dirt coffee: on evaluating worth in a material society

 

I recently started taking care of an older woman for whom a simple scratch had become a septic wound larger than my hand. The wound festered on top of her collar bone which protruded from her skeletal frame. Every inch of her body bore testimony to her 70 something years of life. The scars of traditional medicine on the chest; the feet calloused from thousands of barefoot miles; face lines of one who has both smiled and scowled plenty. Such a body is magnificent in a place where the average life span is twenty years her junior. 

 

Some days I had to hurry through the dressing change and move on to the next thing, but other days I had the luxury of sitting and asking questions about her life – childhood during colonialism, marriage and her now deceased husband, the role of the matriarch. Dozens of toddler sized look-alikes flitted around her – the older ones sitting and listening as intently as I. She always seemed surprised by my curiosity, her broad smile telling me that she was grateful to be known. 

 

One day at the end of our conversation as I loaded my medical tub to schlep to the vehicle, she looked up at me and said, “Don’t die, Bana Winnie,” – a benediction of longevity. 

“I’ll try not to,” I said back. 

 

As grandma began to heal, her adult children confessed that they hadn’t believed she would recover. Given her age, general fragility and the severity of the wound, they expected to be saying their final goodbyes. Choosing to ignore their lack of trust in my wound-care skills, I rejoiced with them at how well she was doing. After that point, I rarely left that home empty handed. After the sterile gauze had been taped onto her paper-thin skin, grandma would slowly rise up from her mat on the ground and say, “I’m coming,” which in this culture implies, “don't move.” She would go into her tiny brick house and come back with something for me – dried cassava, freshly harvested peanuts or whatever her children, grands and great-grands had pulled from the fields that day. The day she asked how I like caterpillars, I had to think quickly through the pros and cons of accepting a gift that was a delicacy for them and not so enticing to me. But then one day she gave me something really special – a little sachet of coffee. The day before, Grandma had shown me her single coffee bush next to her house. She explained that she picked the beans, heated them in a pan over the fire, pounded them in her mortar, sifted the grounds and then drank it. She asked if I knew what coffee was. Indeed! I responded, explaining that the culture I come from is a little bit obsessed with it. The grounds she gave me were wrapped in a yellow strip of used plastic bag, tied around the powder and very much looking like contraband. I said thank you, and I really meant it. 

 

I took the coffee home and opened up the sachet. I smiled, remembering an incident several years earlier when I had taken bags of Zambian coffee to the states as gifts for donors. Thinking I was being cute, and not knowing any better, I gave an adorable burlap, hand-stamped bag of ZamCoffee to the owner of a successful PNW coffee shop. He opened it, sniffed, and simply said, “Oh wow it looks like dirt.” Slightly stunned at the critique in lieu of “thank you” I accepted that maybe I should have known better. (He wasn’t the only coffee connoisseur on that trip to inform me that Zambian coffee is definitely sub-par. Its ok, my wounded pride has since healed.) 

 

But there in my own home, as I unraveled the grimy plastic and looked more closely at the locally-grown, pan-roasted, home-ground coffee in front of me, I thought, this coffee kind of does look like dirt… and yet I love it. I brewed the cup and took a sip. Having worked hard to become more discerning since that original snafu a few years ago, I couldn’t deny, this coffee would never pass on the world market. Or in any market. Ok fine, it was barely palatable. And yet as I sipped, my mind traveled not to hipster coffee houses but back to grandma’s soft face and her boney hands which had given it to me. The coffee was simultaneously disgusting and precious to me. I struggled to finish that coffee, but also savored it in honor of the hands that made it for me. 

