It's All Perspective

I think I spent a good deal of this journey on autopilot when it came to cross cultural dealings. I feel I can trust my autopilot because I have lived cross culturally so much. But there are times that I realized in a profound and fresh way that even when we think we are all speaking the same language and seeing the same things our cultural worldview is like a pair of glasses that are tinted with our perspective. It just changes the way things look.

In the first half of this trip I remember having ‘ah ha’ moments when I realized that a team member had a very different perspective of the same thing we just experienced together. Maybe it’s safe to say that after a few of those it was normal or easy for me to remember and operate from the realization that we are always coming from different angles.

However I also remember being surprised a few times during our debriefing on the last day about what our dear Kenyans thought of Americans in general. Actions one names as pride, I would call openness. And if you look at it, it’s understandable from a Kenyan perspective how that action would be considered pride if a Kenyan had done it.

One lesson learned is that even 3 months of touring dozens of families doesn’t necessarily yield a correct assumption. I like to think I’m a good life long learner. And I was always discovering new things about Kenyan culture, but one thing this tells me is that perhaps even after several samples and long observations, I may have come to wrong conclusions about what happens in Kenyan culture.

For all my questioning I still think I have come up with some new insights into American culture. I hope to explore those in the coming entries. Stay tuned.

I'm from Minnesota

Yesterday I got to thinking that even though I haven’t experienced a winter for the last couple of years and I don’t really have a winter coat per se, I seem to be taking this cold weather in stride. Today it dawned on me I like that I’m from Minnesota.

I’ve seen what Northerners are like and specifically those who live in the northeastern part of the US. I’ve had conversations with Tennesseans and Texans. I have a feel for those from the Southwest and Californians too. But there is something about where you are actually from that makes you who you are and gives you an innate understanding of your environment.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Kenya too. There is so much about there that warms my heart. And in some ways I feel more at home in Nairobi. But this place is in my fiber. I know how to drive on the highways, I know the proper etiquette for shopping, I love the evening dusk sky looking west from downtown. This place is home. (At least for now.)

Afrizo Tour in Retrospective

I think I have just done the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I was the tour manager for the Afrizo singing group from Daystar. They arrived on Aug 30 and left of Nov 22. The relationships are worth it. I was working for Daystar University scholarship funding so when I think about the many students who used to come to my office for assistance it’s worth it.

That said, I don’t think I could ever do it again. It was the longest extended time that I was so saturated with a task I literally could not think about the future. It was just one day at a time or maybe two ahead. I am facing a huge transition now but I had absolutely no time to process it.

I also had a hard time processing what was happening as we went along. I wish that I could have been writing in the van, but the little reading I did in the van sometimes made me a bit nauseated and gave me some eye strain. So it’s a good thing I didn’t try. I would however like to try to do a series of posts related to the trip for the sake of remembering and noting some of what I learned from this venture.

I am so thankful to have traveled the entire US in a three month span. With the Afrizo team I stopped or passed through 25 States. The team hit another 3 States without me, as I was back in the office for two different weeks during the time the team was here. I think there is about a dozen of the continental States I haven’t set foot in, mostly in the South and New England. Someday I may have to round that out, but for now, I’m happy to stay put for a bit, even if it means enduring a Minnesota winter.

Please check back as I hope to fill you in on more of my cultural tour guide travels.

It’s already September!

The weather I love is here. I’m just not sure how I will survive a Minnesota winter. But warm days and cool nights! I’m lovin’ that!

At the end of August 8 ‘friends’ arrived in Minneapolis. To be more precise, 8 people from Daystar University, one teacher and 7 students – the touring singing group, Afrizo! They are here for three months of scholarship fundraising concerts across the entire United States. And I’m going with them! The students come from all over Kenya and one from the Congo (DRC). The director, Hellen has been here a number of times and was even a part of last October’s Lausanne Congress in South Africa as she joined the worship team there.

Every single day is filled with all kinds of new things for this team. While my coworker in the office, Hannah set up everything it’s still a load of logistics on me to get these guys all over. Thankfully we also have a very helpful driver, Sven for the entire trip also. My responsibilities lie in a number of areas.

