Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 I have just finished reading this latest book from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and have really loved it. Adichie is firmly one of my favourite authors. This is a huge book but I lapped it up, sneaking half hours to read it when I should have been doing other things...

It tells the story of two Nigerians, girl- and boyfriend at school, callled Ifemelu and Obinze, who both travel to the west as adults to find the "better life" they have dreamed and talked about as students.  Ifemelu gets a scholarship to the US, and Obinze finds work as an illegal immigrant in the UK. The book is partly their love story, but more about their experiences as immigrants, their relationships, how it is to be black (which wasn't an issue back home) and eventually how they return to Nigeria and pick up new lives there.

Ifemelu takes to blogging about her experiences as a "Non-American Black" and the sections on her blogging are brilliant, including some of her posts and readers' reactions.

For me the parts I read most avidly were the transitions, both how Ifemelu arrived in the US, and then how she felt about returning home after fifteen years abroad. I was surprised how completely I related to the descriptions of her initial reactions to the west. Her shock that it was not all as clean, wealthy, and beautiful as she had come to believe. Her feelings of confusion about everything. Her disappointment with the fruit and vegetables.

This is such a rich book, revealing about what it is to be an ex-pat, and a returnee, a woman, a friend, a desperate job-seeker, a lover, a writer. I highly recommend it.

Technology and mission

This Thursday a guest lecturer, Mike Frith, came in to speak to the Thrive class about "The impact of technology on mission."

Technology has changed mission so much, from my own experience, in the twenty two years since I first went out as a short-termer. For one thing, then when I went as a 25yr old to a very rural corner of Zambia, there was no email, and we had only landline phones - except that the copper lines were regularly dug up and stolen, so in fact, we rarely had the use of the phone. Communication with family back in England was via letters, which took three weeks to arrive. The post office was a tiny concrete block hut with peeling blue paint. I used to drive there about once a week on my trailbike and collect two huge bagfuls of mail for the whole mission station, hoping that a few things would be for me. I remember the day when an American missio arrived with a laptop, and opened it up beside the swimming pool, and asked me if I wanted to send an "E-mail." 

The other side of the coin was that when I left Zambia after two years there, I didn't expect to ever see or hear from most people there again. (I was so lucky to be able to make a visit back there though, when we later lived in Zimbabwe - which was amazing.) I exchanged hand-written letters with a few people, which eventually dropped off. But now, after working in Zimbabwe for five years and then Uganda for eight, I have facebook friends from all three African countries, I message with some former students frequently on facebook, I hear from them by email - my connection has continued to grow with more and more people. It's really a joy. But, it could get out of hand!

Mike raised with the students how the growth of communication in particular has both huge benefits for mission, but also contains pitfalls. Security can be an issue, privacy of course, as well as cross-cultural issues - for example, if I never wore shorts during my eighteen years in Africa, out of respect for cultural norms there, now could I have a photo of me in shorts on my facebook page? What if a friend tags me in a photo so it appears even though I would not have put it up there myself? The good thing is, I never wear shorts! (thunderthighs...) But, what about with a good old G and T in my hand? Which I do partake of sometimes...

Mike raised a lot of other issues, including our growing use of screen to screen communication in place of face to face interaction. From my experience in African countries, people so much prefer face to face connection that they travel huge distances for meetings, and phone or email does not replace that adequately. In fact, you wouldn't necessarily take much notice of what anyone says on the phone - face to face is the thing. But that value might change, with everyone everywhere using email more and more. But wouldn't we all agree that "real" interaction is better than virtual? Jesus came down to live amongst us - doesn't that hold a great deal of meaning for us?

Mike ended with two great questions: 

1. What is behind the human need for more information and knowledge? Is it ultimately to know the divine or to replace Him (become omniscient ourselves)? How do you think those who don’t believe in God view this?

2. What is behind the need for humans to be more connected? Is it ultimately to connect with the divine or to connect to the whole world without needing Him (become omnipresent ourselves)? How do you think those who don’t believe in God view this?

