Culture Shock

So I know it’s been a while since I’ve blogged and I’m sincerely sorry.  Over the coming days, I plan to update everybody on how the last month or so has gone, but before I get there, I’m going to go back to our transition from Africa to Asia.  

 

We hopped on our flight in Nairobi that would eventually land us in Bangkok and I was totally unprepared.  We had a layover in Doha, Qatar, a place that I knew a little bit about from my economic classes in college.  I knew that, like most of the other places in the United Arab Emirates and surrounding region, Qatar is swollen with cash from oil revenues.  Many of these places literally have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.   Curious, I pulled out my handy CIA World Factbook application on my iPod and looked up Qatar.  I was astonished with what I found.

 

Qatar is the second richest nation in the world as far as per capita income goes (the average income of each person – it’s calculated by taking the GDP or total income for the nation and dividing it by the number of people living there).  Here are some stats I found about Qatar:

 

$85.35 billion in GDP (corrected for PPP for you econ buffs)

 

$103,500 GDP per capita (only the Cayman Islands has higher)

 

0.6% unemployment rate

 

Less than 1% HIV/AIDS infection rate

 

Life expectancy: 75.35 years

 

Literacy rate: 89% (88.6% among females)

 

School life expectancy: 13 years (amazingly, 14 for females)

 

 

 

I was astonished by these figures, but they wouldn’t really hit me for another couple of hours.  We got to Doha and the airport was absolutely packed.  We had a very short layover, so we all hurried to catch our plane to Bangkok, so I didn’t even really have a chance to look around at the airport of the second richest country in the world. 

 

Anyways, we finally got on the plane, and then it hit me.  Honestly, I don’t know what happened but I felt like someone had struck me in the stomach with some sort of blunt object.  My heart broke.  I was staring at a huge leather seat, with complimentary blanket, headphones, pillow, socks, eyemask, and earplugs.  Each seat had its own tv screen with literally hundreds of tv/movie options.  There was a three course dinner that included the words “gormet”, “smothered”, “rich”, and “sumptuous”.  I slowly sat down in my seat and felt deeply uncomfortable, like I didn’t belong and I didn’t want to.  Then I realized why.  I had lived the last three months of my life in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, all in the bottom 10% of the world’s economies.  Let’s look at the numbers for the categories mentioned above for Qatar, but for Uganda.  The numbers for Qatar are in parenthesis.  Keep in mind that there are nearly 35 million people in Uganda.  Qatar has 830,000 citizens

 

 

I’m not writing this to comment on the evils of inequality and capitalism, or on the idea of capitalism as the lesser of two evils that must be administered and managed responsibly.  I’m not writing this to propose ideas to make things better.  These are all issues I studied for years in college.  I’m writing this blog to tell you that before I saw the numbers, and now, I’ve seen…  well…  I’ve seen what’s behind those numbers.

 

I should have known this was coming, but I didn’t.  I’m shocked.  I’m disturbed.  I’m sad.  And, significantly as I realized on that plane, I’m changed.  The old Adam would have been more comfortable on the plane with the blanket and the movies, but in that moment, I really truly wished to be back in the stifling heat of Kenya hanging out with Bishop, or in Uganda with Pastor Johnson, or especially, in Tanzania with my dear friend Robert.  I realized that I was more comfortable sleeping on a thin mattress under a mosquito net than I would be in a five star hotel.  I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

 

I hope I don’t go back to just being comfortable with comforts.  

 

 One of my favorite movies is Castaway with Tom Hanks.  After the character (SPOILER ALERT) is rescued from his years on a desert island, he is put up in a nice hotel, but sleeps on the floor, because it’s what he’s used to.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to a soft bed again, but I want my heart to sleep on the floor.  I never want to forget that there are millions of people suffering and living in abject poverty.  And then, I want to do something about it.  What that is, I’m asking the Lord to show me.  I have been broken yet again, and I honestly don’t know what to do about it. 

 

Right now, I own five shirts, two pairs of shorts, and two pairs of pants, and it’s hard to imagine why I would need more than that.  I wish I had some deep, meaningful conclusion to this blog that would make me feel better about my life of extravagance in the United States, but I don’t.  All I know is that yet again, God has used the World Race to change me.

 

Another lesson learned and He’s still teaching.  Are we listening?

 

 More to come soon… I love you all