Grappling with Assumptions

This post has been more challenging to write, hence the break in consistent posting.  I promise to catch up on the chronicle-style posts with photos and descriptions of this incredible place, but I think it is important to share with you the experience of pausing to reflect.  Early last week we participated in a devotion at the EP Church headquarters and the pastor shared a message about the importance of pausing to rest - and how very much that is part of our being created in God's image.  This blog post is a pause for rest and reflection at a midpoint of our trip.  Enjoy!  

When you join us on our Ghana Mission trip, you should expect that your unconscious bias and assumptions will be challenged.  Regardless of our public commitment to Christianity, we all carry within us a perspective and inherent view of the world and the people within it that is very much shaped by our personal knowledge and experiences. Our perspective helps us to make sense of the world and respond to it.  It is our personal bias, and there is no shame in acknowledging it.  I believe it is necessary to recognize it, name it, and periodically examine it to consider if and how it might be adjusted.

Quiet afternoons and evenings at the Kekeli give space to reflect and discuss as we grapple with what we have seen and heard, experienced, and learned. Over the weekend, as we recognized that half of our team would be leaving soon, and we spent more time in personal reflection and group discussion about how we are being changed by this trip.  I will do my best to summarize those discussions in an effort to share what we struggle to put into words.

When we began to consider this trip, well before we buckled into an airplane seat, we identified some reason or purpose for spending the money and taking time out of our lives to travel to this large and mysterious continent. It was one of the first questions we asked each other as we were conducting our pre-trip meetings and building this team: What is your purpose or reason for joining this team?  Rarely is anyone able or willing to fully articulate the reason deep in their heart on the first try. We haven't learned enough about each other to be that vulnerable, yet. 

As our trip begins and we are excited, anxious, and nervous, we often recognize similar anxieties in others, and we start to relax into the team. We also develop our personal biases about others on the team. It is the very human side of each of us. Our human nature sorts and categorizes the people in our lives, using and building on our personal biases.  We set expectations for how they will act and react.  We start to test our expectations.  We present our individual skills, our expertise first, and we want to characterize others by what they present to us, but in reality, we are only offered tiny glimpses of the rich and vast experiences of other people’s lives. We generalize as a shorthand to choosing our own actions and reactions; and we stereotype, although we would most likely never admit to it. 

It is an unavoidable truth. Our expectations are based on stereotypes of the actions and reactions of others.  We expect specific actions of strategy and logic, a depth of knowledge, a sense of fairness, and an ability to be patient even when tired or hungry or overwhelmed from leaders.  We expect wisdom, scriptural references, and moral, pastoral guidance from those who wear a collar.  We expect gratitude from those we are helping and assume some level of incapability that creates the need for help.  We expect that because we are visiting mission project sites we support, we are the givers and they are the receivers.  We observe their dress, their reactions to us, the state of their properties, the amount of help they need, their actions while we are together, their rush to welcome us and share their best, and how we interpret all of that is very much a product of our personal bias.

What almost startles us when we reflect and discuss with others is how much we don’t know.  We drive through villages on our daily journeys to the mission sites and we often see men sleeping in the shade of mango trees on raised bamboo benches.  As we bump along the road we are hot, dusty and struggling to be alert and energetic when we meet the next group of villagers and always we see grown men sleeping in the shade as we travel.  It is easy to look at them and see evidence of why they need our money and our suitcases of supplies.  What we can’t see through our van windows is that they have been up since before daybreak and have completed a significant day of work before their rest time during the hottest part of the day.  Back at the Kekeli, if we are awake at 5:00 AM we see a flurry of activity as the work of running a hotel is done.  Everywhere, someone is sweeping, cleaning, repairing, preparing, setting up, doing the work without the electric, automatic tools that we use in our homes.  We don’t see it because we are sleeping late, taking a leisurely breakfast, and waiting in the welcome areas for our van to arrive.  How often do we recognize that our guide was in the office until 9pm the night before and has most likely completed 3-4 hours of work before he arrived to meet us 5 minutes later than planned?  We mumble among us about “hurry-up and wait”  and “if you aren’t 15 minutes early, you’re late” mentality that stresses us out in our lives at home.  We scoff at the lazy villagers sleeping during the hottest part of the day, but do we think about the tiresome work they may have done in the morning and how they may have done that without the creature comforts that we enjoy in our work?

One thing I have not yet written about in this trip are the naming traditions, particularly of the shops and businesses lining the streets of cities and villages, and the driver services advertized on the backs of vehicles we follow through town.  Many of the names are prophetic phrases, often religious or moral in nature.  They are most likely chosen to herald good fortune and communicate trustworthiness and quality in the sales exchange.  I don’t know.  I’m leaning into my personal bias and what I have experienced on my previous trips to Ghana to interpret the purpose.  People are similarly named using strong character traits: Wisdom, Miracle, Mercy, Blessing.  In the US, we recognize marketing and branding as an attempt to manipulate our behaviour.  Perhaps the naming is still a manipulation here in Ghana, but I think it is more of a prophetic wish.  

It has been characterized that at home, Jesus saves but here it looks like Jesus sells.  Perhaps at home, we have learned to keep church and business separate, so we are a little wary and maybe a little prudish about putting Jesus on the front of our businesses.  Maybe here in Ghana, they are less concerned that Jesus might be offensive to others, and they simply want to shout the Good News from the highest mountain and from the humblest storefront.  

It is tempting to make a joke out of things we don’t understand,  to complain about things like faucets that don’t work or electricity that suddenly goes dark.  It can be sensational to hear about food that is unfamiliar, and we may feel like martyrs for embracing what is offered because it is the best they have.  I have certainly done that! The bumpy roads in 12-passenger vans that are just getting started at 250,000 miles are travel realities that we will describe as having survived. Telling you about the potholes we drove into and out of that made our Pennsylvania roads seem like glass will be the punchline of stories we retell with laughter.  There is much about travel in a foreign country that has to be processed with laughter and comparisons.  Hold us accountable to share in these stories the perseverance, initiative, and self-reliance that is evidenced in every partially built church that has been under construction for over 20 years patiently working as far as funding can take them, pausing and then returning to the work when new funds are available.  Know that while we may not yet recognize it, the spirit of manifest destiny that we celebrate as a uniquely American proposition is as ancient as the Earth, and we have seen it in action, even if we have not yet named it.