why our children NEED a multicultural community

If I got a nickel (or 50 ngwee) every time I heard “because that’s the way we do it!” I’d be richer than rich… in multiple currencies.

Bush work is hard for many obvious reasons. The lack of resources and infrastructure make even moderate growth a super-struggle. The environment is actively trying to kill us. Language barriers. Snakes. No road signs.

Friends, there has not been cheese in Shoprite since forever.

The straw that tips the scale though has to do with (surprise, surprise) - PEOPLE. People are people the world over, but when it comes to facilitating development, rural communities, by virtue of their homogeneity and isolation, tend to experience the greatest conflict.

The majority of Fimpulu folk had never seen a white person before the Peace Corps spit me out and we started our dance party. It would appear that that was the first time my neighbors realized that there were people on the planet without natural rhythm or an inherent understanding of Bemba or built in SPF.

In those early days, I did absolutely everything “wrong.” I rolled my nshima wrong and washed my dishes wrong and tied my chitenge wrong and pronounced every word wrong. I owned the wrong kind of cooking spoon and I braided my hair wrong and I owned the wrong flip flips (I’m unwaveringly loyal to my Reef Gingers).

getting it. but still insisting on wearing reefs.

 Over time, I learned “the right way” to do most of these things, and since then we’ve all been getting along royally. More importantly though, I learned just how deep the waters of culture go. In the contest for behavior change, the more insular the culture, the more loyal its patrons are. To cultural adherents, new ideas are neither “interesting” nor “compelling.” All things “different” tend to be, at best, “wrong” and at worst, “dangerous,” neither of which is particular conducive to willful adoption of change.

Here in Fimpulu, there is exactly ONE right way to cut and cook leafy greens. There is ONE right way to acknowledge a sneeze. There is ONE right way to hold your arms when you are in trouble.

I spy eight things in this picture that are "culturally informed"

The vast majority of cultural nuances are harmless. Is it really that bad to go through only life tucking instead of tying your chitenge, or avoiding making eye contact with your in-laws? Probably not. (Don’t stress, I love my in-laws).

But what if the behavior isn’t so neutral?

What if your soil stops yielding because you burn it to a crisp every year?

What if you’re chronically constipated because you refuse to drink water before noon?

What if your newborn goes septic because of the way you cut the cord?

What if you’re in debt for the rest of your life because you had to “buy” a spouse?

What if your hair turns orange and your eyes turn red because you think maize is the most powerful food on the planet?

What if you are trapped in unhealthy and dangerous behaviors because you simply cannot conceive of a different reality.

on top of the world really? or matter or perspective

I have this kind of conversation no less than once per week:

Nope, you do not need to put ashes on your babies soft spot. Nope, your child will not starve to death if you exclusively breastfeed until six months. Nope, you cannot contract HIV from witches. (Unless you are sleeping with them. And don’t do that.)

No really, you must drink more than two glasses of water a day. No really, you don’t need spiritual cleansing for having touched a dead body. No really, your baby will be less cranky if you take the six layers of wool off of her. No really, your money does not make you spend it.

I basically eat skepticism for breakfast

The NGO world has led us all to believe that what people need is information. Just tell them, they say... and billions of dollars go towards this end. But there is a category of information out there that is ages deep and miles long that people suffer to understand because it is so far from their perceived reality.

In closed cultures, nearly everything is etched in the ancient trees. How and why things are done is a woven story, passed down from generation to generation, with all the authority of every person who has ever walked the red-dust-bush path. In this context, divergence is considered neither noble nor brave but rather rebellious and haughty.  Compliance is the MO and asking why is a fool’s game.

These footprints tell a far deeper story

New ideas, however brilliant, are filed under “foreign” and received with polite dismissal.

Oh how nice that white babies’ soft spots close naturally. But this is how we do it.

Oh how nice that those pills prevent pregnancy in white women. But this is how we do it. (Or not, as evidenced by your ten children, but whatever.)