 I think there is so much in those questions. Any thoughts...?! 

I Corinthians 13 Guide to Culture - thanks to YWAM KnowledgeBase

This version of 1 Corinthians 13 was written especially for people going to work in another culture, and it goes to show, love wins every time.


If I speak with the tongue of a national, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I wear the national dress and understand the culture and all forms of etiquette, and if I copy all mannerisms so that I could pass for a national but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor, and if I spend my energy without reserve, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love endures long hours of language study, and is kind to those who mock his accent; love does not envy those who stayed home; love does not exalt his home culture, is not proud of his national superiority,

Does not boast about the way we do it back home, does not seek his own ways, is not easily provoked into telling about the beauty of his home country, does not think evil about this culture;

Love bears all criticism about his home culture, believes all good things about this new culture, confidently anticipates being at home in this place, endures all inconveniences.

Love never fails: but where there is cultural anthropology, it will fail; where there is contextualization it will lead to syncretism; where there is linguistics, it will change.

For we know only part of the culture and we minister to only part.

But when Christ is reproduced in this culture, then our inadequacies will be insignificant.

When I was in Britain (Korea, the US....), I spoke as a Brit, I understood as a Brit, I thought as a Brit; but when I left Britain I put away British things.

Now we adapt to this culture awkwardly; but He will live in it intimately: now I speak with a strange accent, but he will speak to the heart.

And now these three remain: cultural adaptation, language study, and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

• Based on work by Kevin Colyer and others.
 
• Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License unless otherwise noted.

Crossing cultures - how is your blue line?

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.

Re-entry revisited

I am skimming through a book by Marion Knell called "Burn-Up or Splash Down - Surviving the culture shock of re-entry," and it looks good already. Isn't it a bit late to be reading that? I hear you ask... Don't worry, I did read a couple of re-entry books before our return in 2011; I am reading this now to see if it would be a helpful one to recommend to others, and also to see if it can shed light on why I found re-entry so stressful, and also because I will be teaching on re-entry later in my missions course, and also because I want to be able to help others who return from living abroad in future.

These are the five stages of re-entry as described by David Pollock in Third Culture Kids, quoted by Marion Knell on p11 of her book:

"1. Involvement A state in which you feel you belong in a place and society; people know you; you are committed and have meaningful relationships and responsibilities.

2. Leaving A time when you celebrate, grieve and say farewells. You withdraw from responsibilities, commitments and relationships. It is a stage marked by a mixture of emotions, such as excitement, anticipation, grief and guilt.

3. Transition The period when you first arrive in the new situation. It is best defined in the word chaos - feeling frustrated, confused, purposeless, and ignorant, not knowing people, places and social skills. This can affect mental, physical and spiritual health.

4. Entering The moment when things begin to come together and make sense again, when you discover the route map. This is a constructive phase, when a new sense of control is developed, a sense of significance and security. At this point, a person is willing to experiment, to try out some of the newly acquired skills and experiences.

5. Reengagement The point when the person feels secure and involved again, accepted and belonging. Re-adaptation has occurred, and a sense of personal security and identity has been reestablished.

All of this takes at least one year."

Looking back over the year and a half since we moved back here, I can relate completely to this description of the five stages. Stage 3 was definitely the hardest, and the longest. I would say stage 4 started when the second year started, when I began to feel connected and that I knew what I was doing. Stage 5 is very recent, and I think has only come with being involved at Redcliffe again, interacting with the students, and back in teaching. Maybe for me, an important part has been resuming my identity as a missionary and a teacher, and feeling that I am now contributing to God's Mission by helping prepare other people. I feel as though this is the right place for me to be - trouble is, it doesn't pay enough! Unless Redcliffe gives me a full time job... So that is a bit of a dilemma!

Teaching again!

Today I went back to teaching! I have joined the part-time Redcliffe College staff, teaching a course called Thrive!, - which aims to prepare students for working and living cross-culturally. It's a very practical course with lots of room for telling stories and sharing experiences, role plays etc. Missio friends, don't worry, I shall use false names!!

