Let Go of Your Bootstraps for a Second

I cut my teeth on Americana. We are loud, proud, and fiercely independent. We don’t need anyone, don’t ask for help, won’t stop for directions, and heaven help us if someone tries to tell us what to do.

It never occurred to me that there was any other way to be, until I came to Africa, where my extreme individualistic culture ran headlong into a collectivistic culture. And that’s when I really learned to appreciate the beauty in letting go of self and seeing myself as part of a larger community.

Chart Credit: Jillian Vinall Miller

Let me paint you a picture.

It is 10 AM on a Wednesday and I am in church. I made an effort today. It was work to get here. I’m an individualistic American with stuff to do. But my life in Togo is already pretty isolated. We don’t work in one particular church, but are in different churches every week. So I don’t have many opportunities to build real relationships. COVID has made this worse. 

Bottom line: this individualistic American with stuff to do got lonely. So I put on my African clothes, tied up my hair, got a taxi, and showed up for a Women’s Ministries prayer meeting at Temple du Calvaire, in Lome, Togo. It’s the second week they are allowed to meet again, as long as social distancing precautions are observed.

I’m late- they’ve been praying since 8 AM. But it’s okay. Madame Mitré, the pastor’s wife, is glad I’m here. She’s wearing a mask, but I can see her eyes smile, and I hear the greeting. “Hello Cherie!” She makes a space for me, keeping the social distance rules in place, and then turns and raises a hand, signaling to another lady across the room. Within a minute, I have a translator, sitting beside me to translate everything going on around me into French.

Speaking of languages, there are at least four being used in this room. There is French. There is Ewe, the local ethnic language. There is, I think, Igbo, the ethnic language of south-eastern Nigeria. And occasionally, when the speaker is a Nigerian, there is English.

It’s natural. It works. Depending on who is speaking, different ones among them translate for each other. They call out help and corrections. I think about how naturally they make sure everyone in the room can understand. Everyone is included. Everyone matters.

I can’t help but wonder why bilingual inclusion is still even a controversy in the US.

As I join in the prayers, my translator explains that we are praying for Madame Kpante. She is the Women’s Ministries director and they call her their Mama. I know her. We used to work with her husband when he was the children’s ministries director. He was killed in a car accident in 2009, and she is widow with children. She’s in the hospital, they tell me. She’s been there for two months.

I am so sorry to hear this and I add my prayers to the others. My own head is bowed. My voice is quiet. But that is not the way West Africans do it. They call out to God.They sound desperate because they are desperate. They move around the room. Every few minutes, they ring a bell, call everyone back to order, and give another brief word of encouragement. One of the leaders says, in no uncertain terms, that we are going to cry for our Mama, because the ladies of her church will cry with their sisters when they are suffering. 

I don’t think I’ve ever been instructed to cry before. 

I’m so humbled. This. This is community in action right here. To come and sit in suffering. To bring a sister to Jesus when she cannot bring herself and to cry with her. Independence and self-reliance won’t do her any good right now. She needs community. She needs friends to bear her burdens, and to sit with her in suffering without trying to explain it away. To have faith on her behalf when her faith is weak.

And because she lives in a collectivist culture, she has it, right here. It is a beautiful example of the strength in collectivism, and only highlights what I can learn from my cultural hosts.

We pray for an hour and fifteen minutes, for this one specific need.

And then, we take an offering to be given as a gift to Madame Kpante’s children. Right now, they have been taken in by various members of the church. This offering is to help them with food, with clothing, with whatever costs they may have while their mother is so sick. And while I watch every woman in the room drop something into the box, the word “community” pops into my head again.  Many here have taken financial hits during the COVID crisis. Seamstresses with no clients, grocery stores with no customers. Goods prices rising, and jobs lost. But they all give, together, to meet the needs of one of their own.

It reminds me of another collectivist culture. The early church.

And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Acts 4: 33-35

When it is over, and I get into a taxi by myself to go home, to my waiting “I’ll do it myself” tasks, I can’t help but think about how each culture has its strengths and weaknesses, and how that fiercely independent, bootstrap-pulling-up-by Americans are missing out on something important.

 

“Belonging” Held in Tension

If belonging is a huge hotel, with Americans having a party in the Cedar ballroom and Africans having another one in the Teak ballroom,  those who live and work cross-culturally often find ourselves alone, out in the hallway between the two, not knowing which party we are invited to. Not really fitting in either place.

When I first came to Africa, I was terribly homesick. I missed the seasons. I was angry when it was sweat-in-all-the-places hot in December while I was trying to put up my Christmas tree. I tried to imagine the falling ash from the burning of the fields in January was just gray snow.  I stubbornly painted autumn leaves with the children  and strung them up on clotheslines across the dining room. I dyed brown eggs with the kids at Easter and tried to explain to them how much more brilliant the colors would have been if we could only get white eggs.