 

A definition of poverty that I have latched on to is that of having little to nothing that the world deems valuable. “Grandma the wound patient” definitely has little to nothing that the world deems valuable and yet she had become so much more than that to me – she was rich in history, tender with babies, tough on teenage boys. She rarely moved from the sack on the ground, and when she did, it was slow, measured movement, that communicated determination, intentionality, and resilience. Her generosity humbled me daily. The day we both attended the funeral of a neighbor lady – her friend – I asked her how she was doing and she said, with wise eyes, “I’m alive.” Gratitude. Character. Grounding. This woman’s coffee did indeed taste like dirt but to me, her mere existence - painful and labored as it may be - was and is of immeasurable worth. 

 

As a community developer that tackles the mammoth of poverty alleviation, I notice how much time we spend evaluating projects and programs based on how productive we can help people become. The things we encourage people to do simply because “there’s a market for that;” defining worthiness by whether the people with fat pockets are willing to pay. The system makes sense, considering that the drivers of development are descendants of the protestant work-ethic who have signs that read “He who doesn’t work doesn’t eat” hanging in their kitchen. In essence, that phrase which the West considers a “Capital T Truth” basically means, if you aren’t willing or able to produce something that the world holds valuable, you don’t deserve to be kept alive. It’s possible that this paraphrase sounds more hyperbole (and dystopian) than it means to be, but I think Grandma’s dirt coffee has me seeing more clearly.

 

Today is black Friday, the day which ushers us into the most materialistic month of the year and, I fear, the worst version of ourselves. We want the stuff, that much is clear, but do we want the stories? As we hold things in our hands, are we giving thanks for the hands that have made it? Are we equating products with dollar signs or equating persons with infinite worth? When we commodify others, we dehumanize ourselves and I can’t help but feel like we are missing out on the massive opportunity this season would otherwise afford us to become a little more real. 

 

The mystery of the incarnation is that God came to earth, tasted our coffee and said, I see your worth. The coffee tastes like dirt - I can’t lie - but your worth? Immeasurable.

God became poor so that in our poverty, though having nothing, that paradoxically, by virtue of embodied glory, we may possess everything. 

 

The world has a ton of leverage over us – impacting the way we see ourselves and others, as doers first, be-ers second, worthy of dignity only if the market agrees. Grandma’s coffee was nowhere near good enough to be valued by anyone that matters which means that she will live out her days unknown by people who haven’t seen in her face all that they are missing. But tasting and seeing go together, so drink the coffee. Bless the hands that made it. Savor the stories. See the worth. 

 As a post-script, if you are interested in spending money on things that promote the dignity and infinite worth of people, may I suggest these options: GIFTS THAT MATTER.

 

where is the hope

 

A few days ago, I messaged one of my nurse friends. “I think I can be creative with Mary’s bandages until the next crate arrives… as long as no one else gets burned.” Today, a little girl whose pants caught on fire showed up at my door. It’s when your ‘just enough’ turns out to be too little that hope comes hard. 

 

My friends who thought they just had to get through the summer are feeling this too. ‘Just enough sanity’ to survive till school starts has been hijacked by school not reopening, and I see a familiar hopeless look in your eyes. 

 

As I lifted the little girl into my tub, giving her Tylenol and cookies to distract her from what was about to happen, I sized up the damage. Thirty percent of the upper thigh, not over any joints. “The clinic sent you home to care for it yourself, didn’t they?” I asked, judging by the gooped on toothpaste and ashes that are considered “traditional medicine” for burns. 

 

Back home my friends are cleaning up different messes. The protest fires of injustice and racism and hate are blazing in Portland and elsewhere and the “traditional medicine” of white supremacy doesn’t debride without tears either.

 

Where is the hope?

 

The little girl started crying as I slowly rubbed away the crust that was clinging angry to the tender flesh. Not recognizing either the girl or her mom by face, I asked where they live. M’wanguni, the mom said, in between telling her daughter to not cry so loud. “That’s two villages over,” I observed, “How did you know to come here?” “I heard from the man whose finger you fixed that you were kind to people like us,” she explained. Ah yes. The man who presented me with a severed finger that the clinic wouldn’t touch except to cover with a square of gauze tied on with a condom. 

