I’ve lived in Africa for three months now. And it’s been hard. But it’s also been lovely in so many ways. Things that I thought would be easy were actually hard (ex. loving people even when they stare at you or repeatedly ask you for money), and things I thought would be terribly difficult weren’t bad at all (see squatty potties, three people sleeping on one bed/mat, no electricity for days, etc.). Trust me, differences abound between the US and East Africa. These differences are even evident when traveling between neighboring countries, but that really shouldn’t surprise me too much as Kentucky and Ohio are bordering states but have numerous differences! Now don’t get me wrong, at the end of the day, we are all people. We have a ton of things in common with the people we meet and serve: we all have basic needs of food, water, and shelter, we all like to laugh, we all mess up a ton, we all need to be loved, and we are all searching for meaning and a purpose. We can get caught up on these differences and miss out, or we can see them for what they are and maybe learn a little something along the way.
One thing that I have noticed in Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia is that people apologize for everything, almost always for things that they literally have no control over. I tripped walking on a muddy road one day, our pastor said “I’m sorry” probably ten times. A teammate spilled their Nalgene, and our host was quick to say “I’m sorry” repeatedly. The power goes out. Someone gets a cold. You have to put on sunscreen. Someone loses their pen. The list goes on and on. At no point did any African person cause or have the ability to prevent any of these things from happening, but over and over again we hear, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
At first, I tried to get them to stop. Stop trying to take responsibility for things that you can’t control. Stop feeling bad for something that was my fault. Stop bearing the burden for me. This didn’t work for very long, because all of my attempts were in vain. Man or woman, pastor or visitor, adult or child, the same thing was said. I decided that changing this wasn’t going to happen, so I started to think about this practice. Why in the world would someone genuinely keep telling me that they are sorry when the mishap was no fault of their own? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wanted to adopt this cultural difference and live a little more like this.
You see, when they’re saying they are sorry, they are really showing an immeasurable amount of compassion and regard for the person. They are saying that they wish they could fix it if they could, and they mean it. They are saying that they don’t want you to walk through it, that if they could trade places with you, they would. Now I would never advocate for someone to place guilt upon themselves. Jesus paid the price for our mistakes and failures a long time ago, and thankfully, we don’t have to carry the heavy baggage that guilt creates. But that isn’t what they are doing when they tell someone they are sorry. 1 Corinthians 13:3 reads, “If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” A lot of the people we have worked with for the past three months have significantly less financially than most people I know, but they love. And they show their love through their compassionate words, I’m sorry. They live this verse out every day when they give all they have, including their love, to the people they meet and live life with.
They seem to be gaining a whole lot more living like this than I originally thought. They are gaining a sense of understanding and compassion for someone who has experienced some kind of trouble. They are gaining the ability to relate to someone in their struggle, and maybe that will be reciprocated when the trial is their own. And they are gaining a soft spot in my heart. If I tell you I’m sorry for something I didn’t do or cause, bear with me; I’m simply trying to be a little more compassionate and a lot more like Jesus.
