A New Kind of Culture Shock

I wanted to write this post yesterday, but, in my frustration, it would have been laced with profanity; therefore, the complete opposite of uplifting or sanctifying (although, the experience was, indeed, quite sanctifying). I even had to hole up in my room for an hour yesterday afternoon, reading my Bible, journaling, and praying. I felt completely in my flesh and outside of the Spirit. So, after a day to regroup and refocus, I feel prepared to share my culture shock experience using kind words.

In all reality, the day was quite strange: good experience, culture shock, good experience. It wasn't all bad. We had the opportunity to visit the church of which we will most likely be a part of during our time here. It's a house church, less then 20 people, and we enjoyed the whole experience. There are a few kids around Waverly's age and most of the crowd is around our age. We understood about 95% of the lesson - a major encouragement - and had a great time of fellowship, getting to know everyone a little better. I did step in dog poop which was a little embarrassing, but it afforded an opportunity to talk with the women as they watched me wash my foot and shoe. 

I've failed to mention a crucial part of this day. Stepping into the bathtub, I realized the water had been cut for whatever reason. Bucket bath for me! But I handled it like a champ. That's typical third-world issues, so, really, I've been mentally prepared for "no water days" for a long time now. While this wasn't an issue for me at the time, it became a bigger issue later on...

After church, we had time to run home and get ready for an afternoon at the beach with our teammates. The water was still off so I couldn't throw in a load of laundry to be washed. Having lived in a hotel for a week and lived in our house for a couple of days without a working washing machine, our laundry situation was getting dire. Then the water is cut for most of the day only allowing for a load here and a load there which we've been drying inside the house because its been raining intermittently. 

Do you see how everything is kind of building up? 

We had a great lunch at a local Chinese restaurant, then spent about an hour at a beach not far from our house. And despite the cold of the water, Waverly wasted no time splashing and jumping waves with her daddy and friends. Needless to say, when we returned home, we were all pretty sandy and generally, yucky. What would we want more than baths? Well, by this point we had water but just a trickle. Enough to get us clean-ish and work some more on my nerves. 

Surprisingly, though, the water situation was the least of my frustrations. The true source of my sanctification lie in about 10 kids standing outside of our gate yelling, Onja! (Ooh-n-za). "Onja" is the Malagasy equivalent of "wave" and is what most Malagasy call Waverly. These kids are neighborhood kids who live in small, wooden shacks and most likely don't attend school. They have nothing but time and have enjoyed coming around our place yelling for Waverly. She played with them once last week and they've been infatuated ever since. 

I was taking down our one load of laundry from the line outside and looked over the see two little girls climbing a cement pole outside of our wall to look into our yard. As you can imagine, this about sent me completely over the edge. I sternly told them to get down and leave. 

The kids stood outside our gate for a good part of the afternoon yelling for Waverly and challenging each other to gate climbing contests.. Well, probably not challenging each other, but they were climbing on the gate, nonetheless. It was at this point that I hid myself in my room to just get away from it all.

I wanted to yell at the children for being so rude after Chandler and I had both told them to stop yelling at the gate and go somewhere else. I wanted to yell at their parents for not having more control over the kids, for letting them be so inconsiderate and rude, and of the utmost annoyance. My heart quickened to think that this could very well be our life for the next 3 1/2 years and I would slowly lose my mind until I snapped on everybody in an ugly way and would have to be flown back to America in a straight jacket and dropped on the back porch of a mental institution.

How do I handle this situation with grace and understanding, but put my foot down for our privacy? Malagasy don't really understand the concept of privacy; its a very western mindset. What is acceptable to say to the kids without inciting a parental riot simply because of cultural differences? Would the parents even care? I even told Chandler yesterday, We always have to be conscious to respect and understand this culture. Why can't they at least try to do the same for us? 

I don't mind being around nationals. I don't mind being surrounded by kids. But my house is my peaceful place to escape from all of that, to regroup mentally, physically, and spiritually. Some of that peace is taken away when there are children looking through and hanging on our gate most every afternoon, most of the time yelling and climbing. 

I want Waverly to have national friends. I want to be accessible. But, for me, there is also somewhere that a line is drawn. Not all missionaries will agree with me on that. Many missionary children play with the locals all of the time, attend a local school, and are pretty much like the local children. At this point, just one year in, I'm not there. 

I read this quote on Twitter via a friend of mine: "As Christians I'm afraid we're sometimes more interested in giving people a piece of our mind instead of a part of our heart."