 

It’s never ending, the wounding is. For me or you. Breonna Taylor’s murderer still walks free; the poor are being pushed farther out of affordable housing; and demon sperm lady is practically surgeon general.

 

Where is the hope? 

 

There was a time when scenes like this would have wrecked me. More times than I can count, I’ve left a bleeding person alone in my bathroom so I could go outside and sob heavy. And while I’m holding tight to wound supplies and not BLM signs, I feel your pain too – I do. That I can’t march with you, that I can’t help teach your kids’ pod, that I can’t hand you Tylenol and cookies while we tackle this life together – it grieves me in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

I want to be optimistic; that the Tylenol will take the edge off, that tomorrow the pink skin will magically be brown, that medical neglect will no longer send people to my door. I want to be optimistic for you too; that the Covid curve will angle down and that black communities will be lifted up and that music will return to your streets. 

 

I love the optimists in my life, and I aspire to be one of them. Deeply connected to heart’s desires, goal oriented and stubbornly positive. Optimism motivates us to take risk and study burns and speak truth to power. Optimism serves us well… until it doesn’t. When the next patient is more critical than the last and the next tweet more heinous than the first it’s a sucker punch to the gut and all those Pollyanna thoughts feel childish. Confrontation with reality has sent more than a few optimists into rehab where we’ve tried to make sense of how we could have been so naïve. 

 

Where is the hope?

 

Wiser, more experienced, we get our act together. I order hundreds, not dozens of bandages at a time and silver sulfa now by the gallon. You round up screen shots for facebook ammo and amplify black voices as we try and figure out how to realistically achieve this thing we call healing.

 

But our expectations are tempered more than we admit. Where we no longer pray for miraculous healing and justice is only preached to the choir. Those brave desires have been swapped out for a safer, more cynical version… but at least we’re being realistic, and that feels grounding… though depressing in its own way. 

 

Where is the hope? 

 

Not knowing how to show up for myself, or you, or anyone, I show up to therapy and try to figure out where I am. I learn that the place I find myself is squarely in-between. I learn that God gave us two hands for a reason, so that we might remain deeply connected to our optimistic dreams while also deeply connected to the world’s brokenness. In the space between, wanting so much, and seeing so little, we feel the tension in every cell of our bodies, which opens the possibility of discovering that this is where hope is. 

 

When healed patients feel loved through hours of connection, I find meaning in the pain. Now  I’m hopeful, instead of devastated, by each new story that reaches my door. As I’m watching America from afar, seeing the end of conservative evangelicalism and the emergence of fresh faith, I feel hope for you in so many ways too. Hope lives in the already and the not yet – where we believe that change is possible while still sensing how broken we are. Where the light shines bright and yet darkness still permeates. Where heaven has come and yet is not fully here. This is where hope is.

 

Lament puts words to the insanity of it all. With space for both the longing and doubt that makes us human: That what we experience is awful, but not beyond redemption. That I’m powerless to fix it but I’m empowered by the one who can. That the-God-who-sees is made of everything I am not. That evil is pervasive but there’s more grace than I know. Lament roots us in hope by declaring that suffering is real, but mercy is near, and if everything we long for falls apart, the shattered dreams will, in faith, become the building blocks of a surprising tomorrow. This is where hope is.   

 

And by sowing tears and reaping joy we carry on, hoping against hope that we won’t be disappointed. As I optimistically wrap wounds and realistically still dispense the analgesics. As you optimistically cast your ballots and realistically pray in closets. We can go to task and then go to sleep because the results are not ours to manufacture. It’s in the space between optimism and reality that hope thrives because that’s where God is, involved in what is, working out what will be, and actively transforming everything in the process. And for this reason, and this reason alone, it will be ok. 

 

Hold on to hope, my friends. Let’s hold on to hope. 