Oh how nice that white people like to put peanut butter on all of their food instead of eating nshima three times a day… BUT THIS IS HOW WE DO IT.

trying to perceive a different reality

The statement would be fine except that there is no 'because' at the end of it. No reason. No rationale. No research. We do it because it’s the way we do it. Even unto bankruptcy. Even unto broken relationships. Even unto death.

It would be too easy to criticize these closed cultures, waiting impatiently for them to get with the program. But the longer I live here, the more I realize how much my own cultural upbringing taught to me these same “but this is how we do it…” ways of thinking.

It wasn’t till I moved to Africa that I learned that you could let people wander in and out of your house without that being a violation universal human boundary. It was here that I learned that sometimes you work your tail feathers off and still don’t get your just deserts. It was here that I learned that you can agree with a democrat and not lose your soul. It was here that I learned that you don’t have to cook scrambled eggs in the microwave.

MIND BLOWN.

Bronwyn makes a really good "mind blown" face for me. Leonie just hates loud noises.

No seriously. I learned that its ok to pick my baby up when she cries and that boobs in public are whatever and that stuff is just stuff and fences make awful neighbors. I say often to my friends, America isn’t perfect either… But truth be told, it took leaving my culture to believe that.

Despite having grown up in a diverse town, I led a rather insulated life which I can best describe as “simplistic.” My friends and I found it easy to scoff at others because we “knew” the “right” answers which flew out of our mouths without pause. I have to wonder whether so many of my peers went off the deep end in early adult hood because they lacked the life skill of productively processing cultures outside of our conservative evangelical bubble. I also have to wonder what life would have looked like had I begun my “African awakening” at the age of 2 instead of 22.

She's lucky to have him

Cultural acquisition begins early, and I’ve enjoyed watching the slow-mo-assimilation-show play out gradually in my own living room. As I raise my children in this hybrid land of white and black and all the grays, I want them to have exposure to the breadth of philosophies about life and opinions in motherhood and ways of cutting and cooking their vegetables.

 

she looks super white... but I guess in some ways she is...

Please hear me well: The goal is not to raise moral relativists who lack conviction. The goal is to raise intellectually responsible Christ followers who are empathetic, global citizens. I firmly believe that exposure to a multi-cultural community is essential in achieving this goal. 

We love our kids and are responsible for their upbringing. We will, therefore, teach them the all the things that we believe to be important, and make for darn certain they know WHY.

We will teach them that Jesus is the greatest and that justice might mean getting the short end of the stick and that cheese sauce makes everything taste better. We will introduce them to people we call friends who deviate from our stances… not as a tactic to make them feel superior but to help them grow in empathy and resilience as they wrestle again and again with the questions of why we do what we do.

Having learned something from our Fimpulu neighbors, I want our kids to not only be able to conceive of a different reality but also to interact with it, digest it and grow in heart because of it. 

Bronwyn with the chefs at our fav Indian restaurant in Lusaka. Because there will be curry in heaven.

Leonie with the same chef.

No blind following. No blind arguing. No blind dressing and cooking.

No blind mothering or working or living. Health and happiness and heaven matter far too much.

Mwewa matters. So much.

Culture is a gift and the mish-mash of different cultures a greater gift still.

And our children NEED it.

they need each other

In what ways do you find it easy or difficult to introduce your children to a multi-cultural community?

the idolatry of minimalism

Spawned by a 1970’s art history movement, minimalism became the choice descriptor for simple art and design. It kept a low profile for several decades until something (the mystical powers of the mommy bloggers) in America caused the term to broaden its meaning beyond art and into every day life. Suddenly, the internet was giving us all the directions on how to downsize our wardrobes and discard nick-nacks and shrink paper piles and everything in between. Minimalism spawned whole new species a la minimalist parenting and minimalist cooking and minimalist hairstyling – and bit by bit, the fad became wisdom and we all realized that fat and cluttered and complicated were not actually recipes for happiness.