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But it went deeper than that. I lived in a place where I was constantly an outsider looking in. Une étrangère. Une blanche. A “yovo*.” When I went to the store, people rubbernecked to see what I was buying. When I walked down the street, people called out to me from across the street just because I’m white. I felt exposed, on display, like a curiosity. Not like a person.  I had no real African friends and I was hurt and angry when my American friends forgot me.

You don’t really realize how important that need to belong is until you don’t belong anymore.

But a curious thing happened. When I finally went home, set foot on American soil for the first time after daydreaming about it for three years, I discovered I didn’t belong there anymore either. I was astounded by the amount of material excess, and not only the amount, but the cavalier fashion in which it’s treated. I went to a Bible study and a woman asked for prayer because she was struggling to find the time to both get her son to soccer practice and her daughter to ballet. I rolled my eyes so hard they probably made a sound like ball bearings in my head. I had just come out of a civil war. My last view of my neighbors homes as I left had been charred and shattered, burned out cars beside the road, and everyone who wasn’t military gone- either dead or fled. My own home, with all my things I left behind, would be later looted. My response in that moment wasn’t gracious. Struggle is not a contest where the one with the worst story wins. But clearly I didn’t fit here anymore either.

The first time we said goodbye and left for Africa without our children. Fall 2015

Twenty years down the road, and I am still standing in the hallway between the two parties. Over time, I have found that I can adapt in either place. I can duck in and out, between the party in the Teak ballroom and the one in the Cedar ballroom. I have African friends, and I have better avenues for keeping in touch with my American friends. But there are days when I still feel like I don’t truly belong in either place. I have learned to hold “Belonging,” like a spring held in tension between the two places. Knowing there will always be  the pull of one behind me as I stretch toward the other.

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These days, I feel this tension pulled even tighter. I read social media and I don’t understand the perspectives of a lot of my fellow American believers. Maybe I don’t agree, but I have to be careful what I say. I sometimes daydream a bit about going “home” to a place that doesn’t exist as I remember it, and a city that has changed while I was gone. It’s a lonely place to be, out in the hallway between worlds.

This week, one of my dear African friends, Madame Miriam Kloutse, came to visit me. She, too, works cross culturally. Though she is a Togolese citizen working in Togo, she is from the Ewe people in the south, in the city where there are more physical comforts and material goods. She works with the Gourmantche people in the far north, where the climate is sub-Saharan and the poverty is extreme.  In the beginning, she had no friends. She didn’t speak the language. She was an outsider and a curiosity. Six years have passed for her, and she is doing much better. “I am Ewe, and I am Gourmantche” she says. “Because in truth, I am neither. I am not a citizen of this world. I am a citizen of heaven and that is where I belong.”

I could have hugged her. I wanted to. I’m not a hugger, but it felt appropriate. I didn’t, because COVID is even changing culture here, where physical touch and salutations are important. But I wanted to, because apparently, I fit in here a bit more than I realized.

But I, too, am a citizen of heaven. That is where I belong.  If only I could remember that when my spring is stretched tight and my strength is low.

(*”yovo is the Ewe word for “white” or “white person.” It’s kind of a thing here for people, especially children, to call out “yovo” when they see you. Sometimes even “Yovo, yovo, give me something to eat!” Nothing like being called “whitey” wherever you go to remind you that you are a curiosity.) 

My House, Your House, Her House

We went out today. Not ‘out’ to the grocery store or the ATM, but out out. Out of Lomé, for the first time since February, out to a village to do some filming. I took some great pictures and video, and as soon as I can cobble some together, I’ll give you a behind the scenes look at what we were doing.

But right now, I don’t want to talk about what we were doing. I want to talk about what I saw. This village is right on the coast. Perhaps 500 yards away is the well of slaves, (which I have written about here), where slaves were loaded onto offshore ships for transportation. We went into the home of an elderly woman who is a figure in the local church.

To go in, you pass through a gap in fencing made of woven palm tree branches. The door itself is a rusty old piece of corrugated tin. Inside, you find yourself in an enclosed space encircled by the woven mats. In the far right corner is a tiny cement building. It is raw, unpainted, and windowless, with a few brick vents near the tin roof line. A curtain blocks the door, and outside, sitting in front of it are a couple of benches made from weathering boards perched on cement blocks. Three children sit on the benches, circled around a cooking fire. It’s a ceramic pot, filled with baked clay. A fire burns down inside and the rims are formed to cradle a pot.

 

I do not share a language with this family. The children, a little, The grandma, almost none. But we have a few colleagues with us who speak Ewe, her language, so I ask them what the children are cooking.

“Pate,” they say. (Dough, the word means in French.)

“With what?” I ask. “Manioc?” I look around, seeing a few discarded scraps of manioc.

