Strangers in America?

No, I'm not going to change the name of this blog now that we're back in the U.S. for a year. It's been a good four years of blogging under that moniker...so why change a good thing?

We made it safely to York, Pennsylvania late on Wednesday night. The jet lag was particularly bad this time...probably because we were packing more bags in our days before flying than the crowd at the BET Music Awards was packing heat. That, and our 2 year old was sick for the past week.

The big question though you're dying to ask is "What was your first meal?" Well, drive through McDonald's on the way back from the airport was about all we had time for. Fish Filet and fries for me...happy meals for the kids. And breakfast the next morning was Lucky Charms with yummy milk.

More culinary details to follow as our time of home assignment begins...

Me and Patty Hearst

For my older readers, no explanation of this title is probably necessary. For those of you who are younger, you might need a quick pop history lesson.

In 1974, Patty Hearst—the 19 year old millionaire daughter of publishing’s legendary Hearst family—was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in Berkeley, CA. Two months later, bank video cameras caught her brandishing a machine gun during a bank robbery with the SLA. When she was finally arrested along with her kidnappers, she called herself an “urban guerilla” and was committed to the causes of the SLA. Her family’s ritzy attorneys couldn’t convince a jury that she wasn’t a willing participant in the crimes; she got 35 years in prison (later shortened by Jimmy Carter).

Today, Hearst symbolizes the desire to break away from normal society and live anarchically. She also stands as a prototypical case of the “Stockholm Syndrome,” a phenomenon where captives begin to care for and empathize with their captors. Rather than hating and distancing themselves from their jailors, prisoners will begin to love their familiar surroundings.

As my time in Africa winds down, I find myself thinking about this crazy story from 1974.

For much of my four years here, I adamantly preferred my old way of life in America. The easy life. Friends and family close by. Abundant free time. Familiar cultural surroundings. Fast food—tasty, cheap, and easy to come by. I gladly settled in here, knowing that my work for God’s kingdom was far more important than a lifestyle preference, but nevertheless, if I had to choose…

But I’m starting to feel like Patty Hearst. I actually think I’m going to miss the bumpy roads and the daily electricity outages. I can see myself longing for all of my wife’s yummy meals from scratch when pre-made frozen meals and fast food become regular again. The spiders, the dust, the monkeys wailing, the roosters crowing, the freezing concrete floors, the drafty windows, the neighbors dressed in rags, the arid brown valley.

I’ve grown to love my captors.

And I’m also wondering if my love for my captors has turned me crazy when it comes to “going home.” Will I go around wielding my philosophical machine guns in normal folks’ faces? Will I storm the bank of normalcy and demand Western society to pay up for the good of Africa? In other words, will reverse culture shock zap me?
There’s also the other side of this coin. Will my allegiance to Africa make others look at me like I’m the freak? Will the presence of this stranger from Africa cause everyone to feel uncomfortable? Will the mere sight of me be like Patty Hearst wielding a machine gun over head?

The answers will come soon enough. Eight days, actually. There is one fact that offers me some consolation. Patty Hearst is still alive today. She’s out of the SLA, she’s out of jail, and she has some semblance of normalcy in her life.

Even if I’m feeling like Patty Hearst today, it’s good to know that there is life after Patty Hearst, for her and for me.

Staring at a lion

The highlight of Kenya’s tourism is the wildlife. Going on an African safari doesn’t get much better than it is in Kenya. And the highlight of African animals is none other than the king of the jungle—the lion.

We’ve found ourselves on a few safaris—sometimes in tour vans and sometimes in our own vehicle—and searching for lions is certainly a highlight. Leopards and cheetahs are rarer to find, but nothing is more majestic than a lion.

One time, we were driving through a wooded area, and we found another vehicle was just pulling away from looking at something. We stopped. About 40 feet away was a half-eaten zebra being gnawed on by a lion. We pulled our truck as close to the kill site as we could and went crazy with our cameras. Then, the lion disappeared. We backed the truck up, trying for a different angle in the dense forest. We could still see the red, black, and white zebra, but the lion was out of view. For a while.

Suddenly, we spotted the lion walking parallel to the road about 20 feet away from us. I now was less concerned about pictures and became more concerned with getting my 3 year old (at the time) son away from the window and getting the car into drive in case I needed to bolt.

The feeling changed from “hunter” to “hunted” in a few seconds. The elation we felt over seeing a lion in the wild—and seeing a lion in the middle of a meal, no less—morphed into terror as this lion appeared within striking distance.

I tell this story as an analogy.

We’ve been looking forward to going back to the U.S. for months now, if not years. The family, the friends, the food, the familiarity—all have been calling to us from this unusual land of our mission sojourn. The years became months, the months became weeks, and now the weeks are just days. Sixteen to be exact.

The excitement and the suspense of “going home” are turning—like our emotions on safari when the beast appeared just yards from us—into something much more complicated.

We’re packing up our house in Africa. We’ll be living out of suitcases for 12 months in America. We’re leaving our full-time ministry and careers in Africa. We’ll be doing a lot of different things—very little teaching—for the next year in America. We’ll be leaving our relationships (hundreds of students and dozens of missionary staff and Kenyan nationals) in Africa. We’ll be renewing hundreds of old relationships and starting dozens of new ones in America. Suddenly, Africa has become more familiar to us than America, and going “home” feels different.

I know there is no reason to fear. God has promised to never leave us or forsake us. He sustained us when we moved to Kenya in 2005, carrying us through those tough transitions. He’ll sustain us this month as we move and adjust back to our “old life” in America.

But that truth doesn’t minimize the fact that right now I’m staring into the eyes of the lion and feeling like I want to put my foot on the gas.

(The picture above is taken without any zoom. 20 feet away. I'm not exaggerating.)