Adaptation

Cultural adaptation is a tricky thing.  We form habits and expectations as well as define “normal” in our minds from the day of our birth.  They become deeply ingrained in our being.  When sharp change comes and those norms are tested, it can be exciting, stressful, anger-inducing, frustrating, confusing – a whole range of emotions is possible.

After more than three months in Africa, we’ve seen progress in our process of adaptation.  We’re learning to adapt to new norms and redefine expectations daily.  It isn’t easy and the process is never complete, but by God’s provision of patience and wisdom, we can press on toward thriving in our new situation.

All in all, our first thirteen weeks have been quite tranquil.  Even so, there are adjustments to make.  I’ve made a list of a few of our little adjustments.  It is fun to notice how far we’ve come in our short time thus far in Cameroon.

We’ve lost water service in our neighborhood for parts or all of about 30 days since our arrival in the last week of July.  The longest continuous period without water has been almost 5 days.  The first time without was rather traumatic and nobody was happy.  We’re used to it now and know very well how to manage our reserves and function normally.  Heating up water in the tea-kettle and filling a bucket for a warm shower is no big deal anymore.

Lori has learned to observe the skies to decide whether it is best to hang the laundry outside or on the lines we’ve made inside.  Clothes dry faster outside if it’s sunny, but if rain looks imminent, it’s best to hang things around the house for a couple of days to dry.  We’re in the midst of a rainy season, so it looks like the house will be decorated with our clothing each day for a while longer.  It may seem like no big skill to discern if rain is imminent or not, but it’s a bit tricky here.  Big puffy clouds are always in the skies above us.  Learning to identify the potential for rain is not nearly as simple as it was while living 40 degrees north of the equator.

Storm clouds gathering over the mountains of the Northwest Province

Candles are always on our dinner table.  We don’t lose electricity all that often – maybe 2-3 times per week, usually not for more than an hour at a time.  But the candles are always there so that if the power goes out, we can continue eating without having to get up and look for them.  The solar-charged lantern isn’t far away either.

Fresh, natural food is very convenient in Cameroon, so we’ve learned to benefit from the many entrepreneurs in our community that hand-make different food items.  It can be confusing to remember who comes to the house with what on which days, but the fresh squeezed pineapple and guava juice that comes on Fridays is almost as heavenly as the freshly made bagels that come on Tuesdays and the cinnamon rolls and (still warm) bread that get delivered on Mondays.  It’s so cool to be able to eat excellent food, buy from local vendors, and go to the grocery store a little less often.  And this doesn’t even begin to address the guavas and avacados that fell from the trees in our yard each day for the first month we were here.  Yeah, we ate a lot of guacamole for awhile there.

We’re adapting to ambient noise.  We live less than 400 meters from a rather busy city street filled with taxis and other traffic.  The constant horn-honking doesn’t even phase us anymore.  And the roosters that begin at 3:30 AM don’t penetrate our sleep too often either.  Yes, we live in a place where urban traffic noise and rooster crows are perfectly normal together.

Neighborhood roosters along the road to Kristin & Ben's school

We’re getting used to being looked at a lot.  When we walk down the street, we look very different, so its only natural that people look at us closely.  Honestly, it does take a bit of getting used to.  Also, people might verbalize their observations in a way that society would consider inappropriate in America (Bonjour, les blancs/Hello, white people).  But we’ve learned that Cameroonians are gregarious and friendly on the whole and the comments/observations are generally good-natured.

Church is a different experience.  It makes sense that if people have a personal relationship with their God, they should worship in a way that expresses things most naturally for them.  This is actually a core principal of our work in EthnoArts.  It’s also cool to see it first hand.  We’re adapting to the animated worship style that reflects the personality of where we live.  But we also will take time once in awhile to refresh ourselves at an international church of expatriates where the style will be more like our home culture.

We’re learning that in Africa, relationships are more important than goals/tasks.  I (Chris) realized I was starting to live this when I looked at my watch and noticed that I had been talking with one of the security guards in the neighborhood about his family, kids’ schooling, and whatever else for about 30 minutes one afternoon.  I don’t think I would have done that a few months ago, but I’m slowly catching on.

For sure, there will be much more adaptation for us.  It’s actually a good thing for us to be stirred up a bit and relearn the need for our dependence on the Lord in our daily lives.

On the more newsy side of life, I (Chris) made a first trip out of Yaoundé to a village in the Northwest Province.  It was two days of driving.  The first day was six hours of highway driving with two hours of muddy dirt roads (see video below).  The second day was a physical four hours on rough roads heading to the village of Misaje.  I am thankful for the vehicle we were able to purchase and for the new tires that our staff mechanic advised us to put on it. 