  

boxing up expectations: reflections on OCC and the church

It was a fairly typical Thursday in our house. My husband went to the Mansa Pastor’s Fellowship, the meeting ran late, he got home and scarfed a “used to be warm” meal and gave me the run down of news from our region’s pastors.

So the boxes came up again, he started. I paused from my counter de-greasing to hear this one. Just a few days prior at the Fellowship’s Valentine’s Day event - capping off an otherwise delightful evening of food, love and laughter - the issue of “paying for our boxes” came up in the announcements. Through the thick murmur of voices, we gathered the sound bites of boxes, pay, free, why and no. Missionaries are really good at rolling with confusion so we held onto our questions. (And it was late – the newlywed game went long because we could not stop cracking up.)

Thankfully, at the next weekly meeting of the Fellowship, the topic came up again, and this time, being a more appropriate venue and atmosphere for discussion, the voices of all were heard, one at a time, and a thorough conversation went on and on.

Livid, Jeremy told me. They are livid. These pastors are the most gentle shepherds, so I had to know more. In bullet-point format, Jeremy explained that the Operation Christmas Child boxes had reached the warehouse in Ndola and that the Mansa churches needed to come up with eight kwacha per box for 5,000 boxes to receive their shipment. That’s $4,000USD, Jeremy said, telling me what I had already calculated. He continued to share that comments from the pastors ranged from, “We don’t have this kind of money,” to, “Aren’t these boxes supposed to be free?” to, “Next year, let’s just refuse the boxes all together!”

We haven't always been at these gatherings during OCC distribution time, and so we were back-peddling a little to make sense of these statements. Wait, wait, wait…  is this how it always is? What’s the money going for? Who is responsible for it? Despite the remaining questions, two things were crystal clear: the pastors were forking over cash for OCC boxes, and they were NOT happy about it.

Truth telling and transparency are core values for me, and the details out of that Thursday’s conversation just felt like something that needed to be shared.

This went up on my facebook wall and I honest to goodness didn’t expect much interaction with it. After all, it was a fairly bland statement – I didn’t flavor it with any personal opinions or emotional judgment. I posted because I myself was wrestling with unmet expectations, and I figured a few others out there might be as well. My goal was to describe the gap and let it speak for itself.

Days later, that conversation was still going, and I started composing this post as a way of saying all that I couldn’t say in a comments section. (Speaking of which, I made that particular post public so that anyone can read the full comments … in case you wanted to catch up…)

Having taken time to both dialogue and reflect (thank you, by the way, to everyone who shared thoughts and opinions with me,) I have observed that many, if not most people who engage with Operation Christmas Child do so with three main expectations. I will describe those below along with my observations regarding how those expectations seem to be playing out in Zambia.  

a quick side note...

(Before saying anything further, I need to make the disclaimer that the following opinions are 100% my own and not necessarily representative of anyone I work with or for. Furthermore, my opinions are drawn from my experiences in Zambia alone and may not be reflective of every country in which OCC operates.)

OK back to business…

Expectation one: The $7 shipping cost gets the box TO THE CHILD

This is certainly the most flagrant of unmet expectations. In my initial quest to understand why the churches of Mansa were paying to receive their boxes, I learned from OCC USA directly that the $7 only ships the container(s) of boxes as far as the central warehouse in the country – in our case, Ndola. It is OCC policy that the National Leadership Team (volunteers, and all Zambian) be responsible for distribution and raising funds to cover in-country transportation costs. Historically in Zambia, this has meant levying a transportation fee/payment amongst the churches in each district. This fee is not optional – this is not a free will offering – and it is announced to the churches that those who do not pay will not receive.

OCC policy clearly states that boxes are not to be sold. However, the Leadership Team’s directive to “raise funds” and their decision to do so by levying a “standard transportation fee” has effectively translated to a system of selling and buying the boxes – the National Team sells and the churches buy and that money takes care of the in-country transportation cost as per OCC’s plan. Some churches have chosen to absorb the cost on behalf of their congregants; others have merely fronted the costs and will then re-sell the boxes to the families themselves.

