Pulsing rhythms, rich harmonies, throbbing beats

One of my favorite experiences during our orientation was singing in Swahili with Jacinta, a gentle young Kenyan woman hired to help with childcare while parents attended classes.

Jacinta led us in the traditional way of singing: She sang a line, then the rest of us sang an answering line. We sang back and forth until we finished the song.

We didn’t need musical instruments. Someone tapped on a kettle, someone else kept rhythm with a stick on a chunk of wood, and the rest of us clapped our hands.

I’ll never tire of those African rhythms and harmonies. In Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I described them as rich, distinct, and pulsing. They quickly boogied their way into my heart and spirit, and they dance there still. I treasure them.

Clickon this link to view a short video of Kenyans singing a Swahili praise song, “Angalia Bwana” (Look, Oh Lord). The leader sings a line, like Jacinta did, and the others sing an answering line. But keep in mind that in this clip, those are shy young people! Usually, Kenyans sing out with great volume and energy, but I suspect they were nervous on camera.

Here’s another clip that will give you an idea of the pulsing African rhythms and harmonies, and the way Africans usually sing out and enjoy dancing while they sing in church (unlike those shy young people in the first clip). And, oh!—how I miss that now back in America! Like I wrote in Grandma’s Letters from Africa, King David’s dance before the Lord (2 Samuel 6:14) could not have been any more joyous than those dancing in African churches!

I ran into Jacinta a few times after Kenya Safari. She’s a soft-spoken, gentle young lady with a ready smile. (African smiles seem more radiant than Americans’ smiles, don’t they?)

Sweet Jacinta radiated joy!

She blessed me with her quiet spirit,

inner radiance, sunny smiles, and her Swahili worship songs.

Jacinta was a gift from God.

Jacinta helped with childcare and cooking during the orientation course.

Have you ever eaten a chapati?

In my last post, I listed a number of firsts experienced during Kenya Safari, our three-month orientation course. Some of those firsts were delightful, others not so much!

Another first was eating chapatis.

When Indians started moving to Kenya (around 1900, if I recall correctly), they introduced chapatis—basically, flour tortillas.

Chapatis consist of about three cups of flour and one cup of cold water stirred together and kneaded for a few minutes.

After letting the dough sit for half an hour, you divide the dough into little balls about the size of a ping pong ball, sprinkle each with flour, and roll them out until they’re very thin.

Traditional recipes call for frying them in a dry pan over a hot fire for a few seconds on each side.

By the time we moved to Kenya, chapatis had become a staple food for Kenyans but over the decades, they’d changed the original Indian recipe.

During our orientation course, the chapatis our Kenyan staff prepared were a quarter of an inch thick (usually thicker) with lard layered in, and fried in lard, too.

In Chapter 2 of Grandma’s Letters from Africa, I described them as “unleavened, and with a dense, rubbery consistency.”

Often people tear them into bite-size pieces and drop them into Kenyan stew—cabbage, onions, carrots, and tomatoes boiled together. Sometimes they add a little meat, too.

Mmmm . . . . Recalling such meals makes my mouth water.

Sweet memories—even though I’m sure all that lard could not have been good for us!

This is lovely Jacinta (more about her next week), along with another staff member, James, working at our cooking fire under enormous fig trees in Eleng’ata Enterit.

Jacinta and James at our cook stove during our orientation in Eleng'ata Enterit

Unbelievable, unforgettable firsts

During our three-month orientation course, Kenya Safari, I experienced many firsts.

That was the first time I:

• outwitted a charging hippo
• received a Maasai blessing
• ran my fingers through a psychiatrist’s hair
• lived surrounded by baboons (who pooped in the breakfast I was preparing for orientees and staff, fifty people)
• learned there was such a thing as—and had to use—a pit latrine
• slept through big cats (lions? leopards?) prowling on the other side of my tent wall
• ate goat, dikdik, warthog, ostrich egg, ugali, sukuma wiki, and irio
• drank tea from a pot cleaned in cow’s urine
• and got peed on by a colobus monkey.

 

Sigh. . . .

All I ever wanted was to live a quiet, secure, genteel life

in a little white house with a picket fence

and a rose garden,

but my husband, Dave—a free spirit

who seldom limits himself to coloring within other people’s lines—

and our adventuresome God (ditto) had other plans.

You’ve probably seen the following. I haven’t been able to identify who wrote it, though it sounds like something both God and Dave could have written. They had no intention of letting me remain an unadventurous homebody.

