In the spirit of the Wheaton record which for every edition publishes a "the good, the bad and the ugly" I figured I would do the same and share some of my experiences from being in Uganda...Enjoy!
THE GOOD
1) Spending Sunday afternoon with my host family - got there and had tea with three, count 'em three, pieces of white bread...then a huge lunch a couple hours later...good thing I'm not there the whole semester or I would be massive!
2) Going to an international craft fair in Kampala last Friday. There were way way too many people there and I had to clutch my bag tightly to my chest to prevent it from being snatched, but hey it's a good African experience :)
3) Playing dancing games with street children in Kampala - they didn't quite get the point of the game but boy can African children dance! Way more rhythm than me, but hey they also almost all sing off tune, so I guess we're even...
4) Planning to make breakfast for my Ugandan politics class tomorrow...french toast and scrambled eggs yum :) Then going to drop off the materials to make breakfast at my prof's house for tomorrow morning and being invited to have dinner with them - quiche and tomato cucumber salad - double yum!
5) Mom and Dad coming to see me this Sunday!
6) Going rolling (translation: walking outside the university gates to get a rolex around 9 or 10 with UCU students - rolex = chapatti with fried egg + cabbage + tomato) - however I usually opt for the fake, but still delicious ice cream which is sold right next to the stands :)
7) Playing with the children at Off-tu, the home for street kids which I am working with on Tuesday...normally I don't get to go to their place in Mukono (I usually go Kampala) - now I am "Auntie Meghan" and they invite me to come back any time
THE BAD
1) My eyes getting a slight infection from all the pollution/dust in the air - got eye drops though so now "I'm ok" (this is what Ugandans say every time you ask them how they are)
2) The UNBEARABLE heat the past couple days...I have resorted to a shower in the morning after my run and another half shower (without washing my hair) in the evenings before bed...and I am soaked all day with sweat
3) Fearing for my life when I am in a car on the roads in Kampala...especially with Uncle Julius from Off-tu - after riding with him I will never complain about a driver in the US ever again...add in being in a car with nonexistent seat belts and you have a recipe for disaster
4) Internet which is either really really slow or goes out randomly - unless you get up at 5:30 in the morning...
THE UGLY
1) My Ugandan "friend" Bob walking me back from the dining hall with his arm around my shoulder...even though he knows I'm engaged, but told me to "not get married and wait for him instead" - afterward my shoulder smelled like BO (gonna call him BO Bob from now on...and no, most Africans do not wear deodorant)
2) Begging children on the streets of Kampala...
3) Not paying attention to where I was going and stepping right into a gutter on campus...luckily Ugandans ALWAYS say "sorry" in response to every mishap and rarely if ever laugh, so it wasn't as embarrassing as it could have been...
4) 64 days till I get to see Josh again...ugh that seems like an eternity...
Thanks for reading my blog! I am almost to the halfway point of my time here which is crazy! At the end of next week I leave for my rural home stay and then it will be November...pray for continued guidance and perseverance as I continue to learn and gain understanding of this culture.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
What Does the African Jesus Look Like?
It's funny but I don't even know how to start writing this post. Perhaps I am slightly jaded towards missionaries who come in with their own cultural preconceptions about Christianity and attempt to impose them upon the culture to which they are attempting to "witness." So often throughout African history, Western Christians have created more havoc than good when attempting to "bring Christianity" to the African continent. Why is AIDS much more common in areas where missionaries evangelized?...because they came in without understanding the sexual practices of Africans and only preached against what was the most obvious sin, polygamy. Without prior knowledge of a culture, Christian evangelism does very little good at all...so I guess this is the basis from which I am starting. My being in Africa is NOT about missions...and it is frustrating when people think I am here because I have something to offer. In fact, I have very little to offer in the circumstances I encounter here. I am more often a burden than I am a help...
Although I am not here to "evangelize" so to speak, I am here to begin to understand a culture which is very different from my own. This is an attitude which is severely lacking to our superior Western attitude. In a class I am taking here in Uganda, I just finished reading John Taylor's The Primal Vision. As a disclaimer I do not agree with all that he lays out in this book and in fact if my USP friends knew I was writing a blog post about this they would cringe, since we have beaten this dead horse over and over in class...but it is still something to think about. In his book, Taylor attempts to lay out the basic tenets of African Christianity and ask some both profound and confusing questions, such as the one above. I'll attempt, even with inadequate words, to give you some of my thoughts about this...
Western Christianity is often completely irrelevant in the African context. An African proverb says when the leopard comes to you, the club at your neighbors won't drive him off, meaning that bringing our own cultural expectations to this context is ridiculous - Africans must think of Christianity IN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT. We must enter into this with an attitude of humility, recognizing how little we truly understand...a period of learning about a culture is essential before you even think about "evangelizing" in the traditional sense. As long as we continue to look on African culture with a patriarchal and superior attitude, we won't understand what the culture has to offer our own, sometimes impoverished faith. God is already here, we are not bringing him as though he is dependent on us to spread Christianity to the rest of the world...
Africa is a communal society, not dependent on individual interests. 'I participate, therefore I am' as opposed to the Western 'I think, therefore I am' is essential to understanding how this culture operates. As a human being, your life is intricately tied to the lives of all those around you, whether living or dead (and yes, ancestors are hugely important here). As examples, to an African, the concept of guilt is irrelevant because it is based upon an individual feeling of wrongdoing, but the concept of shame is hugely important because it implies judgment from the community for an act of sin. An emotions which is bottled up inside is better to an African than one that is expressed. In America, we are taught that if an emotion is kept bottled up inside it becomes dangerous to our own wellbeing. In Africa, if expressed, an emotion becomes an entity that you can no longer control, and it can even act back upon you (I'm sorry if this concept is confusing...) Our cultural views of the self in turn affect our view of salvation..."what does death-of-self mean for a self that is dispersed into many centers of consciousness far beyond the narrow circle of the skull and precincts of the flesh?..." Maybe the sinners prayer is not relevant...