Short video of Chris navigating the muddy route between Bafoussam and Jakiri

In Misaje, I was helping out with a songwriting workshop that was held for six language groups of the surrounding area.  It was good to get a first taste of ethnoarts work and to live with/work with my ethnoarts colleague in Cameroon, Neil Zubot, and his family during the week.  The workshop participants were very eager and turned out some nice music in their indigenous styles and languages with Biblical texts.  One highlight of the workshop was when one of the participants decided to lead the group in a song that everyone knew in Pidgin, the trade language of the region that closely resembles English.  Their zeal in doing this song was pretty cool to watch.  I caught most of it on this video.

And at the same time, in the same building, some of our media specialists were recording voice tracks for the Jesus Film in a recently translated language of the region.  One day I looked around at lunch and noticed that I was only one of two Americans among the missionaries.  I was there in the village working with teammates from Canada, Costa Rica, Austria, The Netherlands, and Cameroon.  What a fun week to be with a great group of co-workers and enthusiastic workshop participants!  Enjoy some pictures below from the workshop.

Wonderful friends and co-workers: Kay (Costa Rica), Nathanael (USA), Neil (Canada), and Guy (Cameroon)

Editing song texts with workshop participants from the Naami language group

Participants and most of the staff from the October workshop

Teaching a workshop session

Photos don't do justice to the beautiful scenery in the Northwest Province

No, man...I live here!

Despite being an introvert, I (Chris) enjoy a little bit of small talk with random people from time to time.  When we lived in Virginia, I got into the habit of talking a bit with grocery store checkers, bank tellers, whomever.  It's kind of fun.

While in France for language school, I really went out of my way to speak even more because I was always looking to improve my conversational skills.  The French are generally less outgoing than Americans, so sometimes I caught people off-guard with the attempts at conversation.  Sometimes I embarrassed myself with silly mistakes in the language.  But all in all, it was beneficial.

And now that I'm in Cameroon, I've discovered that people enjoy friendly chit-chat quite a bit more than in Europe or even the US.  It's still an opportunity to practice my French and now maybe I can also pick up some new cultural tidbits with each conversation.

Yesterday, I was in centre-ville Yaoundé with a friend going to look at a car.  It's the busiest part of town with tons of traffic and people going in every direction.  It can be sensory overload.

Rond Point de la Poste, or Score Circle...the center of Yaoundé.

While my friend was looking for his contact that was going to take us to see the car, I was approached by a man wanting to change money.  He asked me if I had Euros or Swiss Francs or US Dollars that I'd like to exchange for Central African Francs.  The best moment was when I responded (in French, but I'll loosely translate here), "No, man.  I live here.  I only have Central African Francs."

He smiled and wasn't sure he understood.  So he asked if I needed Euros before I went back home (I took this as a compliment of my French, that he thought I was European).  I said, "No.  This IS my home!  I live here!"  And then we shook hands and laughed a little.

As a man trying to conduct business (not sure if it's legal, doing currency exchange on the street like that...but whatever...), he certainly made a logical assumption that I was a good person to approach.  It was fun for me to be able to trump the typical and share a laugh - and then a bit of conversation.  And it was fun, even if in the context of a joke, to call Yaoundé home.  It doesn't quite feel like that yet, but it's getting there.  A few more days like yesterday and it will soon enough.

A thousand+ words about a lack of pictures

The old saying that, "a picture is worth a thousand words," is a gross underestimation, especially for the observant and/or loquacious.  There's so much to see and describe in the world around us, especially if an image includes people.  People are far more complex and I believe that just about everyone could have a pretty interesting book written about them.

After one month in Africa, I wish I could say that I have a ton of pictures to tell the story of what our life is like here.  But I don't.  Last year in France, I must have taken at least 1,000 pictures in the first month (digital photography is so different from the film era).  By contrast, I think I've taken less than 10 here except for a couple dozen inside our apartment at Kristin's birthday party Saturday.  Lori has taken a few dozen pictures, which for her is an incredibly low amount, and only a couple with Cameroonians in them.  Why so few?

Because I can't.  I cannot bring myself to photograph much of Cameroon for several reasons - not yet.