Life should not be a journey to the grave

with the intention of arriving safely

in an attractive and well-preserved body,

but rather to skid in sideways,

champagne in one hand,

chocolate covered strawberries in the other,

body thoroughly used up,

totally worn out and screaming

“WOO HOOOO!!! What a ride!”

(author unknown)

What about you?

Have you worked on the mission field or 

in some other role overseas?

If so, tell us your list of firsts!

Leave a comment below or on the Facebook Page.

We’d enjoy hearing your stories!

There’s hope: You can survive the Groan Zone

Last week I was candid about cross-cultural living. It can instigate culture shock and can leave a person baffled, confused, bamboozled, stymied, discouraged, befuddled, and even angry.

Cross-cultural living can leave a person disoriented. Culture shock can lead to severe depression. And personal and professional failure.

But today, our guest blogger, Sheryl O’Bryan, tells us there’s hope: We can adapt to new cultures. I encourage you to read more about her from last week’s post, and then settle in and enjoy her inspiring insights, below, first shared with us in May 2010.

Welcome, Sheryl!

New stuff fascinates me.

I am not a Mac. I’m a PC who is intrigued by all the iStuff.

I want to play with an iPad, but I don’t think I’ll get one.

My laptop is officially old by computer standards, but I’m reluctant to trade it in—even for a new PC.

I have a binder full of new recipes to try, but 97% of the time I go back to the old standbys.

The gym has new machines, but it will be a while before I give them a try.

Here’s the thing. I know newness doesn’t mean everything is shiny and happy.

I can’t think of a time when a new thing didn’t bring some pain with it.

Granted most of the pain doesn’t last, but it’s still there. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of pain.

The Groan Zone

Every truly new thing takes some getting used to.

I call this the Groan Zone. You know, the period between doing things the old way and adapting to the new thing and the way it requires life to be lived.

In the space between discarding former habits and learning new ones—in the process of growth—there’s groaning.

Transitioning from a Big Wheel to a bike meant learning a new skill set, lots of skinned knees, quite a bit of groaning and more than a few tears.

A new baby brings lots of joy with her, but she also brings many hours of interrupted sleep to her parents.

Changing the kind of car you drive, be it an SUV for a sedan (who remembered they were so close to the ground?!) or a standard for an automatic (where did the clutch go?!?!), produces groan-worthy moments.

I think it’s the same way in my spiritual life.

When God is at work growing me into the next part of maturity there’s groaning to be done.

I realize I’m not as humble/generous/kind/accepting/loving/ _____ (fill in the blank) as I thought I was. Rarely are these pleasant realizations.

God knows I need these epiphanies. They are essential to me becoming who He created me to be.

Growth is hard work.

Pregnant women groan as their body changes to accommodate the new life growing inside them. A chick that doesn’t persevere through the hard work of getting out of the shell never reaps the benefits of life. Having a tumor cut out so healthy tissue can develop isn’t fun, but it’s necessary for good growth and good change.

When I hear myself groaning, I have to stop and ask, “Where is God trying to grow me now?”

Knowing groaning can lead to growth doesn’t make the process easier, but it does make me more aware.

A new zone: Refinement

The good news is we don’t groan forever. It happens in different seasons. We move from the frustrated and sometimes painful sounds of the Groan Zone to a new growth zone, Refinement. Growth continues here, but it’s more like “Look what I can do!”

Are you in the zone? 

Are you groaning and growing 

or are you refining and growing?

I was right, wasn’t I? Sheryl’s words are wise and oh-so-practical. Encouraging. Full of grace. Thanks, Sheryl!

I “met” Sheryl—or rather, I discovered her blog—in 2010, thanks to a couple of blogs we both were following.

And it was so fun to discover that Sheryl and I almost met in real life. When my husband and I worked in Africa, we once spent a few days on business at Ivory Coast Academy, where Sheryl taught missionary kids for ten years—but our timing was off: We arrived while Sheryl was on furlough.

She knows a number of teachers we knew at ICA, though.

Sheryl also knows our friend, Dr. Thom Votaw, President of Teachers in Service.

Small world, indeed!

Culture shock can really mess you up: "Even the stars are not familiar"

You might ask, “Why did you have to take an orientation course?”

The answer: Because cross-cultural living can make a person—

baffled,

confused, 

bamboozled,

stymied,

discouraged,

befuddled,

and even angry.