I was needless to say really nervous, waking up early yesterday and today with my stomach full of butterflies. I was afraid about that and a bit discouraged, thinking it meant I haven't got over the whole anxiety thing... but I have always, my whole life, got nervous before teaching or speaking, and always once I am up in front talking and communicating, I am completely fine. So I told myself this was normal nerves, not abnormal ones... Dan reminded me that teaching this course is about the students, not about me. Putting it in that proper perspective really helped too. My job is to help equip them, not to "be a great teacher". Anyway, I can now relate to something I read, that when anxiety has become problematic, half the battle can be being anxious about being anxious. I get that.

My class is delightful, about twenty students, and I loved it. It reminded me that I do enjoy teaching, and I can do it! What a relief!

As part of the introduction to the course I used the following handout based on the word THRIVE, which was made up by the person who originally taught the course at Redcliffe. I don't know who. So it is not my own - but I thought some of you might like it and relate to it.

T - To be, not just to do...

H - Hold on to your calling

R - Reasonable expectations - of yourself, of the culture you are going to, of what you will do, - and making sure your supporters have reasonable expectations too

I - I need to look after myself

V - Vulnerability - not to fall into the trap of saying "I'm OK" when you need help/encouragement

E - Elasticity - being flexible - in every way probably.


... Six things to help you thrive on the mission field.

Flashback

This morning we went to the lovely church we have finally all agreed upon - this has been a long story... - and in the middle of the service I was suddenly back in Uganda, transported by a song.

We normally sing up-to-the-minute songs at our church, songs I have mostly never heard before since our Uganda fare was so South Africa based, or else traditional hymns. But today we had a baptism and so a couple of better-known songs had been chosen. The band started us off on "Oh Lord My God, when I in awesome wonder...." and suddenly I was back in Uganda, in Nkoyoyo Hall, standing in a long row of Ugandan students, lecturers and my family - usually with the Fountains somewhere nearby - if I looked to the back past hundreds of singing swaying students I would see Brian Dennison and the kids up in the higher rows at the back - usually a smattering of American USP students somewhere - often a few other muzungu visitors - but mostly hundreds of African students, staff, nurses, children, Mukono people, singing at the tops of their voices, some arms up in the air, some eyes closed, a group up on the stage in long lines smiling and dancing, making dust rise from the floor with their shifting feet, one student singing over-loud, enthusiastically and pretty often off-key into the mike... The overall emotions evident all around were love for Jesus, love of singing, love of movement, and love of being together. My own mind would enjoy those feelings and enter into them, I was almost always glad I was there, but I would also be aware of the heat, aware that we were singing for a very long time, and knowing that a long sermon was to come...

Church in Uganda was one place where I could feel homesick for my familiar church in Exeter, where we had comfortable seats and carpet, sang songs once or twice through only, had tweny-five minute, orderly, exegetical sermons, and where you knew the service wouldn't suddenly extend to two and a half hours for some function or extra special number... But church in Uganda was also where I sometimes specially felt excited to be living in Africa, when the students rushed onto the stage to dance with abandon to a song from their part of Uganda, or when students did hilarious sketches acted brilliantly (not always...), and when John Senyonyi or Fred Baalwa preached so brilliantly it made me proud to be there hearing them.

I haven't often time-warped back to Mukono so it caught me unawares this morning, but I liked it!

Happy St Bartholomew's Day, by the way.

Chinua Achebe

Hope Amazon doesn't mind...and, you can't look inside....
but there I've given them some much-needed advertising I guess...

Abby Bartels sent me a book for my birthday, "The Education of a British-Protected Child" by Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian writer of the famous "Things Fall Apart" and much more. This book is a collection of talks and pieces he has written on Nigeria, Africa, and colonialism. It is so interesting and well written, a very easy read but full of insights. I love his voice as much as anything; it is like sitting down with a John Senyonyi or an Eliphaz Maari - wise, critical but not hostile, humble, and both exasperated by and hopeful for Africa.