In dialoguing with many box senders in America, it is clear to me that no one actually wants to be a burden to the recipients. A lot of discouragement was generated by the thought of the rural poor having to scrape together funds to buy presents, and I was asked if there was a better way. Well...

I spoke directly with OCC USA regarding the policy and potential solutions. We didn’t have a particularly thorough brainstorming session, as that wasn’t the point of the call, but it did stand out to me that all “solutions” mentioned still kept the burden of transportation cost on the rural communities. Again, this is OCC policy. It was explained to me that OCC strategically does NOT charge the sender $7+K8 in order to ship all the way to the children because they WANT the churches to pay something. As an organization, they do not want to create an unhealthy dependency. 

This comment about dependency leads me to my second unmet expectation:

Expectation two: The gifts are HELPFUL both in evangelistic outreach and material aid

I’ve already written a full post outlining my thoughts regarding OCC and the coupling evangelism with Christmas gifts. I’d encourage you to read that post as well as I don’t intend on going into it here, but the spoiler is that I thoroughly disagree with this methodology for moral, cultural, and theological reasons.

As for the second element – helpful material aid – when the kind OCC staffer in North Carolina told me that they insisted that the churches pay so as to “avoid dependency,” I heard in that word choice the patent use of “development worker speech.” I started to wonder, just how many people really consider the shipping of these boxes to be an effective form of relief and/or development aid? It seems like Christmas presents don’t necessarily need to be sustainable, so… are our friends packing their boxes full of socks and washcloths and toothbrushes and Band-Aids because they believe they are supplying items that the child actually, desperately needs?

It may be quite right that a child would not have gotten a new toothbrush without that box, and that makes us all feel so useful on this planet, but if material aid is the expectation, this is not good stewardship of resources. For the cost of that new (American) toothbrush, a child in Mansa could buy 10 toothbrushes in the market. This pattern holds true for many of these “necessity” items.

A cost analyses on the boxes as a whole is even more striking. Expenditure certainly varies, but if we guestimate that the average box – contents plus shipping – is worth roughly $30, then have we done a good job of counting the “alternative cost?” Have we considered what could be done with that money instead?

in rural Zambia, $30 can pay for…

60,000 liters of potable drinking water

100 kg of maize meal – feeding a family of 5 for 4 MONTHS

school fees and uniforms for 6 elementary kids for a year

2 breeding goats

6 insecticide treated mosquito nets

15 gallons of soy beans

wages for 3 weeks of farm work

           

            

The families are not consulted, of course, (further evidence of poor development practice) – meaning, no one has ever asked them directly, “would you rather have a box of assorted American goods, or would you rather send all of your kids to school this year?” Yikes. Do we even want to know the answer? Would it bust our expectations left and right? And if it did, are we courageous enough to do something else?

community based needs assessment is not an optional step

One thing I did learn from the comment thread on the original post is that there are plenty of families who do NOT share in this expectation. They fully recognize that this is maybe not the best evangelism tool, and it is without question NOT the best aid, but they do it anyway because of the benefit to their kids. I thought about that one long and hard, and to this group I say – despite all my other feelings – GOOD ON YOU, parents, GOOD ON YOU. You have taken intentional action to make your privileged children more generous, aware and missions minded, and this is so very worthwhile. I have heard your question, “is there a better option?” and I desperately want there to be. The impetus is on the local church and its sent-out-missionaries to strategize and facilitate this caliber of experience. We have not done all that we can do, and for that, I am sorry. Nevertheless, you deserve all the props for being both third world savvy and good disciplers of your kids.

As a final observation, I’ll share a third expectation:

Expectation three: A reputable organization like Samaritans Purse can be trusted to  provide oversight

The first responses to hit the wall after my post went live were filled with disbelief. What? How is that possible? There must be an explanation! Not Samaritans Purse!?!?!? Even after I shared “the rest of the story” (that OCC knows that the recipients pay and actually expects them to pay), a handful continued to defend OCC by offering a variety of positive examples from around the world. The sharers of these stories are likely believing that these gold-star results in one location are representative of results everywhere.

