The morning after we rafted was another travel day. We awoke at 6 a.m. to get a shuttle to the bus stop. The bus was over an hour late which made the 11 hours of travel take even longer.
When we did finally get on the bus, our seats were taken. We showed our tickets to the conductor and most of the misplaced passengers moved. A few ladies, however, contended that they were in the right seats. There were plenty of empty seats just a few rows back, and we tried to explain that we were a group trying to sit together, but the ladies didn’t care. Rather than make a scene, two of us simply went back to the empty seats (the ladies’ seats).
The rest of the long bus ride gave me plenty of time to reflect on this little encounter and dozens of others like this during my first four years as a missionary. I think four years ago, I would have stewed and simmered the entire 11 hours about the injustice of it all. “I made reservations…Those are my seats…That lady is so selfish for splitting up our group…etc.” However, I let it go pretty quickly. A few others in our group seemed bitter about it still, but I seemed to get over it rather easily. This made me think of how entitlement and rights are so ingrained in the American mindset. We want justice. We expect fairness. We will allow no one to walk all over us.
In Africa though, rules and protocol are far more nebulous and gray. A meeting time isn’t set in stone; it’s simply a possible meeting time. A promise is a possibility. Truth is dependent on relationships and circumstances. When the 8 a.m. bus arrives at 9 a.m., everyone smirks and shrugs and is grateful that it arrived at all. When someone steals your seat, you’re simply glad that there is a seat left for you somewhere on the bus.
If this is aggravating you even while you read it, chances are (said in your best Jeff Foxworthy voice) you might be a Westerner.
You want to know my preference…the Western way or the African way? After four years (and probably after 40 years!), I still think my culture’s way is best. But the one thing I learned—a point that was made strikingly obvious as I rubbed shoulders on this trip with a bunch of new missionaries—is that you have to come to peace with the culture in which you’re living. It’s better for your blood pressure. It’s better for your emotional well-being. It’s better for your relationship with Africans.
You lose all sense of control when you cross cultures. You can’t control little things. You can’t control big things. The rules of the land and the customs of the people are far too powerful for one little person—much like the Nile River in which we found ourselves. It was in control. We were at its mercy. If it held us under water for 15 seconds, we stayed under for 15 seconds. If it smacked wave after wave in our faces, leaving us gasping for our next breath, we waited and hoped for our next breath to come soon. Relief, in the form of our next breath, would come eventually, but in that particular instance, we were powerless.
Relief does come though. You might still be drifting aimlessly down the river of a foreign culture, but the day comes when you find peace. You might never enjoy the feeling of being out of control, you might never like the foreign culture as much as your home culture, but you will find peace if you seek to assimilate yourself.
As I walked off the bus at 7 p.m. past the tardy bus driver and the seat thiefs, I felt peace. After four years of gasping for air in the cultural rapids of Africa, it was a welcome emotion.
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