I bought into the minimalist philosophy long before I knew it was cool, long before Becoming Minimalist started telling me to do all the things I was already doing. My first house after college was a tried and true minimalist hut. The entire structure was made of earth. Good, clean dirt and grass and water and clay. I especially loved my dirt floor – I could drain my pasta water right next to the fire which was also dropping embers onto the floor of my kitchen-living-dining room. It was infested with rats and bats, and I loved everything about it. (The Peace Corps tends to attract not-high-maintenance people.) I had no furniture save a bed, a table with no chairs (because the village carpenter was clearly not looking for money) and a rough hewn shelf. And it was all I needed.

Not what most Americans think of when they hear "starter home," but I loved it.
Also, unrelated side note: baby face Aggie on my left there is graduating from high school this year. *tear*

Marriage and children pushed my minimalism boundaries a bit. Jeremy insisted on a not-dirt floor. I'm a good wife, so I conceded. When Bronwyn came along and started sleeping with us and none of the spaces in the house was big enough to fit our new bed, change was necessary. Bit by bit, we've pushed walls around and added a few amenities, taking a “step up” every year or so… and every time, I’ve felt super guilty about it. It’s like my inner minimalist is being asked to commit perennial felonies and I hate it.

I still find the simplicity of it stunning

the bungalow/rondoval/yert we custom made to fit our co-sleeping bed 

this is how we reno: Jeremy with power tools on top of a chair on top of a chair on top of
a table being stabilized by three boys pretending they are Jet Li. Call us for bookings, HGTV.

Principled is my middle name, and my minimalist principles are chiseled on stone tablets. One of the principles of our work is that we live with and like those around us. We believe strongly in the power of integration for effective communication and we’ve seen the fruit born of such an ideology. Rich people living amongst the poor must acknowledge the baggage they carry unless they want their dialogue to sound like this:

 “Hello! My name is $$$. I’m so happy to be here for the sake of $$$. Would you like to partner with us on $$$? Maybe we can get together and talk about $$$? Ok, well sounds like $$$ would be a good idea? Let’s chat more about $$$. Thanks! Bye… $$$$!”

True story: I have actually had people greet me (outside of Fimpulu, thankfully,) with the words, “Hello, Dollars!” Its crazy unsettling and it totally confirms the need to establish a different name lest we adopt $$$ as the super-inappropriate default.

Hard work pays off, and I’ll be purple duck if living in the bush doesn’t qualify as hard work. After several years, people commented on it – a lot – to us and to others. “Hey, there are these white people in our village and they live in just a house like ours!”

I’ve heard that no less than a dozen times, and I always pat myself on the back a little for it.

happy little homesteaders

Equally strong as our convictions around simple integration are our convictions around the science and theology of minimalism. Studies have proven that less clutter correlates with greater happiness and verily verily, we can attest that throwing junk away feels good. Furthermore, Jeremy and I are both proper Sunday School graduates and we know this to be true: Don’t store up your treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy. Have less crap, says the Teacher. And all God’s people shouted Amen.

But life is a forceful tutor. My baby got malaria. And then she got it again, just as Jeremy and I had too, and this happened over and over until our family malaria count is somewhere around 20 and we stopped counting because that’s silly. Our roof started to slowly dust away to nothing and we unloaded 10 cans of insecticide to assassinate the beetles eating it, and I don’t even want to think about the brain cells we killed with that choice. We’ve all had weird skin ailments and are far too comfortable with conversations about diarrhea. We had a season of hairy spider infestation too. Our newest thing is that we now have an indoor “water feature,” a tranquil waterfall flowing down the side of our kitchen wall collecting in a small pond that touches every square inch of our living room. So vogue.

One afternoon, I watched Bronwyn skype with Grandma, naked and fevered, lying on the floor and looking painfully pitiful. To say that I felt like a bad mom would be an understatement. That same day, Jeremy read me an article from a study in Uganda claiming that tin roofs, when compared with grass, saw a 50% reduction in the incidence of malaria. The wise husband started asking me if we should make some changes and I said “NOOOOOo!” faster than he could say “MALARIA.” My heels are dug in pretty deep in this Zam-mud. I dogmatically recited our mantra. "We live simply. As do our neighbors. If they can do this, so can we. We do not need more comforts than what we have. We. Do. Not.”