As I said at the outset, my perspective is 100% Zambia specific. All I know is that the disappointment over the cost of the boxes HERE is unmistakable. Every other commenter with experience in Zambia said the same thing.

What for all the yeah but… yeah but… yeah buts…stemming from those alternative examples from other countries, still, as far as I’m concerned, ^^^ this means something.

An addendum to the above expectation would be that we expect uniform results across the board. However, a basic rule of a GLOBAL aid organization, is that one-size-fits-all (and works for all,) is not a thing. The cultural climate, relationship to the west, perceptions of power/respect/authority – these all matter hugely.

OCC handles its oversight requirement largely by working with National Leadership Teams, seconding to them great authority in each state of the process. Here, the Team in Ndola – for cultural and other reasons – was not shuttling report of the discontentment across the ocean. The American representative told me that he works closely with the Ndola team and would follow up with them… I was only mildly comforted considering that this voice was 7 time zones away. “Work closely with” can mean so many things… I mean, Jeremy and I would say that we “work closely with” our local pastors; and by this we mean, we know them. Henry Mumba is a jovial leader who almost fell in our pond going down our zip line… Pastor Bwalya fasts and prays quarterly at our farm and never lords his title of Chairman of the Fellowship over anyone… Bishop Chimanga prays for provision while refusing to takes a penny from his extremely poor congregation whose roof we re-constructed this year… Reverend Mwansa is a phenomenal worship leader who is always helping others despite having nine kids of his own. These partnerships are relationally rich – and effective for that reason.

I’ve always been an advocate of supporting the little man because THIS is where accountability WORKS. No one has ever had to call us from another continent to tell us that one of our programs is not working. When something flops, we know it in about twelve seconds because the casualties of that flop usually come knocking on our door. In the same vein, if someone has a question or concern and would like an audience with the top-of-the-top of our organization, I’m pretty sure I can arrange that – dinner is at 6 and please don’t mind if my children throw peas. They lose their minds when we have visitors.

Scope and size of impact grow as an organization gets larger and larger, but quality control is almost always inversely impacted, and that is an understandable tradeoff.

Actually, so much of what we’ve observed with OCC is “understandable” and this is why I “stated the gap” without overt judgment. On some level, I get it. My point in sharing what I have is that the massive donor base of North America is not well versed at vetting, monitoring and evaluating the projects that our funding goes to. We trust the big names – sometimes too much.

At the end of the day, each donor is responsible for his or her investment, and no one else’s. Merely assuming that the stewards of your money are living up to expectation benefits no one. Asking questions and following up need not be hostile or cynical; BUT, with great (financial) power comes great responsibility.

Also, I concede that a lapse in expectation need not be a deal breaker. This too is a personal choice. For me, the unmet expectations outlined above are not palatable, and I will probably never participate with OCC for this reason, nor would I recommend others to participate either. But this is just one opinion, and my perspective is both biased and inherently imperfect. I appreciate the others who have shared their perspectives with me and expanded my understanding. You make me a better missionary, and I thank you.

*** UPDATE ***

Due to the outpouring of concern generated by this post, Operation Christmas Child has issued a formal response. Prompted by further reader concern, my response to that communication can be read: HERE. Please take the time to read the follow-up post as it is comprised of direct statements from the local pastors. I hope you'll find it as helpful as I did. 

Also, please note in the comments below how many people have shared similar examples from countries OTHER than Zambia. OCC continues to paint this as a localized problem. The testimonies below give credence to the fact that it is most certainly not. 

accidental colonialist

We prepare for months to move into communities where we will be the only Americans. We are taught the importance of shedding our privilege and pretense, and are given the skills to accomplish the same. Sustainability is our middle name. Cultural sensitivity, our constant concern. Respect, empowerment, preservation – we have PHD’s in all these subjects. This is what we’ve come for. We are straight professionals at judging anyone who comes off as “too American.”

