how I made every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous

We had already been in Zambia for two years when we got married, and as soon as our zam-tastic wedding was over, we were anxious to get back. Being the first foreigners to ever live in the Fimpulu, everything we did was intriguing to our neighbors. They loved to watch the way I braided my hair and washed my dishes and piddled around in my garden and so when we returned to the village as newlyweds, it was no surprise that everyone was waiting to watch and see how we’d "do" marriage.

My neighbors were worried that I’d do it wrong, so they promptly pulled me aside for training. They taught me how to sweep my home and cook his food and make him ***real*** happy.

After a few months of blatant failure in the wife department, my teachers pulled me aside again and told me to step up my game. Their first threat was: “We taught you better than this. Get your act together or we’ll beat you.” Why yes they did. Greater love has no Zam-Mama than this, that she will slap the white off your face if you don’t get your crap together. And their second threat was, “Because if you don’t do it right, he will find someone who does.”

In self defense, let me say that "bad wife" is a relative concept. If you were supposed to rise before dawn to sweep the house and scrub your floors and thrice daily cook elaborate meals for your husband while you ate leftovers in the other room, and kneel before him and never look him in the eye... you might be a failure too.

I should also mention the added concern of my elders that we had been married for three whole months and I wasn’t pregnant yet, which meant, clearly, that I was either not doing my marital duty at all, or that I was doing something to hinder conception against my husbands obvious wishes - both of which are cardinal sins.

But the real disappointment, and the reason why the mamas were ready to slap me back to the cold land, was because not only was I failing at my obvious duties, but I was also letting JEREMY do them.

They watched in horror as they saw him sweeping the house at all hours of the day! They saw him stoking the fire and putting pots on it! They saw him scrubbing my underwear! Good heavens woman, have you no shame?!?! One woman asked what kind of juju I was slipping into his porridge to get him to behave like that. Theological underpinnings of the question aside, I explained to that woman and others who were genuinely concerned for our marriage that I had in fact not witched my husband, and that he was doing these things of his own volition. I tried to explained the counter-cultural concept that my husband serves me simply because he loves me.

They still told me he’d leave me within six months. I relayed that message to Jeremy who, being quite offended, retaliated by making out with me on the front porch.

Six months later, Jeremy was still sharing the work load and I still hadn’t born him a child and we were still sleeping with each other and no one else… and all the elders just sort of raised eyebrows and kept watching. Fascinating, they said.

 Two years later, Jeremy hadn’t returned me to my parents or asked for his dowry back and our circle of gawkers grew larger still. I think most women accepted that I wasn’t slipping magical herbs into his porridge, but they still weren’t entirely sure what the X factor in this relationship was. At least I was finally pregnant and giving him his first child, so I wasn’t a complete waste of womanhood.

Turns out the baby was just a whole other realm of radical for my husband. If they thought kissing on the front porch was bold, nothing could prepare them for diaper changes. The reaction to that stunt was so addictive, Jeremy took the show on the road. We had gone to town together and I had entered the market to get some vegetables during which time Jeremy changed Bronwyn’s diaper on the hood of the Land Rover. The next week, there in the market again, I walked across the dusty selling space and noticed an above average number of people staring and pointing at me. (I mean, a handful is normal, a crowd is a little curious.) Finally one of the onlookers approached and all she said was, “You’re the woman who is married to the man who changes diapers!” Umm…  yes! Yes I am! Were you wanting an autograph?

Jeremy’s fame rapidly spread from there. We were hard pressed to go anywhere in a 25 mile radius where we didn’t hear “Jeremy! Jeremy!” being called out by various members of his unofficial fan club. And as for me? I was just “Mrs. Jeremy,” the lucky lady connected to this beast of wonder, who would sweep and cook and change diapers and remain faithful without needing to be bewitched and was still manly enough to build things and drive a tank of a vehicle and kill things… and other such measures of manhood.

manhood - like caring for your infant while slaying cobras. no big deal.

Now jealous though they might be, it's not like any of these ladies are coming after my man. Feelings about Jeremy waver between admiration and sheer terror. He is, after all, a bit of a powerful mystery which keeps most ladies from coming too close. Any woman in the village will still insist on talking to me even if they really have a question for him.

But truly, my husband's acclaim – the stares and pointing and side comments about how lucky I am – these are treasures I store up in my heart. I adore that in a context where we work tirelessly to fit in, that for the handful of ways we actually work to stand out, we do it for love. Jealousy can be healthy if it stirs up motivation to step out and try something new. We feel not at all guilty for the ways this crazy idea of serving your spouse has caught on with a precious handful of men whose end game is happiness and have observed this as a good way to get there. The women on the receiving end know who they have to thank for that novel idea.