But I slept on Jeremy’s question all the same. For many nights... and mornings, mopping up the lake in the livingroom and dumping the mosquitos out of our little night-light-bug-sucker thingy and swabbing anti-fungal goo onto Leonie’s face and killing all the spiders of the world for Bronwyn.

The staunch conviction that we must live JUST like our neighbors started to waver a bit as I was rattled by my lack of hospitality towards my own children.

Hey Guilt Hey! Our minimalist principles are hard and fast, and so by conceding to change, it felt like we were wimping out, throwing in the towel, and embracing that which we’re most adamantly against. In our case, however, “go big or go home” is more than a tagline. It’s a mandate linked to real possibilities and real consequences. We understand that if we don’t take care of our family, we’ll have to opt out of this gig all together and it would behoove us to make sure that doesn’t happen. Alas, the hubby is right.

We’ve emphasized how simply we live to everyone who has tracked with our work. It’s kind of been a thing we may have bragged shared about more than once. (oh hey extra layer of guilt). But we’re going to have to change our story. Because we done gone ripped our roof off. We sure did. We tore some walls down and we we have begun operation hospitality: the effort to turn our house into a home. Dear everyone, the goals have changed.

Once upon a time, the goal was to live as simply as possible, idolizing minimalism and embracing an almost-ascetic brand of discomfort. I judged hard-core anyone who commented that they couldn't live like we do because truth is, yes you can - we are not special. But. Just because one can doesn't mean that one has to or that one should, and I've spent near on a decade parsing this distinction out. There’s a difference between seeking comforts because of a materialistic spirit and/or an immature avoidance of hard things... and seeking to not be so sickly and tired all the time. 

The goal now, therefore, is not to live comfortably, but to live comfortably enough. To have enough space that we can think and breathe without thinking and breathing on top of one another. To have enough of the household amenities that we aren’t stressing our bodies or our time to complete basic tasks. To have enough distance from the outside that we don’t feel like we are at constant war with the environs. To have enough aesthetic beauty to lift our spirits when needed. To have enough rooms and bed space so that the parents don't have to sleep with all of the kids forever and ever amen!

Enough.

Not all the comforts, not more comfort for more comfort’s sake, but enough.

Enough is defined by a matrix of culture and age and personality and gumption and grace and when it comes to "how much is enough," one size fits all is inadequate and lame. We have had to draw the lines in our own (literal) sand, and we've done so prayerfully and with great forethought. 

There have been seasons when we've embraced less for less’ sake, and we’ve hurt ourselves. We stand actions of starting off in the village sans fanfare. We acknowledge that it is because of our early choices that today we are not dollar signs, but rather friends, neighbors, helpers, and co-workers. By the same token, it is because of our history and friendship that at this stage in the game no one gives a rat’s rear whether we change our roof or add some square footage. Truly, they don’t care. Because after nine plus years, surprise, surprise, the intrigue is gone, and people are genuinely happy that we are doing something nice for our family. (Confession: because guilt is a twisted friend, I compulsively polled people on this to make sure we weren’t making a huge mistake and that our friends would not covetously despise us forever. Weirdo.) But when we received the equivalent of the Papal blessing from the neighbor folk and the grass came flying off the roof, we knew it was ok.

When we were fresh and pink and smelled like we had just stepped out of Wegmans, the people of the village were watching to see what we were all about. Now years later, we have children, and THEY are the ones watching to see what we are all about. As a principled mother, I want them to see frugality not futility. I want them to see moderation, not masochism. There’s a way to not bow to the god of mammon and still care for your body, mind and soul… and there’s a way to responsibly spend the money to do so.

Today I stood in the original house, the one the size of my parent’s bathroom, stroking the walls and tearing up, saying to Jeremy how I would miss that precious structure; the one in which he carried me over the threshold, to which we brought home our first child, where we made a name for ourselves in more ways than one.

"We’ve come far," he said. "And we’ll go farther still," and back to demo he went.