But what fun would the ex-pat life be without cultural exchange? Where’s the harm – and isn’t there even a lot of benefit? – in goofing off around a fire, sharing recipes and funny accents and style. The 90’s top-pop-hits deserve to be shared (!) and aren’t multi-racial dance parties the best way to bond with your new friends anyway?

And bond we do, and life is groovy and we’re feeling more confident with each passing day. All the training and theory and conviction grows roots and sprouts wings and mixes all the development metaphors, as it turns into a kind of third-culture tie-die project in real life.

We all have to make it over the one-year hump, but once the wind catches your sails, and you can just glide? The life overseas sure gets good.

Speaking for the hubs and I, years and years later, our convictions never did change – our friends’ didn’t either – but the stories around us have diverged from our common campfire start.

I don’t believe one can honestly assess the good he or she has done without equally assessing the bad. This is where I’ve found myself milling about as of late. Perhaps it’s because we just submitted our year-end report (obviously focusing on the good). Or because I recently celebrated my ten year anniversary in this country! Or perhaps it’s because we’ve come face to face with a series of unfortunate examples recently… Whatever the cause, I’m thinking a lot about this ambiguous expat life and trying to evaluate not only my obvious highs but also my lurking lows.

It was several years ago that a friend reached out to me. There wasn’t really a “point” to her message, per se – as in, she wasn’t telling me to “stop doing this” or “start doing that,” but was sharing a meditation of sorts – the concerns of her soul, through which she shared some thoughts and feelings for me to appraise. I forget her wording, but the sentiment has stuck with me. There’s something about your life that feels risky. I just think it’s dangerous when Americans move into an African community and try and “do good.”

My naive and arrogant self was offended. Sister. Friend. I’m not like “those people” – do you not trust me? Can you not see for yourself? Respect, culture, friendship… do no harm – these are tattooed on my heart.

Unfortunately, her admonition came too early in my career. I hadn’t developed the core competency of self-evaluation, and I truly thought that my convictions were enough to hold me to a good standard. But thankfully, all good seeds eventually bear fruit and despite my botched reply, (I’m sorry), I couldn’t un-read those original words and they’ve grown into a larger script – a cautionary tale, as I’ve learned to see how dangerous the overseas existence truly is.

I remember my first afternoon in Fimpulu with embarrassing clarity. My earliest memory in this place is that of casting judgment on an inadequate structure at the clinic, mentioning to my translator, that, “that would need to be changed” and continuing on as if someone had actually invited me to audit anything at all.

In those early days, I spent not enough time asking questions, and far too much time providing answers. A year or two later, I grew disillusioned because things were, in large part, staying quite the same, even though I had expected my presence to be the end of that.

There were myriad times I spoke too fast because I need you to know how smart I am. Broke custom because give me a break people. Disregarded concerns because let me tell you how the developed world does it.

Colonialism comes in all forms – action and attitude – and at various times I have been guilty of both. Lament and repent – there’s been plenty of that – but what has returned me to my friend’s word of caution has been my painful realization that colonialism comes so very easily.

I’ve seen it in my own experience as in so many others. We spend so much time getting in, going deep. Sharing space and stories and the stuff of life. We laugh enough to build bridges and break bread (can you “break nshima?) enough to superglue our relational bonds. But what comes next is where it gets tricky: The growing relationship breeds a certain security and we expats let loose a little, showing our colors (maybe even our knees). We talk more freely and less filtered, capitalizing on our new and exciting “insider status.” It all starts to feel familiar – like home. Expat nirvana, or something equally disorienting.  

