There are things I take for granted in America. Housing. Convenience stores in walking distance. Convenience in general. Clean drinking water. Paved roads. Electricity. If I were to move to a foreign country, like, say, Uganda or Kenya, and those staples of my life were absent, I'd like to think I would adjust.

But safety... safety would be tough. I don't take safety for granted here. I double-lock our doors and tread carefully in traditionally "bad" areas of the city even if I'm in a car. But in Africa, I felt unsafe as a present rather than passive way. There were lots of contributing factors of course - we were regaled with stories of missionaries being bound & held at gunpoint while their small children had to go around the house collecting their valuables. We were somewhat constantly reminded to know where our passports and wallets were at all times. There were big metal doors with big metal locks on them separating the living areas from the sleeping areas in both homes we stayed in. Most of the neighborhoods that we saw that weren't extremely poor were surrounded by gates, barbed wire, armed guards and more. Most people we talked to didn't think about if they would be robbed, but when.

After a few days of this thought occupying unfortunately gigantic spaces in my head, I brought it up with one of our hosts. How do you live like this? She said, in a simple, unpretentious voice...

"After awhile you realize that safety isn't the most important thing."

Of course, this thought quickly spun into every corner of my noggin.

What if I wasn't worried about getting sick? What if I didn't care if I died? What if financial security weren't the most important thing?

Would I live intentionally in one of those "bad" areas of Chicago? Would I devote all of my time to things not of this world?

It's not new information for most of you to hear that the non-Western world is less worried about stuff, or even that the westerners that go there become less attached to stuff pretty quickly (there's hope for us all yet), but it was an important piece of how the trip affected us. And that's what I think is worth talking about. The specific experiences in Africa were hardly mundane, but they also weren't turn-your-world-upside-down exciting. But the way they affected me has lasted.

There was a freedom from stuff over there that I envied. When we got home, I recharged my iPod and booted up my iBook and turned on the DVR and was happy to be reconnected to my stuff. But I was very aware of how my stuff owned me. I looked in our storage area at all of the things I had held onto for years and decided i could pare down and be less handcuffed to stuff. It was liberating putting things on Craigslist and making piles for the Salvation Army and the Harvest. But then I came to the stuff that I really like. The books, the DVDs, the toys... things that I am now aware of and have to sort out. I no longer get the luxury of ignorance. I stare at books I've never read and DVD's I haven't watched in years. What's important and what's not? If something is not important, does that mean I should trash it? Can I enjoy stuff? What would being free to enjoy things look like? What's reasonable? What's unreasonable?

So I wrote a manifesto. For myself. Maybe I'll post it someday. I looked at every corner of my life and decided that some things needed to change. I facilitate a conference each summer whose unofficial theme is "Not changing is not an option given to you by this program". I feel that way about my time in Africa. Confronted with how important all things security (physical, financial, et cetera), I had to make some decisions and stick with them. Luckily I had a lot of momentum to work with.

Next time: momentum. Or, what I learned from 19 Kenyan pastors and one Holy Spirit.

And then maybe we'll get to the giraffes. Oh the giraffes...

Labels: africa, Jesus, Other

People often pray for God to stretch them, to make them face their fears and to wake them up to a new life.

Those people are crazy. I'm one of them, so I can speak for us. We're crazy.

From the moment we arrived at O'Hare to the moment we left O'Hare, nearly every experience I had felt stretching. So for two weeks, I was completely out of my comfort zone. Hopefully you will understand then why I feel two ways about my first experience overseas. I'm trying to remember that feeling two ways about something doesn't disqualify you from fully feeling either (so... I'm still being stretched).

I want to start processing the trip, but I'm going to do it in parts. Today, I'm just going to cover our very first experiences in the country, but this isn't going to be a day-by-day thing so you can read with confidence that this isn't going to go on for weeks (Also, for once I get to use pictures that either Verity or I took during the trip. Africa makes it easy to be a good photographer for a couple weeks).

ARRIVING IN UGANDA
We landed in Nairobi, Kenya after 18 hours of flying (more on that later) for a quick overnight stay with friends, and then hopped on a plane to Kampala, Uganda early the next morning. The drive to the house was my first real out-of-country experience but it didn't really feel like we were on the other side of the world. Maybe because people spoke English well or because Coke billboards were littered along the roads, but it felt like America only... tweaked. For example, the roads were paved but without streetlamps. And we were stopped by police, but they had big (!) guns hanging menacingly around their necks. Or the home felt like any home in the States, but there was mosquito netting on the beds (which confirmed my fears about getting diseases in Africa, and I was now convinced that I was not going to come out on the other side fully intact).

The next morning we woke up from our Ambien-induced slumber feeling bright-eyed and ready to go. We got our passports stamped again and were off to Uganda, where we were whisked away to our home for the next week. We stayed with the Willisons, which was worth the trip in and of itself. Most of you know the Willisons better than I do, but let me say that as a married couple, as parents and as a family, they are truly wonderful people who I feel touched to have as role models.

The drive from the airport revealed something I was less prepared for because I spent all of my pre-trip time suffering the flight and not thinking about what Africa would actually be like: it was gorgeous. The lake, the greenery, the colors. Apparently we came a short while after the Queen of England had been there and so a lot of money had been poured into beautifying the city (...), so let me clarify that it was the God-made part of the land that got me. As we drove through we put on our mosquito repellent and took everything in. The people bustled down the street dressed in suits and dresses, like pictures of America in the 40's (only everyone wasn't white). The traffic was, not for a lack of a better term, INSANE. The roads were largely washed out and ... "bumpy" (later someone said to us, "It's nice that they put a road in that pothole, isn't it?"). Stores with a small room full of one item (DVDs, bananas & cell phones seemed to be a popular choice) lined the roads and shacks served as a bedroom for many families.

So one would assume that we were in a poor part of Kampala. While you wouldn't necessarily be wrong, we did learn that you can't use western values to judge the state of non-western cultures. We learned that life in Kampala is done outside and that housing for many local people is seen as merely a bedroom. So you could be very poor or fairly well-off and live in one of these shacks. I decided to throw away snap judgments for the rest of the trip.

We pulled up to the Willison's home where they live with their five children and six dogs (most of who are guard dogs) and opened the gate covered in barbed wire. Thus begins the next part of the story: safety.

Labels: africa, Jesus, Other