Africa Has Changed Us

Us as cold-weather kids in Vermont

We used to be cold-weather people. We went to college in Vermont. Some of our first memories as a couple are playing in the snow and driving carefully on icy roads. We’d be in sandals before the snow completely melted. I remember the first time we stepped off the plane in Chad and how oppressive and enveloping the heat was. It was overwhelming.

We’re not those people anymore. When we arrived in the US, we had an embarrassing incident at Tom’s parents’ house, when we insisted that the upstairs thermostat must be broken because we were so cold at night but it said it was 70 degrees. Turns out thermostat was fine, we were just used to those island nights in the 80’s. When Megan’s dad told us that it was going to be in the 90’s all week, our immediate response was “Oooh, nice!” when the expected response was to lament the heat. Air-conditioning makes us cold and now that summer is turning into fall, we find ourselves bundling up much more than the people around us. We assumed after nearly 6 months in the US we would be back to our cold-weather-loving selves, but I guess 13+ years in Africa has changed us.

We used to be more rural people. Cities were good for a visit, but we enjoyed the open spaces and big yards of small town living. Before we felt called overseas, we had daydreams about a future in a small New England town.  Now staying in American suburbs has us thinking about how we miss the crowded neighborhoods and noisy streets of a city. Our home on the islands isn’t completely urban (not enough anonymity and no high-rises), but we’ve gotten used to people living on top of each other and walking out our front door and into community. We’ve gotten used to constantly mixing with people that are very different from us and we miss it.

 (Aug) That summer desert heat still felt hot though!

There’s a lot of other ways we’ve changed or are still changing. We’ve learned things: to be more communal (we used to be so individualistic); to open up our home and have people in our space (before our privacy was more important to us) ; to adjust how we talk and interact with people who are different than us (we used to not realize that we had the power to make people more comfortable or make ourselves more understandable). We’ve learned lots in our time on the islands and in Africa.

We’ve also lost touch and forgotten things too. We aren’t up-to-date with all the movies, music and TV that define American pop culture. We sometimes forget the English word for something or we speak but immediately question whether we’ve just said a Britishism or even a French or island saying just translated into English. “Is that how we say it in America?” we ask ourselves. We also sometimes forget the protocol. “Am I supposed to greet everyone I see?” “What is considered polite conversation with strangers in America?” Sometimes we forget what is normal behavior here because the island norms are more natural to us now.   

We’ve heard people teach on the struggles of adjusting to a new culture, that people have to accept that they are not just adding to who they are but having to say goodbye to who they were. They claimed that eventually you can become a 150% person, you won’t fully become the new culture, and you can’t fully retain the old culture, but you can get about 75% of each and become something new.

So even after six months in the US, it doesn’t feel like we’ve snapped back into being the American versions of ourselves. Maybe 10 years ago that was still possible, but those versions of ourselves are over a decade old now and they don’t exist anymore. Now the islands, with their unique culture and perspective, is always with us.  I wouldn’t claim to a 150%, more just mixed up, but we can confirm— living in Africa has changed us and ultimately we’re thankful to be mixed up.

Our kids pulling out the longsleeves now

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it back to the Boston area and only had to quarantine for one day before our negative COVID results came in. The island borders are open and we were able to get in touch with the airlines to change our tickets to October (we still had partially valid tickets leaving this week). We are still waiting on the final confirmation email but we are pretty sure we have tickets leaving on October 9th! We had another good zoom call, this time with a couple open to serving in Africa—we pray for more!

 

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Our island colleagues are trying to leave the islands on a flight to Kenya on Wednesday, but they are required to have a COVID test and there don’t seem to be any test kits on the islands! They are petitioning the airlines to find a solution, one of the travelers is 8 months pregnant and after this week won’t be allowed to travel. Pray for peace for them in this stressful time and for an easy solution. An island sister had a long talk with a troubled island woman. They prayed together and the woman is looking for peace, pray that she would find it. Another island sister’s father is very ill, pray for his healing and for comfort for her. We were greatly encouraged that contacting the airlines didn’t take as long as we feared, but we still need to get full clearance to go back. We’ve done most of the paperwork and God has been providing, but we still need to do some follow-up labwork for medical clearance and get in our financial documents. Pray also for our final weeks in the US that we would use our time wisely.