Africa: The Christian Vacationland

Christian trends are funny. I mean, just listen to our music. The "hymns vs. choruses" battle has been going on for ages, and most have yet to realize that, musically, we largely stink at playing them both. We see choruses as a trend of this generation which is more relevant to the culture, or something like that, but in the process we often miss the fact that the guitarist only knows three chords, the drummer can't keep a steady tempo, and the sound guy doesn't know how to mix the high-ends of the keyboard.

Our cultural conscience, so to speak, has always gone through intense evaluation to the extent that it misses the point. Elderly Christians today may recall the organ controversy when the Church was introducing instrumental music into worship services, rather than sticking to the traditional a'cappella style. There was a time when Christians were torn over the moral value of using a fork at the dinner table. Years later, missionaries would condemn cultures which didn't use forks and instead used their dirty hands.

In Romans, St. Paul address the debate of eating or not eating meat which has been wrongly blessed. He tells his readers not to bicker and divide themselves over such silly things which aren't central to the message of Jesus. Centuries later, of course, we don't think twice about what kind of meat we eat (or even where it came from).

If you read biographies or autobiographies of western missionaries to Africa, you will notice that they consider the continent to be some kind of adventurous world. Missionaries often viewed themselves as savior figures coming to rescue a savage people. Culture and creed got meshed into one, resulting in condemnation of African traditions and the speedy perpetuation colonialism. In recent post-colonial decades, as Silver informed me, there was a fancy restaurant in Kampala which boldly read, "No dogs. No Africans." Colonial attitudes led to neo-colonial practices following an incomplete liberation of the continent.

Today, we've become a bit more culturally sensitive, I think, but I question whether our worldviews are still the same as those of the older missionaries. We can't deny that we still have egos, still consider ourselves part of the world's greatest empire, still believe our education and lifestyle is better and healthier, still see ourselves as the ones authoring world history.

Think about it. Go to a Christian music festival. What do you see? Shirts with Africa on them. Speakers talking about the need for clean water, often neglecting Asia, Central America, and even their own country of America, and only talking about Africa. You buy a cool band T-shirt and you get a free pin from a western NGO in Africa. You can sponsor a child from where? Africa (quite often, a child in the less-Muslim sub-Saharan regions).

We see our Christian friends with these T-shirts, hear these passionate speakers, view presentations from our churches' missionaries, and we consequently (and naturally) think to ourselves, "If I'm going to follow God's call, I should go to Africa!" It's pretty easy to think only Africa has problems for us suburbanites who aren't even exposed to suffering in our own motherland. So we think, with our human and philanthropic consciences, that we should go there to "The Dark Continent."

Because we all started doing it, going to Africa has become the cool thing to do. People want to hear your stories. People want to see pictures of you towering above little black children. They want to see a giraffe or a hut or a schoolyard with a hundred black people showing their teeth because a white person is there. Only very thoughtful and accountable friends bother to ask what you learned. The rest just want to know what you did to help.

Africa is where we go to get our Christian on. Particularly sub-Saharan Africa. And recently, it seems like everyone I meet who has been to Africa has been to Uganda. I started noticing this long before this trip. We hear via NGOs with cool T-shirts about all the suffering due to rebel groups. We rightly assume that we should go be with the suffering but often wrongly assume how we should do it. We hear about the poor education or limited access to clean water and hygiene products but when we arrive we overlook the wisdom of the people and their nutritionally and physically healthy lifestyles. To satisfy our guilt or to show our power, we pay for someone's surgery or schooling. And our friends call us brave or strong for going there. Or they at least commend us for our good hearts.

I'm not perfect at the skill of going to Africa, and I'm not perfect at the skill of being in Africa. But we need to recognize that none of us are, and that the experiences we have there are just a glimpse of perhaps the most diverse continent in the world. Before Jesus told us to go out and speak the euaggelos (good news), he told us to follow Him. His work precedes our work, yet sometimes we try to lead Him to a place where He's either already been or a place where he has not yet told us we are ready to go.

Long story short: my fallible philosophy is that I always try to learn more than I teach, because if I'm quite honest, I don't know who I'm teaching or what I'm supposed to be teaching when I'm in Uganda. So anyway, here are a few words of Lango, a Luo sub-language, which I have learned, and which have impacted me:

"Mitu" - This word functions for both "need" and "want." Perhaps this points to a virtue of selflessness which has been etched into Luo people. If what we want is the same as what we need, we will seldom have land disputes or the desire for excessive personal property. I can just hear the suburban child in the toy section right now. "But Mom! I NEED that!"

"Yelle" - The name (very rarely used as a name) given to one of Suzan's brothers. It means "to work hard" but can also mean "to suffer." Sometimes we like to say in the US that a lot of hard work can bring someone a long way. Well, in some cases that is true (though it is actually very difficult to change one's economic class, and its often the poor who work hard and the rich who sleep while they profit), but it is more true in rural Oyam, I think. Agricultural land is abundant. Some people feed their family and educate their children simply by working the land. Others sit and drink and become thieves because they have no food of their own, despite the fact that they own land. The ability to suffer is a virtue.

"Bedo" - This word can be used for many English words, including "sit," "be," "stay," "live," and "become." If there is anything I have learned in Uganda, it is the value of presence - being in one place. Being still allows us to fully live. The culture of my homeland had taught me the opposite. I realize now that not only is just sitting with someone (even silently) enjoyable, it is also beneficial. It is how we become most human.

"Bunya Bunye" - "Hurry." There's not a lot of hurrying in Uganda, but I just like the sound of this one when it is spoken. Kind of in the same way that I like "Yogo Yogo" - which refers to something loose or unstable.

"Itie" / "Atie" - This is a kind of greeting/response, of which there are many. One person asks, "Itie?" ("Are you?") The other replies, "Atie." ("I am.") It can also be translated something like "Do you exist/I exist" or "Are you around/I am around." The essence of this exchange is the same as the aforementioned "bedo": presence. Presence is important. Ugandans have frequently told me they know that I love them if I come around again, which brings me to my next word:

"Welo" - "Visitor." In Uganda, Africa, and actually, many other places in the world, a visitor is never a distraction or inconvenience. It is an honor. Even in Biblical accounts, the visitor is a blessing to the house which he visits. Many view it as a kind of good luck or good fortune. In Uganda, people beg me to come eat their food. When I visit one family, they want to then take me to see their parents and siblings and in-laws and cousins. The comfort of the visitor must be ensured, which is why it was so hard for me to do any work in Oyam. If I did any work, people would stop and stare at me for several minutes at a time, laughing and calling their friends over. Many cultures, especially in Uganda, honor a visitor with the slaughtering of an animal, perhaps a chicken or goat. It seems to me that where the Church of the developed world has failed to preserve the virtue of hospitality (it is now a business with our hotels and restaurants and appointments we set up to meet with pastors), indigenous cultures have not wavered.

I don't know if I will make any further posts on this blog or soon start a new one for the coming semester, but I want to thank you for reading. If you aren't really interested in my experiences and insights, I understand, and I thank you for at least pretending. Let us not see Africa as a continent to convert or save or rescue or fix, but rather a continent to share and a continent to learn from, consequently empowering its people.