“Farine de mais.” Cornflour, the word means. What Americans call cornmeal.

When it is done to a nice gooey texture, the oldest boy scoops it out in metal bowls and overturns it onto plates in perfect bowl-shapes. A smaller child takes one and carries it carefully, only wobbling a little, and vanishes behind the curtain.

All this happens while I watch, while Phil and our colleagues set up their camera equipment for the filming we are about to do.

Directly to my right is a little shelter, poles stuck into the sand and a palm branch roof. This looks like it is for the chickens. One petite little hen scratches in the dirt and pecks at a discarded bit of mango rind. Her four chicks, not any bigger than the egg they hatched out of, scuttle around her, peeping and searching the dirt for scraps. I’m sure I seem crazy to smile at something so ordinary, but they are delightful, these tiny things.

Another shelter is to my left, and inside, a pot of dirty water, the cold remains of another cooking fire, and a small pile of dented and dirty basins, pots, and bowls. I’m not sure if this is another kitchen, or what this space is used for.

The sand is soft and loose. It’s settling between my toes, and if it gets too windy, it will be gritty in my teeth. When the grandmother offers me a plastic chair, the legs sink into the soft sand. I point to another chair, a crumbling wood one along the wall, asking if I can sit there, and she smiles ear to ear, and makes me wait while she hunts down a rag to wipe it down for me.

I settle into this spot, the breeze blowing off the water, temporary relief from the humidity, and she sits next to me. For the next couple hours, we watch the filming going in silence, both of us swatting futilely at the flies.

I wonder what her status is. What is her name?  Is there a husband, out working fields somewhere? Is she childcare for her adult children, who will come home later? I have no way to ask her, but right here, I only see a grandmother and children.

 

The hen and her chicks entertain me. Outside the compound, the birds twitter and sing. Children call out as they pass by outside. The porridge smells warm and I smell a bit of smoke from the dying fire, occasionally a whiff of a latrine that must be nearby. While Phil and our colleagues work, my eyes explore.

Overhead, a bent and twisted electric line snakes across the courtyard, winding around a branch of the mango tree, under the corrugated tin shade over the porch of the building, and through a hole in the concrete. So, they  are tapped into electric, but probably just enough to power a light bulb, and to charge her cell phone, which lies on a bench next to a scrap of fabric.  What I don’t see is anything resembling a pantry. No food storage. No fridge. No running water, no toilet facilities. At least the community well is just 20 yards outside the front door.

A couple dirty basins with water are placed around the courtyard. At one point, a little girl scoops out a cupful and uses it off to the side to rinse off her hands. “Good girl,” I think to myself. We are here filming videos about hand washing. I see no evidence that they are drinking this dirty water.  I ask my colleague where they store the drinking water. He nods toward the curtained doorway. I don’t know for sure, but I think she has one of the water filters that Water Charity distributed last year. I hope it’s made a difference.

Children smile at me shyly. They come and go, moving surprisingly quietly, respectful of the adults in their home. I count four that look like the y belong here. But neighbors stop by. Other women, other children.

 

After a few hours, we are done filming. While we are packing up, Phil and I talk about an appropriate thank you gift and consult with the pastor. Phil and the pastor thank her profusely and Phil hands her 5,000 cfa. (About $8.) I want to give her more but everyone tells us we don’t need to be excessive. Her eyes shine and her smile is as wide as her ears. I understand a few words here and there, between her Ewe and the translation. “God has blessed me today.”

She is alone, the pastor explains. She cares for these children by herself and she’s at the church every time its open. He helps her whenever he can.

 

I have spent 1,000 words telling you where I was this morning. I wanted to be more brief, but I needed you to go there with me. I needed you to feel the grit in your sandals and smell the wood smoke in your nose. Because next,  I want you to come home with me.

We pull into our driveway, exhausted but happy to have been able to go out for the first time since COVID hit. I walk in my huge kitchen, with its running water, fridge and stove, and every small convenience imaginable. My dogs, one of whom is obviously overfed, greet me. Phil and I crack open our lunch, takeout from the local Chinese place, and settle into our recliners, watching a British game show that we stream off YouTube. Afterwards, we nap on our king size bed, in an air-conditioned room, while the washing machine and the dryer happily hum away washing our clothes. This evening, I’ll have a meeting using the internet connection to talk to someone on the other side of the world.

My heart weighs heavy. Here, in this 3 Bedroom, 2 bath house, for just two of us, where I have every convenience. How is it that her home is so different from my home and your home? I don’t even know her name.

I’m humbled. Again, as I always am. It’s just that it’s been a few months since the last time I was reminded so poignantly that none of us deserve by right or by birth the lot we were given. That I was born into wealth and she was born into poverty was chance and nothing more.

