“We just got gifted another papaya!”
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| Last of the papaya & new gift! |
We had to laugh. We had been eating papaya with every meal for days and were just finishing the last of it off. But it seemed that papaya was still on the menu for awhile! It’s not that we don’t like papaya— but it can ripen quickly and even slightly overripe papaya is not our favorite. So we try to eat it quickly when we get it. This was a our fourth papaya in a row! Most had been gifts from the two guys that Tom studies with regularly.
Island relationships can sometimes feel very transactional. We know that most times when someone is befriending us, it is because they are hoping to receive something from us beyond just friendship. Sometimes it is status or connections, sometimes it is tangible or monetary help, sometimes it is knowledge or information.
Transactional means that when we help someone with their English or give them some food or money or even study the good news with them, that they often feel like they want or need to give back to us in some way.
We help out Ma Riziki with food and simple medicines fairly regularly, so she will gift us mataba (the local dish of crushed cassava leaves cooked in coconut milk) whenever she happens to be making it. Two ladies in our neighborhood gifted us with lots of baked goods on the same week because we had helped them in the past and that week there was a big event for which they had been baking. Muki has eaten breakfast at our house most days for awhile, but when he noticed that Tom liked plants, he started gifting Tom with different seedlings and soil. If a village’s English exams coincide with any kind of harvest, then Tom will come home from proctoring the exams with a bag of fruit or veggies for us to enjoy. We teach English to a wealthy doctor and so now we get invited to fancy meals at his house and he insists we get any services at his clinic at cost.
The idea of relationships being transactional is uncomfortable for many Westerners, but islanders have no problems with it. In every good island relationship, there is supposed to be a give and take. Wedding attendance and the money given at weddings is so transactional that they take video footage of the money lines and record how much each person gave in a notebook, partially so they know how to reciprocate when it is that person’s wedding. Sometimes islanders who live in Europe get Westernized and forget or ignore the expectations. I have heard islanders complain when, for example, an islander visiting from Europe doesn’t reciprocate in the correct fashion. In island understanding, they host the visiting islander—cooking, cleaning and welcoming them, with the understanding that the visitor will be bringing gifts of electronics and/or cash from abroad (not to mention potentially helping with school fees or paying for home improvement projects).
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| Last of baked goods & new gift! |
We know that we don’t always get it right, but most of the time we are giving willingly and it is actually the receiving that makes us uncomfortable— because we don’t get to choose how someone reciprocates. Sometimes we are gifted things we don’t really enjoy or something of which we already have plenty. But we’ve learned enough to know that we don’t say that to the person giving. Often, the gifts we receive are coming from people who are poor and they are giving what they can, so we accept with a smile and many thanks— it is their way of giving toward our relationship (and if we end up not using or re-gifting their gift, they don’t need to know that).
PRAYERS ANSWERED
We were able to attend a funeral event for our friend’s mother and Tom was able to share some words of comfort with him. The test results are in and we got to celebrate with several of our friends who passed and will now be able to enter university. Hashiri continues to ask thoughtful questions and to be seeking truth. Megan had a good visit with Ma Imani and they were able to talk about some hard things. Tom had some excellent studies with Muk and Mtsa this past week.
PRAYERS REQUESTED
Two island sisters are hoping to travel abroad this week for medical treatment— pray for their healing, for their travels while not feeling well and also for the kids that they are both leaving behind. The rest of us hope to have our monthly women’s gathering and an island sister who has been hesitant to host lately has volunteered her house— pray that it would go well and be an encouragement. We have a visitor arriving on our island today and staying for just over a week to see what work and life looks like for us here on the Clove Island— pray that it would be a good visit. Pray that we would know how to wisely navigate our different relationships with islanders with their varying expectations— pray that our relationships with them would be healthy and draw them more to Him than to us.
