not overwhelmed by the fear that I may fall in, but can’t do anything about the smell that comes out and hits me right in the face.  I run around vendors on the streets.  I run around burning trash heaps, coughing. 

I try to greet every person I pass – the Ghanaians rarely initiate conversation with an obroni they don’t know – so if I don’t speak to them, even though they wouldn’t speak to me, they would think that I think that I am better than they are.  So I do my best.

More shocking than any of that is that everyone is African.  I look around – I am the only obroni.  I had forgotten how that felt.  I had forgotten how they stare at us, or is it worse this time? There are plenty obroni – and we have been here, and there were others here long before us – and still they stare, as if they have never seen a white person in their life.  Three weeks and I had forgotten. 

Three weeks.  I adjusted right into being a tourist in Israel.  That was easy, and exciting.  I adjusted in a few hours back to American culture, someone even told me, “You haven’t skipped a beat.” I was excited to see Starbuck and thrilled to walk the aisles of Target.  So many choices in America.  It’s exciting and overwhelming at the same time.  I guess it’s easy to adjust to American life because it is an easier life than life in Ghana.

I am here, working, teaching at a nice international school, living in a nice brand new house with air conditioning and bathrooms and a bed and a kitchen.  I can leave and go back to my home in America for Christmas and weddings and the Summer, or whenever I need or want to go.  These people I pass when I am running know no other life than this.  They are not here for a while and then get a break.  This is it. This is all they know. 

Overwhelming. Culture shock.  Love for people; all people, everywhere.  Everyone should have a chance to make their life “better,” to get off the street, or to start a business to support themselves, and their families.  It wouldn’t be fair any other way, right?  How do people get out of this?  How is this fair?  I ask God, and hear Him answer me, in the words He answers Job:

“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Dress for action like a man;

I will question you, and you make it known to me.

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

Tell me if you have understanding.

Who determined its measurements – surely you know!”

God is sovereign and God is good.  We don’t know how He created the Earth, but we know He did.  We don’t know how he is working in these people’s lives, but He is.  God is bigger than any script we can write for Him, for ourselves, or for others, in any circumstance we encounter.  Wherever we are, whatever circumstance we are in, we should learn from the Ghanaians, to laugh and to be present in life.  We are not promised tomorrow – and they know that all too well.