I began teaching music in a school for African refugees, which has been accompanied by joy, sorrow, pain, and laughter in an ever-repeating flood. This school operates in a small cultural bubble inside of the culture that I live in. Having to live as a functional human being in one new culture is hard, and I am still learning how after nine months of being here. However, now that I have discovered this new cultural layer of displaced refugees on top of the local culture, everything I have learned thus far has become once more convoluted. Of course, in saying that, I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything else! Africans really do know how to live joy-filled lives, and the kids that I work with are people of true quality and depth.
When I first started teaching, I fell apart because of stress- I was very sick and was struggling to do basic tasks because of my reaction to the environment. Africans are very relaxed, to the point where the person is valued over any sort of time structure (an example of this- there is a meeting from 2:00-4:00. 2:00 comes, but not everyone is there yet. The leader waits for everyone to arrive before beginning the meeting, even if that means only having a meeting for 30 minutes). Needless to say, this was a stressful thing for me- I consider myself relaxed when it comes to time, but Africans win the gold medal for being the most relaxed. My reaction to this among other things was another round of culture shock, which I didn’t even know was hitting me for a second round like a sack of bricks.
After a particularly stressful day at school, I sat down with my school director’s wife to vent my frustrations, and she reminded me that grace is absolutely necessary for surviving and thriving in that context. She reminded me that we as Western workers show up to work in order to assist local people who run the school, which is a hard thing for anyone who comes from a culture that gets things done. In working in this environment, we take our servant’s work of administration and planning to make sure that others are empowered to go and do good work, even if we do not agree with the process. This helped me think of my own situation in a new light. In my choir class, I had to surrender my need for control so I could survive my own cross-cultural stress. Through that surrender, God taught me about his love for all cultures, and his way of investing in each one in a way that we can fully understand. When I saw the joy the choir kids had in performing together, how well they performed, and the fun of sitting together afterwards above my own stress, I saw an unexplainably beautiful thing. To know that the father spoke to them (even those who are still curious but not followers) in that time was a precious gift for all of us. My perfect lesson plans did not speak to these kids, but God did when he revealed himself through worship at our concert. We show up to work, we pray, and we hope to God for the outcome that we think won’t come because of a lack of preparation. We die to the need to do things a certain way so that Christ can be reflected in a way that the culture can understand. I am realizing too that as I offer tools, God is giving me tools in turn to function well in that environment.
So, an amazing journey has begun in my learning how to be humble: how to step back, and how to know exactly when to step up and when to let others take control. The path is hard, but I know that I am walking with my father through this. I have to say that even in being humbled I am being deepened in my spirit. I am looking to the father and becoming more like him, and the joy that follows has been priceless. God is pulling out parts of me to replace them with more of him. In death to myself, God is replacing me hundredfold with life and joy in him.