Oh, That’s Just Tear Gas

Bang!  
“That sounded like a gun shot.  Did you hear that?”

Scene from our friends' porch

Bang….Bang, Bang!
“Oh that’s the police.  They’re firing tear gas at the gangs.  They’re always fighting over there.”

We are visiting the French Island right now.  Our friends live up on a hill.  Their porch looks out over a neighborhood where there is frequent trouble with gangs.  We watched as tear gas canisters exploded over the street, landing among a gang of young men who were pushing trash bins into the street to block the way of the police.

“Sometimes they light them on fire.”  Our friends say rather nonchalantly, as if this is normal.  But in fact it is normal, here.

“Usually the wind carries the smoke away, but once in a while it comes in our direction.” With that we moved inside and closed the windows.

One of the things we’ve discussed a lot this week as we’ve been visiting our friends on the neighboring French Island is how we often assume things to be the same on all our islands when actually situations, mentalities, and daily life may actually be very different.  

Tear gas raining down

We all do it, don’t we?  We generalize.  We group.  We stereotype.  We simplify.  We assume that the way people live in one place is the same as they live in another place.  We assume everyone is either like us, or like our impressions of them, but as soon as we dig a little deeper, we realize that people are different.  And those differences are important.

Driving around the French Island, we are intrigued and confused by the similarities and differences to Clove Island.  Sometimes it feels like Clove Island, only cleaner and richer.  But other times it feels extremely different.  On the French Island, many islanders live in fear of deportation, crime, gangs and finding their next meal.  While on Clove Island, these fears are almost unheard of. Our friend, who has lived both on Clove Island and the French Island laments that many of the French people think they understand all island culture because they’ve seen it on the French Island, but they really have a skewed understanding which impacts their ability to speak meaningfully to their island neighbors.  

Not that we aren’t also guilty of making misassumptions.  We’ve made assumptions about life on the French Island from our experiences on Clove Island. Or even closer to home, we’ve assumed that we know all about the culture and dynamics of Clove Island, ignoring the fact that we’ve only lived in the capital and that the realities of life in the many villages is different. We may take pride in having figured out how to share our resources, share good news, help others, and do our work  on Clove Island, but we have to admit that they may not work well in the villages. Success and failure stand in the balance of our assumptions.

It would be so comforting and reassuring if our expertise and assumptions could apply to huge swaths of people.  The reality is humbling: that we don’t know what is best, that people are different from our assumptions and that we still have further to go in gaining an understanding of them.  Moreover, it will take action to overcome our assumptions.  If we want to understand someone else’s reality we have to go, see, and enter in.  We have to ask questions.  We have to stop and listen.  This takes time, energy and often money for travel.  But the effort is worth it.  We understand the French Island better for the time we are spending here.  We are learning.

How much of the world these days is fractured—with so much misunderstanding and misassumptions.  Maybe the answer is more humility and more going.  Where are the biggest misunderstandings and fears and judgments?  Maybe those are the very places for us to go, to see, to enter in and learn. 

About to get our COVID tests!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
In an answer to prayer, Makini has met and studied with one of the men with whom Tom had studied. They have plans to study regularly and we pray that more seeking men would join them (we have a few specific men in mind that we are praying would join!). Dunga has stood strong with her family and hasn’t had any renewed calls for meetings. We are thankful that she has weathered this storm and continue to pray that she would be a blessing to her family.  We have had a nice time reconnecting with our former teammates and a few days by a pool relaxing with some good family time. 


PRAYERS REQUESTED
We weren’t able to travel back to Clove Island as planned because two of us tested positive for COVID. We’ve been assured that this is probably residual presence of the virus from our previous infection rather than a reinfection and that we’re not contagious, but it has disrupted our plans. Pray that we would get negative tests so that we can travel on the next boat and get back to Clove Island to welcome our new teammate (coming next week). So pray again for calm seas and calm stomachs when we finally travel. Pray for our new teammate as she celebrates her birthday and says goodbye to her friends and family. Pray for safe and smooth travels. Continue to persevere in prayer for our medical teammates that they would get clearance to start medical work soon!