This was written, mentally since Internet access was a joke and power was spotty at best, about mid-month. Bear in mind this is a two-part blog.
I’m sick of Africa. I’m completely and totally done with this stupid, stinky continent. I never wanted some mystical spiritual connection to the poorest continent on Earth that everyone seems to fall in love with, and right now I want NO connection. I’m just plain tired of trying to be a missionary here. I can handle goats and chickens everywhere. I’m fine with power interruptions and no running water and everything smelling like the inside of a porta-potty on a hundred degree day. Decades of special news reports and crying starving children on TV commercials and missionary month slideshows at church have completely inured me to the third world. It’s meeting my expectations in every way you can show in images. What I’m sick of is what they don’t tell Americans about Africa.
I’m sick of the people. They’re judgmental, they’re overly legalistic, and they treat us like sideshow freaks. It doesn’t matter if I’m going to the store, to the church, or to the bathroom – I’m on display like some grossly exaggerated 4th of July float. I’ve been first startled, then entertained, bored, and finally disgusted with the celebrity status children give me. I’ve perfected the celebrity wave, and responding, “I’m fine how are you” to everything I hear said in a child’s voice is an automatic response, since the only thing any child says to me is, “A MUZUNGU! HOW ARE YOU!” I’m well past the breaking point with this continent, when the same three or four batches of a dozen African children react in PRECISELY the same way every time I walk to market: “MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU! MUZUNGU!” That’s it. I wave my fake wave, and smile my fake grin, and inwardly I want to punt them. Now, I love children. There is nothing that makes me happier than being surrounded by, covered in, or played with by, children. This has been fact my entire life, but right now if one more African child runs up to the precise distance at which they prefer to experience their white foreigner (between seven and ten feet, depending on how brave they’re feeling) and yells “HEY YOU’RE WHITE” I am going to wring his neck. I have no idea how, but somehow the small community (five bedrooms, one common area about half the size of a soccer field, twelve adults and twenty kids) living out behind the compound we’re at this month has learned my name. Normally I’m ecstatic when someone I have incidental contact with actually bothers to learn my name, but it loses some – no, make that ALL – of its lustre when they call me like a dog and expect stupid cheezy muzungu grin.
I’m sick of the adults, too. I’m sick of being told that the acne on my forehead (because showers are pans of lukewarm water in a lightless, airless, stinky and roach-infested concrete room) is actually a bunch of moskwito* bites and I really should learn to adjust my moskwito* net properly. I’m sick of being told how to butter my bread, why it’s dangerous for white people to walk around at night (because people that look rich wander around dirt-poor neighborhoods in America ALL THE TIME and it’s fine and we need to understand the realities of our situation), and what a cow is. I’m furious to the point of yelling when I’m asked, “Do you have those in your country?” and the speaker pointing at anything from a duck to an albino child to a mud hut. “Do you know what X is?” Yes, I do know what malaria is, I’ve heard of potatoes, and in fact we do get rain in America. I’m familiar with brick structures and manual transmissions and buildings taller than three stories.
*Yes, they pronounce mosquito weirdly here. It’s annoying.
I’m sick of the judgment. I’m sick of being asked if I’m really born again or ‘just a Christian’ – whatever that means. I’m sick of hearing, “Why were you not at dinner?” when I’m late by one minute. I’m sick of being told about how amazing it is that this mute woman could give birth, or how incredible it is that a child with clubfoot could figure out how to speak. I’m tired of even the positive undeserved judgment. I’m sick of being deemed an acceptable mate because I’m foreign – never mind that I’ve known the girls for a week. (For the record, I am seven of eight this year for crushes, love notes, and/or marriage proposals. [Yes, the Thai girl in the Chiang Mai University cafeteria with a ring made out of a drinking straw was working on a dare and completely not serious, but I think my point stands.]) I cannot stand the people – Christian, saved and sanctified people – that ask if I can save them, as if salvation somehow granted by a white person is admission to some incredibly exclusive club. I’m incredibly tired of being told that I’m qualified to preach every day for a week at a conference simply because I’m white and I’ve known Jesus since I Was 5 years old. I’m glad to help out, I’m eager to share what God’s telling me, but I am most emphatically NOT a sermon machine. I know God speaks to me, and I’m happy to give what He gives me to whoever He gives it to me for, but I do not “have a word” for every inhabitant of every mud hut we visit for two minutes on our ‘shotgun evangelism’ tours. I’m a little more irate every time we communicate our wishes, our issues, or our requests to our contacts, and because of a comical language barrier and a cultural opinion barrier that is anything BUT comical having our opinions completely ignored.
In South America I was mildly surprised that the locals tried to rip us off because we were North Americans. In Central America I was resigned to the fate of having to have a local negotiate prices for everything from taxis to hostels. In Thailand I started to get better at haggling. In Africa I became furious about the whole situation. I’m incensed that the Christian pastors, teachers, and yes even contacts rip us off as a matter of course. Never mind that we can see the economy and know that what we’re giving them for three weeks’ lodging is more than they make in six months. Never mind that we’re here to help them with their ministry as brothers and sisters in Christ. Never mind that the Muslim shopkeepers we’ve made friends with will actually give us discounts or gifts and cry when we leave – to the people we work with, we’re cash cows and we’re going to be milked for MORE than we’re worth. Every single African, from the 14-year-old schoolboy whose father died in the fighting and whose mother was ambushed by raiders who broke her pelvis; to the schoolteacher in the middle of nowhere teaching 50 children three grades of education in a dirt room; to the street kids so high on glue they can barely tell what color my skin is; to the pastors of tiny churches that give us one day’s warning that we’ll be preaching at three different churches and should prepare sermons – EVERY African has had his or her hand out. Sometimes I almost feel better giving crackers to the street kids, because at least they don’t pretend to care about your name. Every sob story, every glowing report, every tale of God’s provision ends with, “could you help me?” “When you go back to your country, will you raise support for me?” “Are there any charitable organizations you can put me in touch with?”
I’m done. I am not rich, not well-connected or influential, and NOT INTERESTED. I do not want to hear one more sermon about the sins of envy, greed, and gluttony that separate me from the love of God. I will punch the next pastor that piggybacks on my sermon for twenty minutes with barely concealed negative opinions of children, women, and the disabled. And if I EVER find my contact beating his 17-year-old daughter, from his first (failed) marriage, who he has completely cut off from his family but still employs periodically as cook and dishwasher against the wishes of his jealous second wife, who he yells at constantly for things as stupid as when we break a plate, I will completely and deliberately abandon any love for my neighbor and smash his face into the wall. I want off this stupid, backwards, stinking continent right now.
I.
AM.
DONE.
That’s what I thought at about the end of week two, month two, of my time in Africa.
Then I met Iddi.