I had no clue, really, that I was stepping into something so rare and compelling, making every woman in a 25 mile radius jealous of me, just be simply saying "I DO." And yet, nine years later, as I reflect on the significance of this marriage, I’m thankful all the more for my maven man – the one who turns heads with his flip of pancake and stops traffic with his road side diaper changes. You’re what every woman wants, babe - especially me.

third culture kids and America first

Like most holidays, the Fourth of July is kind of a funny thing to try to celebrate when you are living in a different country. For us in the village, we are the only Americans for a good distance and I’m terrified of fireworks exploding in someone’s face, so my inclination is really to just let the day slip on by. I think I’m giving it greater consideration this year only because our oldest has recently become more aware of her American-ness and honestly, it has made our whole family pause a bit.

These are turbulent times in the Colvin house, to be frank. I don’t know why I expected smooth sailing forever. I mean, we are raising third culture kids, famous for their angst and exhaustive search for belonging. Wishful thinking maybe?

For six years, Bronwyn believed she was actually, ethnically, Zambian. Everything about her life would have told her so. After all, she has spent roughly 2,153 days doing typical Zam-kid things like eating nshima, climbing trees, dipping un-ripe mangos in salt and digging for rats after the fires go through. She’s never heard the Pledge of Allegiance or the Star Spangled Banner but she can sing the Zambian National Anthem flawlessly – Zambian accent and all! And what always made us chuckle is that, until recently, if you told her she wasn’t Zambian, she’d fight you. (She gets her feistiness from her father, obviously.)

I think my bio kids have always known they are a bit “different.” They get teased, laughed at, stared at, stroked – every form of unwanted attention possible. They get pulled into pictures with people they don’t know, asked to “perform” at random times, and get reminded often that their Bemba is noticeably a second language.

Their otherwise beautiful Zam-life – up in the trees, making banana stalk babies and rolling in the dirt – has always outweighed any sense of “other-ness.” They’ve always attributed negative experiences to the indiscretions of those who cause them… but never to their being American.

Until recently.

posing at the Chief's palace

Our family did a thing earlier this year where we sent mom to America for two months which apparently un-caged a multi-cultural bird that has desperately been waiting to fly. America has existed for our kids only as a figment of their imagination. Out of all of them, Bronwyn has spent the most time in that country – a whopping eleven months, actually, which transpired for her between the age of two and three – a time when a child’s memory is totally accurate, of course.

And so our beloved six year old’s recollection of her parent’s birthplace is basically Grandma and all of the benefits of living in her house, which includes, but is not limited to:

No set bedtime

The absence of the word ‘no’

Presents just because its Wednesday so why not

Bathing in an oversized tub under 18 inches of bubbles

Eating whipped cream out of the palm of her hand at 7 o’clock in the morning

Watching Micky Mouse for six hours a day while being served fruit and cheese on a tray

Etc., Etc., Etc.

And so when mom boarded that plane and went off to gallivant around the United States, it clicked for the first time in our eldest’s head that that was a thing. And once a trip to magic grandma-land was within the realm of possibility, it was a short jump in logic to start begging the question, Well then why in the name of all that is good and right in this world are we not all going there?

Because America is, in her unformed mind, a place of perfect and utter happiness, going there naturally became the knee jerk response to anything unpleasant.

You are making me eat my vegetables? Fine I’m going to America!

I have to do math? Fine! I’m going to America!

I don’t want to share with Leonie! I’m just going to America!

Not that that her declarations ever materialized for her – I mean, the child still ate her vegetables and did her math and had to share with her sister – all without boarding a 747. But still the magical possibility of escape to never-never land not only stayed alive but also grew in influence.

Feeling out of place in this environment combined with the known possibility of going to a “perfect” one, had the effect of pitting the two countries against one another. America could do no wrong and Zambia became the scape-goat for everything. All those little reminders that she’s “different” – once brushed off as other people’s bad manners – now became a dark spot for a whole nation. All of that third culture kid insecurity now had a perpetrator in her mind. Zambia was the problem; and so it followed that America would be the solution.

She started communicating those feelings in different ways. Boycotting chitenge dresses and refusing to curtsey before her elders and suddenly hating nshima. Her teachers told me that she’s racist because she got “sick” during Bemba period every day. Eventually she gave voice to her internal crisis, telling us directly, “I don’t belong here. I’m too different. I don’t feel like this is my land.” (My land? Who are you, Abraham and Lot?)

We sat outside one afternoon, Jeremy and I did, pondering if we had blown it all, ruined our first born by asking her to straddle an ocean, something that even we – with fully formed frontal lobes – fail to do perfectly. As we sat and talked, we watched our emotionally entangled child tangle herself up in a tree, chatting away (in Bemba, mind you) with three of her besties, and then come down and ask if they could all stay for dinner. She doesn’t hate this place like she thinks she does, we assured ourselves.