And that as a Christ follower, my rights to anything I think I am owed end where this woman’s sandy courtyard begins. I am charged to give justice to the poor and the orphan. To uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute.

After all, isn’t that what Jesus did for me?

 

The Stories We Wear: African Wax Print Fabric

You cannot visit West Africa and miss the textiles. From the minute you exit the airport, you are guaranteed to see fabric for sale. It’s in every little boutique, hanging in displays in the window or stacked in neat folds, or criss-crossed like Lincoln Logs. Women walk down the street with folded stacks on their heads. Everywhere you turn, people wear clothing made from wax-print (locally known as “pagne”) and on Sundays, the churches will be an explosion of bright colors and patterns, each outfit custom-made, each different from the last.

Boutiques like this are all over the city, floor to ceiling fabric for sale.

Pagne fabrics are traditional here, not because they are West African in origin, but because West Africa claims them and makes them their own.  I won’t write about their history because this post, and this one, do it much better than I can. But what I wanted to share today was some of the interesting meanings and stories that are attached to some of the more common prints.

So I went down to the Grand Marché in Lomé, Togo today and took a lot of pictures and asked a lot of questions!

“Si tu sort, je sort”

By universal agreement, this one (above) is one of the oldest designs. It is called “If you leave, I’ll leave,” and the story behind it is that it’s meant to be a warning to one’s spouse. If you cheat, I’ll cheat. I’m not sure, though, that if you spotted someone wearing it, they would mean anything by it except “hey look at this pretty bird fabric. I like it!”

Maison du Roi

Maison du Roi

In the local language, Ewe, the name of this fabric (above) is “Sagbadre,” which is the name of the bird on it. I do not know what the English name is, because the vendor only spoke Ewe, and my translator didn’t know the French name for it. But she did tell me that in Benin, this fabric is called “Let us go to the house of the King,” because traditionally, the King would keep this kind of bird as a pet in his home. So if you arrived at his door wearing this, he was sure to let you in!

“On est ensemble.”

This one’s (above) name translates “We are together.” This is a lovely example of cultural influence on names. “We are together,” is something Togolese people will often say when you are talking about collaborating on a project. “You take care of that part, I’ll take care of this part.” and the person replies, “Oh yes! We are together.” A lovely example of relational culture reflected in art.

“Ginger” or “Tortoise Shell”

The origins and names of pagne fabrics is not clear. They do not come from the manufacturer named, but somewhere along the way, the vendors and the clients agree on the pattern name (or not.) This fabric (above)  is a great example of how there isn’t always consensus on the pattern names. The vendor who was showing me this one today called it “Gingembre,” which means “Ginger.” However, this website from Ghana shows the same fabric in a different color scheme (which is normal- the same pattern often comes in multiple color schemes,” and calls it “The Tortoise Shell.”

“L’escargot”

“Le Bananier”

Even within the same market, there isn’t always agreement! I took both these pictures today in the Grande Marché in Lomé, at different shops. The one on the left, they told me, was called “The Snail,” in two different colors. The one on the right, “The Banana Tree.” Honestly, it doesn’t quite look like either one to me.

“Sweet Potato Leaves”

This one (above) is called “Sweet Potato Leaves,” or in Ewe, “Agoutomakpa.” The name is quite strong, I’m told. The sweet potato leaves are a quick-growing plant that will take over everything quickly. Thus, the implication in the local language is “something that will take over your whole house.”

“La Famille”

This one, (above) is one of my favorites! It’s called “The family.” Notice there are eggs, chicks and roosters, but the hen is at the center of the design. Because Maman is the center of the family!

“Basilique”

This one (above), Basilica, dates back to when the country of Cote d’Ivoire gained their independence from France. This fabric represents the shining light of freedom. (I should have had her open it up all the way, as the design is quite big, but you can see the chandelier motif.)

The name of this one has something to do with doves.

This one, above, sparked a very interesting conversation and a lot of laughter. Apparently the name has something to do with doves. I said, “but there are no doves on it.” The two women, the vendor and my interpreter, looked at each other and laughed. Then my interpreter explained that the swirl in the pattern is what dove poo looks like. “It’s quite pretty,” she said. “And because doves mate for life, there is a sense of love and fidelity associated with doves.”

“I wouldn’t want to wear a dress with dove poop on it though,” I said. They all laughed and I distinctly heard the word “yovo,” in their conversation, which is the Ewe word for “white person.”

Finally, I encountered a whole plethora of fabrics that just have interesting names, with no real story attached- or at least not one the vendors could tell me.  (Scroll over the picture for the name of the pattern.)

“Thorns”

This one is named after a warming cream you put on your skin, kind of like Ben Gay!