Cross-cultural living can leave a person disoriented. My friend Ryan Murphy, teacher at Rift Valley Academy in Kenya, points out that when you move to a different hemisphere, “even the stars are not familiar.” (All That You Can’t Leave Behind: A Rookie Missionary’s Life in Africa.)

Culture shock. It’s real. It can immobilize newcomers.  

It can even lead to deep depression and other mental health struggles.

Culture shock can make people fail in what they set out to do—it can make them flee, hurry back home where life and culture make sense.

But orientation courses can help newcomers survive countless changes and challenges.

Our course, called Kenya Safari, helped us make sense of our new settings, to adjust and flourish.  (See our “classroom” in the photos.)

It equipped us and our fellow new missionaries transition into the work we came to do.

And—this is crucial—our orientation taught us expatriates to respect and value the culture new to us, to understand the importance of not offending the host country’s people—our new coworkers and neighbors (see last week’s post, NEVER say “_ _ _ _ _ pack”).

Our classroom under giant sycamore trees

Throughout our course, we learned to:

listen,

observe,

stretch our thinking,

and, perhaps most important: scrutinize our assumptions.

We had frequent opportunities to stand back and examine our American ways.

And many times the African way seemed better than ours.

My husband, Dave, and I often said to one another, “We Americans have much to learn from Africans.”

Our Kenya Safari was a gift of God’s grace and mercy, 

providing tangible answers to often-urgent prayers. 

It blessed our lives beyond measure and changed us forever.

A page from my scrapbook

Be sure to come back next week and meet Sheryl O’Bryan.

She’ll share thoughts on transitioning—a process she calls being in the Groan Zone—with everyday examples all of us can understand.

Perhaps you’re transitioning into a new job, or moving to a new city, or changing churches.

Maybe you’re transitioning into marriage. Or into an empty nest.

Or maybe you’re considering missions work, either short-term or long-term.

Most of us go through numerous changes in life so you will appreciate Sheryl’s rich wisdom—it will help you brace yourself plan ahead for your inevitable Groan Zone.

No matter what’s happening in your life, 

you’ll find good stuff in Sheryl’s message!

C’mon back next week.

NEVER say “_ _ _ _ _ pack”

In Eleng’ata Enterit, under massive sycamore trees along a tiny stream, we studied hygiene, African anthropology, tropical diseases, and medicines to treat them.

We learned to identify Kenyan coins and bills—and how to calculate the Kenya Shilling’s equivalent value in U.S. dollars.

But perhaps most importantly, we discovered that what is polite in one culture could be rude in another.

Our goal was to learn to live in non-offensive ways among Africans. We needed to learn to appreciate their culture and traditions and practices.

We had to learn Africans’ world views and social norms and values and expectations.

But we had to go beyond just appreciating their ways of doing things—we needed to respectfully model our behavior after theirs. We needed to fit in.

We needed to try really hard 

not to offend anyone.

For example, in Kenya we should never use the left hand to give a person something. The left hand is considered dirty for reasons I won’t go into here.

Africans are people-oriented. In Kenya, everyone shakes hands when they say hello and goodbye. If we fail to do so, we offend them.

When Kenyans first greet one another, they take time to ask about each other’s health, family, and extended family. Only after a lengthy discussion do they get to business. Many Americans struggle within such a people-oriented culture because we are goal-oriented—we have work to do.

Kenyans will not look you in the eye, and they wish you wouldn’t look them in the eye either. They look at your shoulder while they talk to you, or off in the distance. This is hard to remember because we Americans usually look people directly in the eye.

And only after I returned to the States did I learn that a good woman never crosses her legs. Oh, dear, I must have proven hundreds of times that I am not a good woman!  

This is a "bum bag," NOT a fanny pack!

While we lived in Africa, no one spoke the word “p.a.n.t.s” in mixed company, but it was okay to talk about trousers.

My friend Sue was surprised to learn that the term “f.a.n.n.y pack” is vulgar in Kenya. No one winces, though, at “bum bag.”

Sue described such cross-cultural training as “relearning English.”

So, just by reading this, are you feeling—a little. . . a little disoriented? If so, welcome to cross-cultural living! Adjusting to a new culture can be unsettling, but. . . .

. . .  it can also be an adventure!

A good sense of humor helps! Dave and I would quickly learn that we had to laugh at ourselves when we made blunders.

Just for fun, take these quizzes about dining etiquette in other cultures:

Dining etiquette across cultures

Mind Your Manners: Can You Ace This Food Etiquette Quiz?

