This diagram was part of the Thrive (Preparation for Missions) Lecture today, on Culture and Culture-Shock/Stress.
I delegated the lecture (yay!) to ECM missionary Jim Memory, who has worked in Spain for some years and still divides his time between Redcliffe College, and Spain.
The diagram speaks for itself, but, it is useful to see where you are on the line... Jim pointed out that it is the classical Cultural Adaptation diagram, often used - but, it is a bit simplistic. For one thing, you may or may not have a honeymoon phase when you arrive, or arrive home, depending on your expectations and how much they are met initially. Also, the expectation seems to be according to this, that when you reach the Adaptation stage, your emotional well-being goes along in a straight line. Well obviously it doesn't, and all kinds of things can change it. For some people, they are more happy than they have ever been once they have adapted well to the new culture - so their blue line would be running along way above its original level, while others may run along at a slightly depressed level even though adapted fairly well. For me, the stage my children were at and my capacity/energy/time to be involved in teaching and the community affected my blue line a lot. I would say from the time I arrived in Uganda, my blue line went gradually downwards... not too badly, but to some extent.
On Culture Shock, Jim said he prefers the term Culture Stress to Culture Shock, in that it is a steady and continuing factor not just the one-off at the start. I did get about two days of what I would actually call culture shock, when I first arrived in Zambia in 1992: we were in a small, crowded car driving to my rural mission station, with one older missionary who was driving us, two brand-new short-termers (one of whom was me), one Zambian lady with a newborn who cried A LOT, and two years worth of luggage... I was overwhelmed and mind-boggled by all that I was seeing out of the car windows, the dirt road, the bush, people walking walking walking everywhere, four grown men sitting in the shell of a rusted-out car, just sitting there, women with bundles on their heads, little bright vegetable stalls by the roadside, goats, chickens, ramshackle wooden booths, mud huts... and I felt scared stiff. When we stopped to buy some boiled eggs for lunch in a scruffy shop, I couldn't get out of the car. I couldn't eat anything either, and I didn't want to greet any of these African people. I wanted to just hide in the car. A good night's sleep and a second day of exposure made me feel better about it and when we arrived in our future home, I was OK.
I had a massive long honeymoon period, and the slowly wearing culture stress for me came really only in Uganda when I became so tired, and conflicted about mothering versus mission involvement, feeling guilty about some of my decisions... actually there were of course many factors, which I won't list out here! But I was explaining to a student over lunch afterwards, that the cultural differences were normally very manageable for me, I had adapted very well I think, but, it was when I became over-tired and stressed about one/any thing, the other factors such as lack of privacy at home suddenly hit all the harder and became big issues. They get you when you are down! For me, the driving, heat, power cuts, and money issues were some of those triggers.
If I were doing a study on sustainability on the mission field, I would look into this and try to figure out how I could have overcome these things. To me then, the things (heat and power cuts etc) seemed immutable, and my choices (eg to drive the children to Kampala) seemed like the only choosable ones, and so, the downward blue line, was I suppose inevitable. For me I don't have to solve that now, I just have to finish recovering! And think how I would advise others going in future. It is not simple, is it.
No comments:
Post a Comment