“The States are Unified”

“Sugar Cubes”

“Stairs”

“Prayer Mat”

“Peanut Shells”

“Moringa”

“Macaroni”

“Macaroni” in another color

Name unknown

“Guinea Fowl”

“Marriage Flowers”

“Marriage Flowers” in another color

“The Rich Woman”

“Congress,” so named because it is reserved for the important people.

“Iron Rings”

“Water in a well”

So what do we do with these fabrics? Here’s a couple older blogs I wrote about ordering custom-made clothes in Lomé!

Clothes Shopping in Togo: Where There is No Mall

My New Clothes are Here!

If you are interested in more information, here are some other great articles I found!

https://yevuclothing.com/blogs/stories/the-hidden-meanings-behind-africas-wax-prints

https://face2faceafrica.com/article/african-print-fabrics-and-their-meanings

African Wax Print Clothing – The Story Behind The fabric

On Being An Immigrant — sethlewis.ie

Growing up in Alabama, I knew the rules: I knew when to say “yes, ma’am” and how to order a Sprite by asking for a Coke and waiting for the server to say “What kind?” I knew what was expected of me, and I knew what to expect from others. I knew how to say […]

via On Being An Immigrant — sethlewis.ie

Embracing Tacky Christmas

I have a tacky little Christmas tree. It’s loaded with wacky or odd ornaments, with lights that are gaudy Santas that glow orange. It’s topped with a fake bow in garish colors. Even the tree itself is tacky. But this tradition Phil and I started about four years ago, the tacky Christmas tree, has a meaning that goes back quite a bit further. 

Our first Christmas in Africa, in 2000, I felt like we were pretending. Removed from family and friends, removed from all community and all clues that it even was Christmas. The weather was more sno-cone weather than snowmen, and I distinctly remember how absurd the  gecko on the wall behind the Christmas tree looked. 

The next year was a bit better. December in Cote d’Ivoire was the season for burning fields, so we joked about how the falling ash kind of looked like snow if you squinted your eyes just right. 

It was about our seventh year in our career as missionaries when I first really started to think about the tacky. 

We lived in Togo that year. Lomé has developed a lot in the 12 years since, but in those days, there was very little to buy here for Christmas gifts. So we went to Accra. Accra is the capital of Ghana, the country next door to Togo. It is about four hours away by road, if you count the time spent at the border crossing, and it had all kinds of restaurants, fast food, and shopping. 

It was night time when we pulled up at a shopping center in the Osu district. The street was always crowded. It was where the best restaurants at the time were, which meant it was frequented by tourists and ex-pats. Where there are tourists and ex-pats, there are vendors, merchants, and hawkers selling them stuff. Booths stuffed with African shirts, djembes, beaded necklaces, locally made leather goods, etc. They were always squished in there like kids trying to get to the front of the line and it was always chaos.

That night was no exception. What was different, though, was that most of the touristy-stuff was gone. In it’s place, every single vendor in a long line as far as we could see down the street, was packed to the gills with a eruption of Christmas decor. It was gaudy and raucous.  Garland in colors never found in nature, and seizure-inducing lights lights and more lights. Inflatable Santas and strange decor in plastic and tin foil. Absolutely nothing I would have ever considered purchasing on its own merit to grace my own home. It was all just so tacky. 

And yet. The overall effect was glorious, as if all the festivity the world could conjure was packed like brown sugar into this one little street. In the sum of all the Christmases in Africa before, I’d not seen so much actual decor as was in that one place.  It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas and I was utterly enchanted. 

A whole street of gloriously tacky Christmas decor! Osu, Accra, Ghana, 2007

Years went by, and I didn’t give a lot more thought to that one moment on the street in Osu, Accra. For some of those years, we had a home in Africa. For others, we lived in the US and traveled back and forth. We had our own decor and I never gave the “tacky” stuff I could find here much more thought.  Until 2015. 

In October 2015, with both kids in college, we came back to Togo, Phil and I. We packed up our empty nest, put it all on a shipping container, but by December, our container, which should have just taken 6-8 weeks to reach us, was still in the US. We didn’t know it,  but we wouldn’t get our own things for four more long months. But Christmas was upon us. We had no friends nearby, no family with us, no community celebrating around us, and on top of that, not even a shred of decor to remember it was Christmas.

 I woke up one day and decided, I guess, that instead of being sad for what I didn’t have, I would embrace what I did. So we went out the door laughing. We bought a small tree. It’s anorexic, but at this point, tacky became the point, and it was only $3. (And I had a full-sized tree already. It was just somewhere on the Atlantic at that moment.) We bought a basket full of the worst ornaments we could find for it. In fact, Phil made me put one or two back because they were too cute. We bought a set of lights that are little plastic Santas with pipe-cleaner beards, and I laughed until I snorted when I got home and discovered that they are orange when lit up, and that they have different settings of blinking, all of which are awful. And we decorated our tacky tree. 