Ok here comes the most important part of what Taylor lays out (I think anyway)...
From the African perspective, God is not necessarily a God who is personally involved with his creation. This is in essence why they so often pray to ancestors, etc. - because they are doubtful whether so high a diety as God would even care about their own petty affairs. Everything is nature and the world is connected, but God is essentially outside the sphere of human connectedness. This is why Christ is so important! To an African, the concept of God's omnipotence is not as important - as Bonhoeffer says "that is no genuine experience of God, but a bit of extended world." You do not have to "know" God to come up with this concept. We simply take a human attribute and and extend it to the highest level...we have some level of power, so God must be all powerful. What is important about Jesus is rather his PRESENCE in the physical world, bringing God into the circle of human life. God responded to the suffering of the world NOT by using his power to reverse it, but by subjecting himself to it through Christ. Africans do not see a God that intervenes for them in times of suffering (how could they when they see so much destruction around them...) but a God who placed himself in their shoes legitimizes his call for them to persevere through times of suffering. Jesus is the reversal of all that is human - we live for ourselves, but he lived completely for others.
I work at a home for street children once a week and a few weeks ago some of the young girls sang a song for us which started out saying "I see the Son of Man, suffering home alone, nothing for them to eat..." They know what suffering is but they take comfort in the fact that Christ was and still is present with them in their situation. Christ's triumph over sin and death, although still important, is not as relevant as his presence among us...
Hopefully that wasn't as rambling and confusing at it sounded...
Although I am not here to "evangelize" so to speak, I am here to begin to understand a culture which is very different from my own. This is an attitude which is severely lacking to our superior Western attitude. In a class I am taking here in Uganda, I just finished reading John Taylor's The Primal Vision. As a disclaimer I do not agree with all that he lays out in this book and in fact if my USP friends knew I was writing a blog post about this they would cringe, since we have beaten this dead horse over and over in class...but it is still something to think about. In his book, Taylor attempts to lay out the basic tenets of African Christianity and ask some both profound and confusing questions, such as the one above. I'll attempt, even with inadequate words, to give you some of my thoughts about this...
Western Christianity is often completely irrelevant in the African context. An African proverb says when the leopard comes to you, the club at your neighbors won't drive him off, meaning that bringing our own cultural expectations to this context is ridiculous - Africans must think of Christianity IN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT. We must enter into this with an attitude of humility, recognizing how little we truly understand...a period of learning about a culture is essential before you even think about "evangelizing" in the traditional sense. As long as we continue to look on African culture with a patriarchal and superior attitude, we won't understand what the culture has to offer our own, sometimes impoverished faith. God is already here, we are not bringing him as though he is dependent on us to spread Christianity to the rest of the world...
Africa is a communal society, not dependent on individual interests. 'I participate, therefore I am' as opposed to the Western 'I think, therefore I am' is essential to understanding how this culture operates. As a human being, your life is intricately tied to the lives of all those around you, whether living or dead (and yes, ancestors are hugely important here). As examples, to an African, the concept of guilt is irrelevant because it is based upon an individual feeling of wrongdoing, but the concept of shame is hugely important because it implies judgment from the community for an act of sin. An emotions which is bottled up inside is better to an African than one that is expressed. In America, we are taught that if an emotion is kept bottled up inside it becomes dangerous to our own wellbeing. In Africa, if expressed, an emotion becomes an entity that you can no longer control, and it can even act back upon you (I'm sorry if this concept is confusing...) Our cultural views of the self in turn affect our view of salvation..."what does death-of-self mean for a self that is dispersed into many centers of consciousness far beyond the narrow circle of the skull and precincts of the flesh?..." Maybe the sinners prayer is not relevant...
Ok here comes the most important part of what Taylor lays out (I think anyway)...
From the African perspective, God is not necessarily a God who is personally involved with his creation. This is in essence why they so often pray to ancestors, etc. - because they are doubtful whether so high a diety as God would even care about their own petty affairs. Everything is nature and the world is connected, but God is essentially outside the sphere of human connectedness. This is why Christ is so important! To an African, the concept of God's omnipotence is not as important - as Bonhoeffer says "that is no genuine experience of God, but a bit of extended world." You do not have to "know" God to come up with this concept. We simply take a human attribute and and extend it to the highest level...we have some level of power, so God must be all powerful. What is important about Jesus is rather his PRESENCE in the physical world, bringing God into the circle of human life. God responded to the suffering of the world NOT by using his power to reverse it, but by subjecting himself to it through Christ. Africans do not see a God that intervenes for them in times of suffering (how could they when they see so much destruction around them...) but a God who placed himself in their shoes legitimizes his call for them to persevere through times of suffering. Jesus is the reversal of all that is human - we live for ourselves, but he lived completely for others.
I work at a home for street children once a week and a few weeks ago some of the young girls sang a song for us which started out saying "I see the Son of Man, suffering home alone, nothing for them to eat..." They know what suffering is but they take comfort in the fact that Christ was and still is present with them in their situation. Christ's triumph over sin and death, although still important, is not as relevant as his presence among us...
Hopefully that wasn't as rambling and confusing at it sounded...
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