Cultural Grafting

Ladies working in the heat of the day.

The ladies leave their shoes outside the door and quietly enter after a long day of work in the blistering sun. They greet each other with a curtsy or with an arm crossed over the chest and palm laid open on the opposing shoulder. Faces stretch into smiles and eyes shine as they begin to share conversation. We all settle down on the area rug in our family room; furniture is a luxury that some of them do without. The rug on the floor is comfortable enough.  The power is off making it somewhat difficult to distinguish facial features on dark skin as the sun streams through the windows. But you can always tell when someone is smiling as a flash of white teeth shines brilliantly in dim light. After waiting a short time, we are ready to begin. Everyone stands and someone begins to clap a rhythm. Soon bodies begin to sway, and one woman will begin a song. All the voices are in unison as we begin, a little further into the song, the beautiful harmonies begin, along with the continued clapping rhythm. Eyes are closed as each soul present strains to express the joy, the hope, and the love felt from our Savior. As the song begins to end voices become softer and clapping becomes quieter until the final note brings silence.  The silence remains for a short while until another song is begun. We continue singing a few songs. In deference to me, they always try to sing one they know that I know in iciBemba. Singing a song of praise in a different language with people from a different culture never ceases to affect me strongly. I can’t help but envision the time that is coming as we surround the throne with people from every tongue, tribe and nation, with no barriers, only one common goal in mind; to glorify our Savior together.  I can’t even begin to imagine with my finite mind what that will actually be like. I can’t wait and I get chills every single time I think about it. We pray together after we sing and then we do a short study. Currently we are learning how to be Biblical peacemakers. We talk a lot about how we can practice these methods with the young people that are living with them. Many of the ladies are caring for children who are not their own; children they have taken in to their own homes after the death of a friend or family member.  

After our study, a vote is taken on what to do next, English lesson, reading lesson or having someone share a testimony. English lessons win hands down. We all move to the kitchen table for the lesson. We continue to work on handling fragile things; glasses, babies, kittens, eggs etc. You can almost see the ladies’ brains working as they form different sentences in an unfamiliar tongue placed in an order that makes no sense in their own language. They place English pronouns together with English verbs and adverbs as they instruct each other to “Pick up the baby very carefully” or “Put down the eggs quickly”. Then they begin to ask questions of each other in English. Foreheads wrinkle, eyebrows furrow, occasionally eyes are shut tight, struggling to remember. Laughter rings around the table as the ladies recognize “bad English” mistakenly escaping from their friends’ mouths. It is a safe place for them to practice and learn, especially because many of them have never even been able to go to school. Time drifts quickly by as we move to reading lessons. New sounds are introduced as well as the words for different colors. Colored pencils are used. A couple of weeks ago at class I was delighted to watch the ladies put together a puzzle for the first time ever. It was hard to hold my smiles and laughter inside as they argued about what the best way to complete it was. Sometimes mystification filled their faces. Consternation and bewilderment reigned until they began to get the hang of how to put the pieces together. Then just like small children, they began snatching pieces from each other’s hands as they finally put the picture together. Complete satisfaction filled the group as they laughed and gave each other high fives all around.  Class is over all too soon.

Today, I am walking home with them to visit and buy some vegetables from the market. Also we have some employees who are sick that I am planning on visiting while the ladies are with me so I can have an interpreter. After a flying discussion in Bemba that I followed hardly at all, I was asked if I would be willing to drive them home. Of course I agreed. They advised me to put a chitenge on because we would be going to a funeral.  I quickly complied, tying the long piece of cloth around my waist over my jeans as I walked out the door. We all piled into our van and left the farm. We headed towards the compound, home to an estimated eight to ten thousand. 

A termite block home

The roads are rough and difficult to navigate. 

We dodge small children walking hand in hand, chickens, stray dogs and very large potholes. Our first stop is at the home of one of our production team workers. We find her sitting outside on a reed mat with her neighbors. All of us ladies join her as her neighbors move aside to make room for our group. A few feet away, a young girl is being bathed in a tub by her mother. Little boys point and laugh as her mother douses her head with 

water. Her mother lifts her screaming and soaking from the tub and dries her with a chitenge. She carries her inside her home, away from the boys prying eyes. The crying stops as the mother enters the dark coolness of her home, built with mud bricks made from the clay of a termite mound. 

We sit and visit with our friend. She spent a day in the hospital last week with a bad chest infection. In her home, she allows children with TB to stay as she cares for those others are unwilling to spend the time or effort on. The medication she is taking leaves her feeling dizzy and exhausted. She brings her plastic bag full of prescriptions to us and in my limited medical knowledge I attempt to make sense of the unfamiliar names and read the fine

print on all the boxes, bottles and blister packs to decipher side effects. The older ladies in our group advise her to make sure she is not taking any medication on an empty stomach. I tell her through an interpreter to please take the time to be well before she returns to work. Often our ladies will come back before they are well because they are concerned we will give away their job to someone else who is just as desperate to provide for those in their care. Before we leave we all bow our heads and pray for her. Then at the close of the prayer, English words fill the air, “Heavenly Father, we thank you in Jesus name, Amen.” These words are met with hoots of laughter from the group as they were spoken by one of the more reluctant English speakers in our group. We shake hands all around and walk back to the van.

