a blog from the wife who never posts...

Jim and I tend to be a-typical in many situations. We’ve learned to both accept and value this as a unique aspect of ‘us.’ When we were warned of the ‘terrible’ first year of marriage, we had the most delightful first two years of our lives. Our cooking, cleaning and social habits have also proved a-typical, and again, we embrace it, in spite of advice that would presume otherwise.

When we arrived in Burundi we encountered new friends that were at a variety of places in their culture adjustments. Many love it here, some are frequently frustrated, and others are struggling to adjust – all perfectly normal emotions. And so, in our a-typical fashion we began wondering how we would adjust and find our own way here. When asked how we were doing two months in by an older woman, I replied that things were wonderful. To which she replied, “Enjoy it because it is the honeymoon phase. It will get a lot harder.” So, okay, I appreciate advice, especially from someone with experience. But that was not exactly constructive or encouraging. I suddenly felt like everyone was placing ‘bets’ on when we would crumple into a puddle of culture shock and despair. Yet things continued to be exciting for us and have become even more enthralling and enjoyable as we form new and deeper friendships with both Burundians and ex-pats from around the world.

So, if you couldn’t see it coming, I write all that to lead into, of course, our first real emotional struggle with the culture of Burundi. For the holidays we traveled with two friends to Uganda to both relax in a big city and also raft the Nile River. The trip was incredible. Not only were the adventures amazing (yes, I rode a motor bike taxi for the very first time – in a city with traffic that resembles Baltimore!) but we made amazing new friends with a young woman working with widows in North Uganda (where the LRA – Lords Resistance Army - has ravaged the people and stolen the children for years) and a guy drilling wells in South Sudan. There is nothing more thrilling that when you connect with someone’s spirit and passion whom you have only just met. The German woman whom we met on a bus who left her job for a year to travel Africa and work with street and orphan children also rocked my world.

However, this incredible trip ended with a bus ride from… well, you know where. Needless to say the 18 hours we spent on the bus – which did not get us all the way home – left something to be desired and brought up emotions in me I never thought existed. (Namely frustration, impatience, anger, judgment, ethnocentrism, capitalism… need I go on?) The bus trip, for us, ended with Jim, our friend Meg, and I, grabbing our things, jumping off the bus at its millionth stop for the drivers to do who knows what, and running to a taxi, desperate to see the bus disappear in our rear view mirror. The taxi ride, racing to get to Bujumbura city before the military roadblocks were erected at 5:30pm and forcing us to sleep in the taxi, proved to be a test of God. The neck-breaking speed and mountainous curves and passing semi trucks forced me to leave a permanent finger imprint on the back of the driver’s seat. We made it through the last check point, which was already up, with a few coy smiles and shouts of ‘Merry Christmas.’ Our delight to be ‘home,’ sleeping in our own beds and not on a bus with people that had driven us crazy, was paired with a deep sense of frustration towards the entire culture. We thought perhaps we could sleep it off. To no avail…

The holidays were quite enjoyable with friends and missionary families. However, this dark cloud of cultural resentment towards Burundi as a whole lingered throughout the next few days for all three of us. For me personally, little things like a small shop not having the product I wanted, a taxi driver trying to charge us too much for fare, children and adults alike staring and calling us ‘muzungus’ all left me brooding and resentful. Yet none of this was a new experience. A bus ride to the beach proved to set us all on edge again as the driver crammed 5 people into our 3-4 seat row. My mind raced to Uganda, which has tightened traffic laws. Buses can only fill the bus to its occupancy. If they attempt to slide an extra individual in, the passengers actually complain and retort that they paid for their ‘seat’ and are not going to share it. Suddenly I was comparing Burundian culture not only to the US but also to Uganda, finding it lacking on all counts.

I chastised myself for these thoughts but they were so deeply rooted in something I could not identify that I failed to shake them. And then, yesterday, New Years Day, Jim and I went to church. He preached there for the first time. But prior to his sermon, the senior pastor asked if anyone had a short testimony to share about God’s provision during the previous year. Everyone was silent and then a woman, clearly from a poor community on the edge of town, raised her hand. He called her to the stage. I faced the stage and waited, wondering how long this would take. And then the sharp, sweet joyful tone of her voice filled the church as she burst into a traditional song walking up to the stage. Traditional ‘praise’ music in Burundi is ‘call and response’. Jim and I have seen it in many contexts before but our church, usually translated in only French and English, does not reflect a ‘typical’ church. The congregants responded to her Kirundi song, softly at first, as if to say “Do we do this here?” and then with increasing volume. In that moment, when her song met my ears, I felt a complete release in my heart of all the tension I had been feeling towards Burundi. My heart seemed to whisper, ‘Ah yes, this is why I love Burundi.’ I had just finished praying during the worship time to be free of this new ‘culture shock’ I was experiencing and with one voice of a poor woman it was gone.

Her testimony touched my heart as well. She was grateful for healing and health in her family. Then she spoke of the recent storm that had just come through. My mind flashed back to Jim and I sitting on our second story porch watching it crackle and blow all around us, heavy cool rain pouring down. She said that they had been praying for rain for their crops. (It has been very dry this rainy season, hurting many subsistence farmers.) But then the storm was too strong and the metal corrugated roof of her house was lifted up by the wind. In that moment she cried out to God and asked that he not destroy her house, not now, not at the beginning of this New Year. And then, though already lifted from the house and ready to blow away, the wind released the roof back down in position. And she praised God.

Her story reminded me of my own small perspective on the world – both here and at home. To me, in my sturdy strong house with vegetables I bought at the market or store, a storm is just something of wonder, to watch and enjoy. Which it is. But for others it means food, it means another month without hunger. And still for others it threatens to destroy the only shelter they have for their family. It is capricious and could take all they have inside their mud brick walls at any minute. The woman said there was still other damage to her house after the storm but a friend quickly came by and offered to fix the home for her family.

And so, I left church yesterday different than when I came. And I praise God my battle with cultural resentments and culture shock and ethnocentric mentality was not an enduring phase. I learned from it though. I now understand that, though not the nightmare predicted by some who assume Jim and I to be ‘typical’, I am not above raw uncontrollable emotions that can judge another culture as ‘inferior’ because it is outside of my concepts of ‘logic’. Save for the grace of God, my heart is bent towards separateness, towards judgment and superiority. And yet I have been called to follow a Rabbi, the Savior, who implores me to love my neighbor as myself, to see Christ in the eyes of each that I meet, to live in the humility and knowledge that I live and breath and exist on the grace of God alone.

So, to the passengers on a bus that seem to have no concept of time, I must say grace and peace. To the man who puts 17 extra people in my seat so that his profit margins slightly increase, I must say grace and peace. To the grown men who think it appropriate to yell ‘white person’ at me everywhere I go, grace and peace. Because I serve a God who created us all, who calls us to live out a kingdom where we stand beside those with whom we think we have nothing in common and choose to love anyways. The upside down kingdom also appears ‘illogical’ to those outside it. I serve a God of grace and compassion who hears the cry of a poor woman and commands the wind to put back the roof of her home….a God who knows my arrogance and self-righteousness and continues to love me just the same.