This is what the tacky tree looked like the first year we had it up. It was our main tree that year.

Every year since then, the tree must go up. Our container eventually arrived, so the tacky tree took a place in the kitchen bay window. But every year, it has become part of our tradition put up the tree. The Santa lights break a little more every year. The tree itself falls over if you blow on it. But every year, we buy another tacky ornament for it. The tackier the better. 

Because that’s what you do, right? You embrace where you are– make the best of it. Find the joy, even when its hard to find. Even when your kids are far away. Even when you feel disconnected from your own culture and community. Even when your friends have decided they don’t have time for you anymore and you are struggling to find your place again. You look for the joy. Embrace the tacky. Celebrate what you do have and not what you don’t. 

I suppose that’s the moral of my tacky Christmas tree. 
I’m preaching to myself. 

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The Mountain Story: A Cautionary Tale of Outside Solutions

There was once an old village at the tippy-top of a mountain peak. The village was beautiful, dug into the hillside and commanding views of the entire countryside around, but there was one pressing problem. The trail that led up the mountain to the village was windy, folded upon itself in switchbacks to counter the steep and plunging hillside. And because the trail was so precarious and the mountain so steep, people kept falling off. Men, women, and children had all been inured, and some had even been killed. 

One day, a short-term team came to the village on a mission. They were full of compassion and good intentions and they wanted to help. “The nearest clinic is 10 km away?” they asked. “You need an ambulance to transport people to the clinic!”

So this team wrote to their church back home and raised the funds. And when they went home, the village had a nice new ambulance to transport victims to the clinic! The people of the village were so happy! Now they had a way to take care of the injured who fell off their mountain! 

But days and weeks passed. Soon, the ambulance fell in disrepair. With no parts for it, nobody that knew its mechanics, and no way to pay for the repairs, the people of the village ignored it until one day someone else fell off the mountain. Embarrassed, they wrote to their patrons. “We need help!” they said, and the patrons promptly sent more money to repair the ambulance.

Days and weeks passed, though, and it kept happening. The ambulance would break down, the people of the village, despite the shame of begging for help, would write to the patron in another country, who would then send money. This continued until one day, the foreigners said, “we can’t keep raising money for you. You are on your own.” 

So the ambulance was abandoned, left to rust and decay, and the people of the village were right back where they had started. With people falling off the mountain and no way to help them, they could do nothing. 

A year or more passed, and another short-term team came to the village from a church far away. They, too, were full of compassion and wanted to help. They heard the story of the decrepit ambulance and they said “we have a better solution. You do not need to drive 10 km to the nearest clinic. You need a clinic here.” So the team raised the funds. They built a clinic, right there at the base of the mountain. They provided the equipment, the medications, and the staff. Then they went home and the people of the village were so pleased! Finally, a clinic of their own to care for those who fell! 

But time went by, and the clinic staff needed a break. They went on vacation and the clinic was left unattended. The people of the village wrote to the patron church, hat in hand, and explained that the clinic was providing poor service. So the church sent money to hire more staff. Then the clinic ran out of medications, and again, the village wrote and complained about the poor quality of care for those who were falling off the mountain. So the team, again, raised funds and sent more money. 

Finally one day, the pastor of the church in the far away country retired. He was replaced by a new pastor who knew nothing of the village and its clinic, and when the people of the village wrote to him and asked for more funds, the pastor apologized, saying “this is no longer part of our vision. We cannot help you anymore.”

So the clinic was abandoned, left to crumble and invaded by rats, and the people of the village were right back where they had started, with people falling off the mountain and no way to care for them, they could do nothing. 

They called a town meeting and began to discuss the original problem. “We need to care for those who fall off the mountain,” they said. “But we can’t. The solutions the outsiders brought us did not work, so we need another short-term team to come.”

But among them, a wise village elder cleared his throat. “I had a solution in the beginning, but nobody wanted to listen to me. It wasn’t free. It wasn’t given to us. We would have to work for it.” Then he explained his idea. The village could build a fence, all along the edge of the trail, to keep people from falling off.

“Okay,” said the village leaders. “Let’s do it.” 

The whole village turned out to build the fence. Each household donated funds from what they could spare. They set posts in cement so that they would last, and built a sturdy rail of wood all along the length. And several weeks later, when the work was done, they had a fence that would stop anyone who slipped from tumbling to the valley below. And over the years, as the wood began to rot, it was a simple task to go into the forest and cut a new tree to replace the damaged rails. The people of the village were so proud of their accomplishment! 

This project transformed the community. Whenever they had another need, instead of looking for an outside solution, they began to ask themselves what they had on hand to fix the problem themselves. They did not have to  go to an outsider, palms out, begging for help. Their dignity was elevated and they grew in confidence in their ability to solve their own problems. All because they owned a fence along a mountain trail. 