But, the book is making me feel a bit depressed for Africa at the same time, as I read about incidents from Achebe's childhood and early adulthood. And how the search for an African identity is still in process and is still needed. I didn't use to understand why so many of my colleagues' PhDs were on the lines of "In search of an African identity, an African theology, etc." As if it hadn't been found already. But reading this book has made me understand a bit more. Achebe describes how over the four hundred years since Europeans arrived in Africa, they have written and spoken stereotypes, in order to justify or rationalise  their treatment of Africa. In the second half of the last century, with independence, new images of Africa are arising, but there is still a lot of the old as well. And it takes a long time to emerge out of that, like a person who has been told for years and years that they are second-best, or not very clever, or ugly, or won't succeed.

Another new understanding for me came in a paragraph introducing his family:

"All my life I have had to take account of the million differences - some little, others quite big - between the Nigerian culture into which I was born, and the domineering Western style that infiltrated and then invaded it. Nowhere is the difference more stark and startling than in the ability to ask a parent: "How many children do you have?" The right answer should be a rebuke: "Children are not livestock!" Or better still, silence, and carry on as if the question was never asked." (p68)

I have asked that question so so many times, because I thought it was polite in Africa to be interested in a person's family! I remember being tickled once when the reply came: "...um, about eight." But I took this vague answer to be purposeful, rising from the feeling that if someone knew too much they could do some kind of harm to that family, rather than from an actual uncertainty of how many children they had. But now I wonder if the person actually objected to the question. I suppose thinking about it, one ought to ask "How is your family?" but perhaps not, "How many children are in your family?" Or maybe this is more sensitive in Nigeria than elsewhere. Eighteen years in Africa and still so much to learn!


Chinua Achebe's book Things Fall Apart was seminal and is read by nearly every African child in school, and I read it before going out to Zimbabwe, but now I want to read it again. Now I feel excited about African Literature all over again. Thanks Abby!

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I have just watched this warm, fun movie, about a group of retired Brits who decide for various reasons to move to India for their old age - to the "Best Exotic Marigold Hotel". It has some humorous, and poignant, observations about moving to another culture as well as many very funny lines. Also some beautiful, noisy and colourful scenes of Indian street life. From my very brief trip to India in 2007 for CV Mathews' enthronement, I second that India is "an assault on all the senses," that the comment of one character, "All life is here" is true, and also that the hair-raising shot of an overtaking bus honking and swishing across into its own lane just in time is all too authentic - the driving was noisier and more frightening by far than in Uganda.

It is a comedy, and it has some fairly ridiculous incidents and probably a lot of cliches. But, I enjoyed it very much and I totally recommend it. The most obvious observation on moving into a new culture is the truism that, the more you put into a thing, the more you get out of it. The characters who ventured out into the streets and markets and then into the lives and finally homes of Indian friends, were the ones who came to love it the most and made the best new life in India.  Another point made simply but well was that you must, must show respect toward and interest in people; and when you are invited into someone's home and are not sure what is expected, just be considerate, and real. Just as you would with a new friend of your own culture, in fact. A more insightful observation came across more subtly: early on the narrator described the group as "adapting to new ways and new habits like Darwin's finches"; but towards the end of the film she says, "Perhaps we were foolish to think we could adapt at our ages. We are too stuck in our ways." Early on in transition to a new culture, you can think that you are making fantastic progress, you know so much already, and you are adjusting brilliantly to the new life. But as you go along, you find out more and more how deep culture goes, both for you and for those you now live among, and you find out just how much you do not know and will probably will never know or completely understand. The challenge becomes greater and harder the longer you stay. That is my belief. Doesn't mean you shouldn't keep at it, keep learning - but you have to be humble, and very patient about it!

Two very amusing lines: when one of the wives is annoyed with her husband, she says to him: "When I want your opinion I'll give it to you." And the one that appears in the trailer, - "In India we have a saying, everything will be all right in the end. So if everything is not all right, it means it is not the end yet." Good one. I do recommend this film for a fun and feel-good couple of hours set in another bright and sunny country.