For the week and a half they’ve been here I’ve managed a few days when I could get into the office to try to get my head around the next step. Though I started off feeling only a millimeter ahead of them, I’m still not a lot more ready. I wish I had the time to think through all the pieces of debriefing every day and cultural exchanges. Not to mention being ready with a Bible study each week and encouragements for the team members.

Sunday evening we start our first road trip. Its 13 days to Oregon and back. I will actually switch off with another staff member and get the last half of that trip off, back in MN without the team. Maybe that is when I will mentally catch up. But then on October 3rd we start the big loop: Chicago, Detroit area, Pennsylvania, NY, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, and finally Los Angeles. They fly home from there two days before Thanksgiving.

All this is to say. I hope to blog about this grand trip seeing most of America through the eyes of dear Kenyans. But I won’t make any big promises. I will just have to see how it goes. I will however update Facebook often. And if you want to follow what the team is doing you can “like” the Afrizo! public figure page on Facebook. The one with the exclamation point is our traveling team.

Thanks for your many prayers to see me through this incredible season.

Gentle Reader (as Jane Austen would say)-

Just wanted to let you know that I'm very much alive. I have been so busy that writing seems to be the last thing on my list, I hate to say. But I would like to be in communication with you more. So I hope things will change.

However, the Afrizo team from Daystar university arrived yesterday and I am now even more aware that my schedule is not my own. On the other hand, the team will likely give me lots of fodder for blogging.

I haven't forgotten about my promise to blog about the North Shore. But it may have to wait a season at this point. We shall see.

Thank you for faithfully checking my blog even when I've been silent so long.

Addicted to Fresh Juice and Kefir Smoothies

I realize it’s been a while since I wrote here. For a while I was feeling like I don’t really have much to say. Now I’m busy and hardly have time to write. I hope to do more writing in the near future, especially of my recent trip to the North Shore.

About a week ago I borrowed a juicer from a friend and now I’m hooked. I start with three to four carrots; add an orange, an apple and a lemon. It’s unbelievably sweet and highly addictive, I’ve found.

If I want to get more filled up, say for breakfast, I throw a couple of frozen strawberries into the blender, add a banana, some of this fabulous carrot-fruit juice and some home-brewed kefir and voila! I may not go back to ice cream!

Lovin’ this new habit.

Culture Crisscross

I'm a little stirred up in the routine department so I haven’t been writing regularly. Among other things I have been introduced to a show called Drop Dead Diva. Long story short - a skinny blond model dies in a car crash and through a mix-up at the Pearly Gates she goes back to earth as a plus-sized lawyer. She has the brains (and body) of the lawyer but the memory of the model.

The premise is very creative. It got me thinking through a different switch up. I was telling my sister-in-law that I think it’d be interesting to do a swap of bodies/personalities from two different cultures; a kind of a cultural Freaky Friday if you will.

Here’s what I mean: Take my Kenyan girlfriend Jane who’s an internal auditor at a bank in Nairobi. Imagine we are going on vacation together somewhere and lightning strikes the plane. Somehow Jane and Jan switch bodies and now Jane (in Jan’s body) is back in the US having never lived there before (though she does know quite a bit about the culture) and Jan is inside Jane’s body and has to work in the corporate world of Nairobi. Yikes!

I think it’d be a new twist on the kind of humor I find most entertaining; cross cultural mix-ups. If I were writing this show you’d be able to hear the thoughts in Jane’s voice while she maneuvers through this crazy American landscape. As I told this idea to my sister-in-law she said, “Because that’s how you feel, right?” She couldn’t have hit it more squarely on the nose. And that’s why I believe I could write it well.

Of course I would need some help to make it funny because sometimes being a Kenyan in an American’s body is just plain old lonely. Even when we switched back, we’d never be the same again. We would have learned how it looks from the other’s viewpoint.

Even now the internal monologue seems to just keep running, a constant flow of what seems strange to me on the inside, while I continue to weave my way through the circumstances that face me every day, trying to act the way I should based on how people perceive me. I wonder if I will ever get over it. If I’m really honest, I don’t want to get over it. But I do want to understand and fit in and go back to having good deep friendships here, too. I don’t want to always be an outsider.

I guess I need to give it more time.