The moral of the story, dear readers, is that sometimes we come in, as outsiders, with great intentions. We think we know the solution and we can raise the funds to provide it. What a blessing!  But our helping is sometimes not the right solution. It can lead to unintended consequences and can even be an offense to the dignity of those very people we are trying to help. If we want to help, we should, always, ask the right questions, listen to local solutions, and invest in the dignity and agency of those we are helping so that they can own the solution.

This story was adapted from the Global CHE Network Training of Trainers Level 1 Materials. Illustrations courtesy of Jeannie Seck. 

Community Health Evangelism. (2019). CHE Training of Trainers Manual 2019. Retrieved from https://chenetwork.org

 

Grief is an XBox

I’m selling a bunch of stuff. We have too much junk and a lot of stuff we don’t use anymore. Among the piles of old ipods, E-readers, crock pots, etc, there’s an old XBox 360.

It’s had a good life but nobody uses it anymore. It’s obsolete from what I understand. So I’m selling it.

I take it out of the box and wipe it all down. It’s filthy and as I’m scrubbing all the dirt out of the cracks of the controllers, I suddenly have a picture of my children’s hands. How many hours were small fingers clutched around this thing? How much laughter (or frustration) or escapism did this facilitate? How many times did I threaten to unplug this console if homework wasn’t done, or or because we had to run an errand and I was tired of “I’m not at a saving place”? 

I start to cry. It’s stupid, me standing here over this old X-Box and crying. My nest has been empty since 2015. This is my second Christmas without either my kids, my third without Jake. They both have their own significant others, and places to go and people to be with, and I should have moved on by now.  But this old console is still here with me. And suddenly I realize . . . . 

This is grief. 

Christmas- either 2008 or 2009. Jake thought we didn’t have the budget for an XBox that year, so it was a huge surprise. I love his face! (And I love Grace in the background, who looks either bored or left out.)

They were both so excited. Even Grace, who is not nearly the gamer her brother is.

I had to step away from my social media this morning. I was bombarded on all fronts by tired moms complaining about their kids and how busy the season is. I can’t fault them. I remember. They don’t think I do. They think I’m old and outdated and couldn’t possibly understand how hard the holidays are for families with kids. 

But I do. And I’m grieving it. I miss those days. I miss the laughter and the love. I’m afraid of forgetting what their hair smelled like after a bath or what face they made when I asked them to clear the table. 

Hello grief. I see you. I acknowledge you and understand like you are like glitter. I might clean up the big mess, but there will be little flakes of you scattered all over my life forever. So I’ll sell the X-Box, wipe my tears, and look forward to the day when I can do Christmas with not only my children, but hopefully my grandchildren too. And there will be new game consoles and new little hands and new laughter and love. But for now, please pass the tissues and thanks for letting me grieve. 

Goodbye XBox. I hope you make some other kids as happy as you made mine.

 

Cross-Cultural Magpies: Thoughts on Home

I got up this morning and pulled my clothes out of the closet. A pair of denim capris, my new pair of locally made flip-flops, made from wax-print fabric, and my Seahawks t-shirt. 

Suddenly it struck me what an odd combination this was. The cross-cultural version of going to Walmart and putting random things on the belt: A car battery, four pounds of grapes, and a packet of those party favors that uncurl when you blow them. Oh and of course a box of tampons. (And every female is nodding her head and thinking “yes, there are always tampons.” But I digress.) 

Our home is sort of the same thing. I am a nester and my nest reflects us. Artwork from the Pike Place Market, and the Lome artisan market and the Cocody market and whatever that market was in Ouagadougou. Or Panama. Or that copper platter Phil got me in India somewhere. It’s full of the bits and bobs and shiny things from all the places we’ve lived and traveled to. It is a museum of us. Of the places that speak to us, mean something to us, or call to us on lonely days.* 

I’m putting out a few fall things this morning. Normally I have a strict rule. September is for Seahawks decor, maybe a scarecrow or a sunflower. October is for pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns. November is for Pilgrims and Native Americans and turkeys made of Legos that my children made for me years ago. 

Seahawks Table runner, made by me, from local West African wax-print fabrics. The wood tray is ebony, purchased here in Togo. The lions are part of a collection I have of African animals in ceramic, from South Africa. (The lioness and her cubs are my favorite pieces of the whole collection.)

It’s drizzling out today.

You might wonder why that matters. It matters because it’s unusual here. Rain in Togo is tropical monsoon downpours, and when I am home in the Pacific Northwest and we get a rare deluge like that, I think of Togo. But here, in Togo, when it drizzles just enough to make the dog’s coat a bit wet when she goes out, but not enough for her to shake when she comes in, I think of the Pacific Northwest. And fall. And leaves changing colors and cozy evenings under my Pendleton blanket. And I get a bit homesick. 