C’mon back next week and I’ll tell you more fun stuff 

about cross-cultural living.

If you have a story about cross-cultural adventures

(or “adventures”), let us know.

Leave a comment below

or on the Facebook Page for Grandma’s Letters from Africa,

or send a private message on Messenger.

Have you considered tithing your professional life?

A special note to mid-lifers, empty-nesters, and baby boomers:

A number of years ago my husband said, “At church they teach us to tithe—give 10 percent—of our money, so why not encourage people to also tithe their professional lives?” In other words, after people have worked, say, thirty years in their careers, how about working three years in a ministry? Great idea!

And, in fact, a number of mid-lifers, empty nesters, and baby boomers—instead of retiring to a life of leisure—are transitioning into ministries, even overseas missions. Most people in this age group have good health, energy, and a wealth of experience and wisdom to share. Many organizations recognize this and actively recruit such people.

Maybe you, too, are ready to try something new, ready to make a difference that really counts, so I invite you to read Grandma’s Letters from Africa, to read over my granddaughter Maggie’s shoulder and learn how a mid-life woman—I—moved to Africa and even lived to tell about it!

And while you read, keep in mind that maybe you could do something like this, too.

Consider the words of Shane Claiborne:

“All around you people will be tiptoeing through life,

just to arrive at death safely.

But dear children, do not tiptoe.

Run, hop, skip, or dance.

Just don’t tiptoe!”

Give it serious consideration!

Keep in mind, though, that change is inevitable. In the years since Dave and I returned home from Africa, Wycliffe Bible Translators has changed, as have other mission agencies. If you were to work with Wycliffe today, you would work with a different Wycliffe than we did. Field training (orientation) courses, such as Kenya Safari, have changed. Financial policies have changed, the U.S. headquarters has moved to Orlando, and furlough schedules are more flexible than they used to be.

           

And while Africa has changed, too, I’m sure some things have not changed: the flowers, animals, and birds; the vast open spaces, jungles, and deserts; and especially the dear, charming African people—their laughter and their music, their spirit, soul, and faith.

Perhaps a second career in missions

is just what you’ve been looking for—

maybe for a few months, maybe for a few years.

Working on the mission field is doable

as long as people are willing, flexible, and strong in their faith.

So while you read over my granddaughter Maggie’s shoulder,

I hope you’ll say to yourself,

“If that gal could do it, so can I! Where do I sign up?”

In many parts the world, not just Africa,

 the needs are enormous.

The rewards are, too.

P.S. Have you read my newest memoir? Entitled Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, it covers three years my husband and I and our two little kids worked in rural Colombia, South America.

From the back cover:

What’s a comfortable—and cowardly—suburbanite to do when her husband wants to move their young family to Colombia so he can teach missionaries’ kids?

Linda K. Thomas has always planned to chase the American dream. Adventure doesn’t appeal to her and she’s ill-equipped for missions work. She prays, “Please, God, don’t make me go!” but after months of soul-searching, she hears Him say, “Go!”

So, with flimsy faith and wobbly courage, she sets out with her husband, Dave, and their kids on a life-changing adventure at the end of the road in the middle of nowhere.

But when culture shock, tropical heat, and a certain boa constrictor threaten to undo her, she’s tempted to run away and hike back to the U.S. Instead, she fights to settle in and soon falls in love with her work alongside modern-day heroes of the faith disguised as regular folks. God has sent her where she didn’t know she wanted to go.

Once life is under control and easy, she gets a surprise—an invitation to one of the world’s most dangerous drug-dealing regions where hundreds of people have lost their lives. The country is perilous in other ways, too. Marxist guerrillas don’t like Americans, proving it with bombs, kidnapping, and eventually murder.

Linda doesn’t trust God to help her make the trip, and she can’t trust herself, either. Gripped by anxiety, she longs to stay in the only safe place, the mission center. Again she prays, “Please, God, don’t make me go!”

In this heartwarming, sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking memoir, you’ll walk alongside a young wife and mother as she faces two universal struggles:

• choosing between her plans and God’s, and
• choosing faith and courage over fear and cowardice.

This compelling memoir will inspire you to cancel membership in the Society of the Faint-Hearted, take a trembling leap of faith, enjoy God more, and relish the adventures He dreams up.

You can order both Grandma’s Letters from Africa and Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir from your local bookseller or from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other online booksellers around the world.