And thus begins a new phase of parenting for us. For the record, this is way more challenging than getting them to sleep through the night or learn to use the potty. This new stage of helping them navigate a world in which they belong everywhere and no where at the same time – light a candle for us.

We want our children to understand that loving one place need not require hating the other. Acknowledging our ties to America does not require rejection of Zambia. A love of nshima is not infidelity to hotdogs. And because the “I’m going to America” line is clearly unproductive, we’re finding new words, – something more healing and less toxic.

We started reciting every single day, sometimes with her teary face resting in between our hands, these truths:

There is hard everywhere.

There is good everywhere.

God loves absolutely every person on this planet the same.

And so we do too.

Go and chase beauty.

Go and be kind.

Every. Single. Day.

We speak the hard words, and she repeats them – less resistant all the time. A rewiring of synapses until her soul agrees with what her mouth obliges to say. And as we go on joy hunts and count our blessings, Zambia regains its good standing.

nshima and lounging with her favorite uncle emmanuel

On the flip side, we continue to deconstruct the well-supported myth that America is the land flowing with milk and honey. She hears us rant about ‘the state of America’ enough that she’s not totally clueless, but really most of it is above her. And yet, as Jeremy and I discuss the drama of our homeland juxtaposed with the drama of our family, the irony is not lost on us.

America as a whole is not entirely unlike my six year old. Both are trying to figure out who they are. Both are guilty of blaming the “other” for discomfort and trouble. Both are fighting to preserve a fictitious image of an America-past where everything is apparently rosy. Both have been convinced that a love of one necessitates a hatred of another. The definitions of culture have become muddled and nationality is a vague construct. The relational strain is more palpable than ever. The good times are gone.

Raising a nation is quite different than raising a child, so I focus on the three littles in my care and pray for the rest. All I know is that in our quest to produce happy, functional, morally responsible human beings, we take a hint from America’s present crisis and we pass the following conviction on to our kids in as many ways a possible:

You are citizens of heaven, and that changes everything.

Human decency demands we think about citizenship through an ethical lens, but our Christianity demands we think about it through a theological one as well. There is no sense in fighting for “our people” and against “their people” when our citizenship is not of this world anyway. There is no reason to love ourselves and hate the other when we are all “other” because heaven is our homeland. There is no logic in building a wall or locking others up and out when our cultural identity is wrapped up in Christ.

This is not about politics. This is about eschatology.

This fourth of July, we in the Colvin home will give a nod to history and heritage and we’ll probably wave like goofballs in the general direction of Grandma’s house. But there will be no celebration of nationalism or patriotism or ethno-centrism, because as long as we have life on this earth, we as a family declare that our home is in heaven. We can meaningfully sing, God bless America and Zambia and any other place we might dwell for a while. We want the best for the people of Mexico and Russia and Pakistan and every location on this glorious globe. Any other attitude belies our faith.

There is no such thing as America first for a people whose anthem is

Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be done.

Nothing else can help our third culture kids make sense of their weird experience on this planet until they grasp this beautiful truth. We can belong everywhere and nowhere because the third culture to which we really belong is other-worldly. Home is not Zambia, really, and it’s not America, really; it’s heaven, really, and heaven is forever.

Our existence between here and there is defined by how well we love every nation, tribe and people while we’re en route. C.S. Lewis in Till We Have Faces wrote, “No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.” It’s a small extrapolation then to say that you can rightly banish no man when you remember this is his city too.

I imagine God weeping bitterly as our ancestors drew fraudulent lines on a map and as proud men scrambled to claim more of it for themselves. And I imagine Clive Staples rolling over in his grave as his American brothers and sisters fight for the whiteness of their arbitrary territory.

We don’t get that angelic immigration stamp in our passports until the very end, but truly, we become better citizens of any country when we strive to make every place a little more heavenly. Jeremy and I pray that through our actions we preach this for our children again and again. Wherever we are, we welcome in every single person. Wherever we are, we seek peace for every single person. Wherever we are, we do justice to every single person. Wherever we are, we extend mercy to every single person.

This is not hardship, it’s the gospel.

Our children may always wrestle with place, identity, and the inherent awkwardness of being a third culture kid. When you eat nshima and pay in kwacha but read Beatrix Potter and watch the Lego movie you accept that all TCKs are a little eccentric. And through all the ups and downs, I pray they learn: the only way to live happily as a third-culture kid is to check the weight we give to our passports as we remember where we really, truly belong. 

Happy Fourth of July.