So I’m pulling out the fall decor early.  Don’t get me wrong. It’s still in the 80’s out there, with 100% humidity. But inside, I can turn up the AC and pretend, and maybe feel a bit less homesick. 

The Pendleton blanket (from Pendleton Woolen Mills, Pendleton, OR) is the middle one, in blues, grays, and browns. It sits on the shelf in my bedroom between three different Maasai blankets from Kenya, and on the bottom of the stack, the heaviest (and so, least used here) blanket is a Campbell tartan wool blanket from Scotland. The basket came from Ghana and of course the children and comic books are American!  

 

The runner underneath is from, I think, Ghana.  The woven chargers are from Benin. The tool in the back is from Kenya. It has a name but I don’t know what it is. It’s for hunting lions. I call it the lion-bonker. And the Jack-O-Lantern candle holder is from Hobby Lobby. 

The Thanksgiving stuff will have to wait, but pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns are out, along with an acorn or too. (I got rid of most of it a few years ago, so I just have a couple things.) But what’s weird is the contrast. Africa and America, with bits of other places too. 

It’s just. Us. It’s who we are. Little magpies collecting bits of our life and tucking them into our nest. Our home. And if you are a cross-cultural magpie like me, don’t be afraid to display all your shiny treasures when it does your soul good. You don’t have to wait for October. 

I’ve always loved seasonal kitchen linens. The fall towels wait to find their place in my Togolese kitchen in front of the ceramic tile from the iconically-tourtisty “Ye Olde Curiosity Shop” in Seattle. 

*Disclaimer. I can’t speak for Phil, since he’s not hear, but I doubt he’d say the things “speak to him on lonely days.” That’s probably just me. 

 

The Well of Slaves: There are no words

 

I picked up this shell today.

I am maybe two hundred yards from the beach, hearing the roll and crash of a cheerful surf, and the warm tropical breeze carrying scents of cooking fires. About ten miles from the city of Lomé, Togo, the sand under the cashew tree is the color of new pennies, freckled with these tiny mollusk shells of all kinds. The shell itself is worn so smooth that I can barely feel the ridges, as if time has worn away the razor’s edges, and its the perfect size to make a cap over my index finger. I drop it quietly into my wallet as my husband starts up the SUV.

I don’t know what compelled me to pick it up, except maybe to remember this place. There is a weightiness here. You can feel it. A memorial, mostly forgotten, razor’s edges worn by the wind and sand, that reminds me of the not-so-distant history of this place I call home. What happened here makes me feel ill.

It is called “Golovoudo,” or “the Well of Slaves.”

One of the last slave ports, this place remained clandestine and active until the very end of the 19th century, meaning it’s atrocities are only a few generations old. A deacon from the local church shows us the site.

His name is Kossi and he’s telling us of his grandparents’ generation.

“Golovoudo, or the well of slaves. Site of the ritual purification of slaves before embarking for the new world, Second half of the 19th Century.”

Slaves were captured all along this coast. They were taken to a slave-house up the coast a bit and put into a windowless cellar. Kept in total darkness, they were only allowed out at night, briefly, for some food and water. The hope was that in the darkness, they would not know where they were and would be unable to escape.

When a ship arrived in port, the captives were then taken to this well in darkness. They were forced to wash from this well, a both practical and symbolic gesture. Told to forget who they were, where they came from. To wash the old life away. It was gone and they were no longer their own.

I watch Kossi, in the dying sunlight, and my heart hurts. He has tears in his eyes as he recounts the story.  In a culture in which men do not cry, he is so close as he speaks of human beings thrown overboard because they were too sick or too weak or too young or too old.

I have no words. There are no words. I know I am not responsible, but I want to apologize. To ask forgiveness from this man for what was done to his people two generations ago. But there are no words.

And then he says something that surprises me.

“But,” he says,”there are people in America who have more opportunity than I will ever have, because of what happened here. Black people who are no longer African people, but who are my family.”

It’s his perspective. It’s incredibly generous, in my opinion, and I’m humbled. While it might be an expression of cultural fatalism, the tears in his eyes testify to his sincerity. 

And as we turn to climb back into the vehicle, we thank him and his brother Agbe for showing this place to us. And something compels me to take that shell with me. How long has it been here? Have feet trod on it with one of their last steps in their homeland? 

It’s quiet in the car. Three Americans, a Romanian, and two Togolese, remembering what happened in this unremembered village.

As the car rocks and bumps over the rain-rutted roads, it suddenly occurs to me how powerful is the symbolism of God. Here, in this village where men were stripped of their identity by washing with water, we have been working, Phil and I, along with an NGO-charity, to help facilitate clean water solutions.

I just now thought of that, but God has been planning this for generations, I think.