Can you pray for me, and us, as we try to figure this out? As we adapt to this new place and somewhat different culture than the one we left in Antsirabe? We want to be a light for the Gospel in our neighborhood, not just when we go to the bush and to the Antandroy people. We want to have our boundaries, but not neglect the fact that there are easily 10 children outside our gate who may not know Christ. 

Bowties or Bows?

Still nobody knows. Well, we have no conclusive evidence.

At our 18 week appointment, the doctor hesitantly stated that the baby is a girl. However, without seeing boy parts or anything that would clearly indicate the baby as a girl, I take the stance that we don't know for sure. I mean, the baby's legs were crossed and I've thought since the very beginning that the baby is a boy, just like with my first pregnancy, I had no doubt she was a girl.

So, I figured we'd just have another ultrasound once we arrived here in Ft Dauphin. We met with the doctor on Monday and she informed us of a couple of things: 1. She wouldn't recommend anymore ultrasounds, than the initial and the mid-pregnancy ultrasounds, and 2. The machines here are old and not very clear.

I've come around to having peace with not knowing until the baby is actually born. It's eating Chandler up, though. So, if we have another ultrasound in Johannesburg, maybe we'll check it out again... Maybe not.

The Journey

Here's the skinny: we're exhausted. I could just say that and move on with life, but we've had a few people ask for the down low on our trip from Antsirabe to Ft Dauphin. I'll do my best.

Wednesday night we had to stay in a hotel because the furniture from our house was broken down to be moved with us to Ft Dauphin for another family to use. And very early Thursday morning, I would say, "before the rooster crowed", but that's not true because roosters in Madagascar crow whenever the heck they feel like it, Chandler ran by the house, picked up the dog and a friend of ours and his son and headed south. At this point, everything we brought with us from the States on the airplane was in the back of our truck. By Thursday evening, Chandler had driven halfway to Ft Dauphin on decently paved roads with no major setbacks.

That same day, Waverly and I headed to Tana with another couple who so graciously offered to drive us to Tana so we could catch our flight on Saturday. We had one last opportunity to enjoy our favorite Tana activities: lunch at The Cookie Shop, which so lovingly dubbed itself "The American Centre of Madagascar", playtime at the mall, a delicious burger, which we enjoyed on the 4th in honor of America's independence, a walk through Jumbo, and a couple rides on the carousel. Really, nothing exciting happened for us the two days in Tana before we flew out.

On Friday, Chandler drove another quarter of the trip. Why so slow going, you ask?
Puddles...

Ferries...

There were about 10 ferries; most of them man-powered.

And just generally bad roads dirt paths and rock faces.

But enough of that sob-story. Waverly and I clearly had the more difficult of the two trips... Saturday morning, at about 3:00am, we woke up and I showered, stressed a little more about the weight of our suitcases and about leaving mostly empty bottles of shampoo behind - If only we could have used up those last drops so they wouldn't got to waste! Whhyyyy! - And we headed to the airport to catch our 6:00am flight. We arrived around 4:45am, checked in - our bags were 10 kgs under the limit... I could've packed that shampoo... Whhyyyy! - and walked through security. At which point, the security guy got more enjoyment out of watching Waverly remove her shoes, than actually watching the x-ray screen. Nor did he bother weighing our carry-ons, which was a positive because we were definitely over the limit - shampoo... - Then we waited in the terminal. 6:00am came and went, as did 7:00am and at 7:20am, we finally boarded our plane. Oh Africa. And here's the irony: Our flight was originally scheduled to fly out at 6:45, but was moved up to 6:00, then we left at 7:30, so there you have it. 

Chandler finally arrived in Ft Dauphin at 2:15 on Saturday afternoon with a bumper tied to the top of the truck:

Not our bumper, but the front bumper of our friend's truck, another couple also moving to Ft Dauphin. These roads don't play, y'all.

And 17 hours after we awakened that morning, we finally laid our heads down in our king-size hotel bed. All three of us back together again.

Monday afternoon our first truck of possessions arrived and we unpacked most of our kitchen wares, some clothes, and a couple boxes of toys. The second truck, which busted it's transmission about 300km outside of Ft Dauphin, will load it's goods on another truck and should be here tomorrow. One day, we'll have all of our stuff... one day.

Oh, and did I mention that we're having fresh, grilled lobster for dinner tonight? That's what happens when you live on the coast, folks!