Reflecting on ten years and observing how different situations have drawn out of me a more pronounced colonialism, I assert this equation as “fact”:

Culture + relationships + collaboration – extreme vigilance = accidental colonialism

You and I are friends and we both want development here and we work so well together and so CLEARLY all the words coming out of my mouth are brilliant and thank you for agreeing with me totally I’m so excited this is great! Wanna take a selfie to commemorate this moment?

 And the resentment builds and the effectiveness wanes because the American has stopped tip-toeing around and has gone full-tilt star spangled banner but the host culture won’t say anything because, culture, … and the damage is done.

We’ve seen it in ourselves – Jeremy and I both have – and in countless others as well. I cannot even tell you how many groups I’ve chaired where I led us down a culturally irrelevant path… for years… before I figured out it wasn’t working and everyone else responded with, oh thank heavens! We’ve been waiting for you to realize how terrible your idea was! I scrolls thorough the “annals of hubris” in my brain and I revisit all the times that I have imposed timed decision making, facilitated “say you’re sorry” conflict resolution, or lectured egalitarian principles as marriage counseling. In many cases these are great ideas! If only they were instituted in an American context and had any relevance to my neighbors at all.

Not long ago, we watched a *could have been beautiful* partnership fall to ruins as a team of Zambians got steamrolled by a better-trained, more-knowledgeable American. The diverse team had a common goal to guide them, but cultural sensitivity was in short supply. The American assumed that because systems and structures and knowledge were obviously lacking that all those things would be universally welcomed… in any form. The pace and style of change were forcefully American – so much so that the Zambian staff couldn’t cope up and had to pull the plug. They acknowledged their co-worker’s competence, but could not get past certain habits – book-based evidence over years of experience, dismissing core Zambian values, insistence on direct communication, inflexibility with schedules and times. It’s like the American doesn’t want to learn from black skin, the Zambians cited. Ouch. Accidental colonialism at its finest.

Still more recently, we endured a unique cultural clash in which Jeremy and I were leading group of Zambians who were staffing an event for a team of Americans. The visitors were running a tightly-scheduled, high-stakes, American-by-all-definitions program and wanted us to help the Zambians get on board by keeping time, participating directly, and ensuring a certain level of precision. After working through a host of complaints, the Americans advised that we take greater care to “build our staff’s capacity” – guidance that fell somewhat flat as we sympathized more with our Zambian co-workers, viewing the unmet-expectations not a matter of capacity but of a differing value system. (America-splaning is a real skill. Tag that on LinkedIn.)

The truly unfortunate thing is that neither of these situations was ever properly debriefed. Communicating failure to the well-intentioned foreigner is not the easiest.

Um hi, you are accidentally imposing your cultural presuppositions on the host culture, which means you are accidentally colonizing an otherwise valid mission.

We’ve seen more than one American take offense that the Zambian counterpart never confronted the American with their complaints. Uhhh… Oops again, friends. Even the insistence that “if there’s a problem, it’s your responsibility to come talk to me” is cultural imperialism.

So. Easy.

Thanks to time, lots of grace, maturity and observation, I’ve gotten better at hearing my words before they leave my mouth. But what’s more, learning to evaluate my motivation has been the single most important habit I’ve cultivated in ten years abroad. It is a safeguard of sorts, despite needing to be constantly refined. Conscious effort goes a long way, but the subversive nature of culture is that it just IS – without us really realizing its sway over our whole being.

Not a one of us has ever meant to impose, or control or dominate, but many expats falsely assume that as long as they mean well and laugh and love, that they are somehow safe. But in reality, life overseas has more layers than a chocolate parfait, and like my South African calculus teacher used to say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I don’t think that the potential for harm negates the importance of trying. Not at all. When I think back on all that has been accomplished and all the ways that our community has grown, I can conservatively guess that 999 out of 1,000 co-workers and acquaintances would say, it’s been worth it! I am forever indebted, though, to the Americans and Zambians alike who have taught and corrected us, and who walk with us still, ensuring that we do less and less harm with each passing season, for everyone’s sake.