I unlock the doors and we pile back in to head all the way across the compound. I struggle to make sense of the foreign hand signals they give me. Pointing to show directions isn’t done here. The hand is cupped together and held in different positions to show turns, or the fingers of the hand all held together and pointed forward to indicate direction. They laugh at me as I try to imitate what they mean with my own hand. We finally pull to a stop outside the funeral house. (by this I mean, the home of the person who has died) One of the ladies neighbors has died. She still has 4 or 5 children living at home with her. The firstborn is 14 and the youngest is 4. Their father is still alive but has been unable to find work. As we walk past more termite block homes, we see all the funeral house’s furniture outside on the hard packed dirt. Men and boys sit outside the home. A large array of shoes sits outside the door as we approach. We all remove our shoes and duck our heads as we enter the home. The room is filled to the brim with ladies. Poly feed sacks have been stitched together and laid upon the dirt floor. Bodies shift to make room for more and some quietly get up to leave. Each of us finds a place to sit. The room is hot and close. Flies buzz incessantly. Young mothers nurse their babies. Small children solemnly sit on their mother’s laps their eyes huge in their faces. One of them reaches for me and I hold him for a short while until he inspects my white face closer. His face begins to crumple and he dives back to his mother’s lap. The room is filled with silence except for the shifting of the bodies. Then in a corner of the room, the family members of the deceased begin to wail and weep for their mother. The cries fill the room. The voice haunts me a little as I am instantly taken back to every loss I have ever experienced in my life. My eyes begin to fill and out of my periphery I see ladies dabbing eyes with their chitenges. The phrase from the verse, “it is better to go to the house of mourning…” fills my mind. Even though it feels foreign and unfamiliar to hear grief expressed this way, it also feels right and somehow holy and acceptable to be allowed to be a part of it. After sitting some moments in silence, one of the ladies in our group begins to sing. Soon other voices join in and begin to blend. I feel a healing balm pour over the hearts in the room. Another song begins. And then someone begins to sing What a Friend We Have in Jesus in Bemba. My eyes spill over. My heart constricts and I feel full of the grace of Jesus and so honored to know these ladies and to experience life with them. They have allowed me to share life with them even though at times the cultural barriers feel high and impossible to cross. I am grateful. Someone offers a prayer. Our group quietly files out and we replace our shoes. 

We quietly walk past a few more houses until we arrive at the home of one of our processing ladies. She is the young wife of one of our farm managers. Erik took her to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. At the time, she was so weak, her husband carried her out to our van and gently placed her inside. She remembers nothing about her time in the hospital because she was so weak and disoriented. She is shy with us. She self-consciously hides her face and giggles as we tease her husband who is quickly escaping his home as it fills with women. We sit inside and visit yet again. My mind is blown away as I think about how often these women’s emotions have to fly between grief, joy and sometimes fear living here in this place. As mentioned in other posts, life here is raw. But the Zambian people are filled with resilience. I know that their experiences affect them deeply. They are acquainted with sorrow and grief, which of course reminds me of a Man I know. And I am filled with peace knowing that He can meet their needs and that He is sufficient. And I rejoice that I have the opportunity to be here and share with them all because people like you, are supporting and praying every single day. We finish our visit with another prayer and we all head to our respective homes for the evening.

Later that night, I am reminded of something that I wrote traveling on a bus to Lusaka with Erik a few weeks ago…

I have prayed a prayer for years that goes something like this:

Help me to see this world with your eyes, break my heart for the lost, the hurting, the hungry. Help me to see people as you see them. Help me feel the repugnance of sin, to understand the gulf Jesus spanned between my filthiness and your righteousness.

In the past year, I have sensed God answering this prayer more every day. And quite honestly sometimes it scares me. I am sure many have felt this for years, but the intensity I am beginning to feel is overwhelming. And it hits at the oddest times. Occasionally it will happen when I am driving down the road. It may be triggered by the homeless man wearing and carrying all his belongings as he trudges alongside the road barefoot or the two young boys, too young to be alone, holding hands as they walk to who knows where, or seeing a little girl drinking from a filthy puddle surrounded by litter. Sometimes it happens when I am taking care of my own children when they are sick, or taking them to the clinic. My eyes begin to tear up and I physically feel as if my heart is being squeezed. Father, why? Why was I born into a rich family? How much longer does all creation have to await your return? What do you want me to do in response to all the hurting you keep exposing me too? What do you want me to teach my children in this? What I am I supposed to do to help the lost? I am not eloquent, I am only one person, I can't begin to minister to all these individuals. My heart is breaking for what breaks yours but now I don't know what to do.

And as I run through this thought progression time and time again, I hear Him gently say, I know you are one person, but you are part of a body. A huge body, that spreads across this world. Each and every member does their part. Continue to see the world as I see it, work hard with My grace at what I have given you to do. Pray for the things you can't accomplish on your own. Encourage others as they work in what I have given them to do. Stop seeing what you are doing as inferior (or superior, depending on the day). Remember in the Kingdom, others gifts are your gifts as well as you all work toward the common goal of making Me famous among the nations.

Thanks for walking this journey with us. And thanks for allowing your emotions and heart to be touched as you listen to His voice.