The first reason is very practical.  In Cameroon, and particularly in the capital city of Yaoundé, where we live, if one photographs any government buildings, police officers, military personnel or other official apparatus, your equipment will be confiscated if you're caught - even if it's just the camera on your phone.  Lori & I really wanted to take pictures during our first shopping trip into downtown on our fifth day in Cameroon.  But the president was going to be passing through our part of town and there were military and police everywhere - on roof tops, balconies, every little street that came off of the main road.  It would have been a dangerous situation.  So we ended up with only a couple of blurry shots that Lori took very discretely out of the taxi window in a different part of town with less police hanging around.  On the whole, we've been advised to be very careful about where/when we take photos around the city.

The other, much larger reason is about walls.  Cultural walls.  We're in a situation where walls (literally and figuratively) abound.  But at the same time, we're trying to eliminate or at least reduce the number of cultural walls because they prevent us from getting inside the culture.  We will always be cultural outsiders here, but it's necessary to get as close to "insider status" as possible to best do our work here.

So the first obvious wall is skin color.  An unfortunate part of being human and having an inherent sin nature is that we are automatically suspicious of those that appear differently than we do.  Yes, we can learn to overcome this, but it's been there since the beginning of history and it is very real.  In Cameroon, I've already got one hurdle to overcome because of my skin color.

And because of my skin color, I am automatically defined as rich because I am obviously European or American and most Cameroonians believe we're all rich.  The truth of the matter is, while we as missionaries are notoriously poor in our home culture, we are, by comparison, quite rich here.  Another wall.

But there's some relief for that one.  I've been taught, and experienced, that in Africa, titles and status are very important.  This is very anathema to Americans because we try to be a "flat" society, where we place extreme value on equality.  But in Africa, I am perceived to be rich, probably well-educated and by extension perceived to have status.  The good news is that I can make this wall less significant by carrying myself as the person that they think I am.  As such, we in our organization do our best to dress very professionally all of the time so that we appear to have the status and credibility that the people around us assume we should have (dress is a very powerful outward image of status to Africans).  If we were to dress in shorts or jeans with a ragged T-shirt, we wouldn't be taken very seriously and due to the societal construct here, people would be at a loss of what to think of us - "He's a rich, white American who claims to be here to help people, but he dresses like a common lackey.  Where's his self-respect?"  That thought process is very opposite of America in 2014, and we can debate right or wrong all day, but the bottom line is that it's the reality in this place and time.

I digress...OK...why almost no photos yet?

In an effort to aspire toward eliminating/averting/more easily traversing walls and becoming a cultural insider, I realized that I can't pull out my camera right now because I would effectively construct a nasty, slippery, thorn-covered wall.  If I went just 150 meters down my street and took pictures, not only would the "perceived as rich" wall become a bit higher because of the value of my camera or iPhone, but I would then objectify the people that live on my street.  They would be nothing more than an exhibit at the zoo.  They are well aware that a powerful person (me, in their eyes) wouldn't take a picture of them or their living condition out of envy.  They would immediately know that it was out of pity because they know that the house I live in has a wall around it to keep out bad people and wild dogs.  They know that my house has two toilets that flush.  They know that a woman comes to help my wife with household chores and goes to the market for us.  They know that my kids go to the school that costs a lot of money.  Why would I be interested in them?

Until I show them the true answer to that last question, "Why would I be interested in them," I can't just snap away at will.  I have to become genuine to them.  I have to show them that I am interested in them beyond just having pity - that I am their neighbor, that I am navigating life just like them, that this is my home right now, that I'm trying to parent my kids well - that I want to see a fruitful increase in their lives and purpose.  I have to demonstrate that I am a person of integrity that isn't out to take advantage of them, even though I may not get to know them on a truly personal level (I have a lot of neighbors).

We'll see how it all plays out, but my hunch is that a formula of consistency over time will be key in establishing credibility in my neighbors' eyes.  And when it finally comes, I hope that being able to take some photos of our neighborhood, our street, and inevitably our neighbors that live there, will actually help to remove some walls.  However, until then, I will only lock the images in my mind as best I can.

As a parting thought, I see a bit of the life of Christ in my conundrum.  Jesus came to save a people in need but He didn't do it as a conquering hero.  He did it as a humble servant.  He left the splendor of heaven to muck it up in our broken world.  By no means do I make this analogy as if I'm some kind of savior or even comparable to God, nor do I want to equate America to heaven and somehow superior to Africa.  But Jesus gives an example of ultimate humility that I need to re-study and model.  I need to follow through on humble servant before I pull out a camera, lest I be misperceived.

Coming Together

There's a lot going on right now and it's good to see this whole thing coming together.  For the past couple of years, it's been a lot of steps always leading to something rather far off.  And now we're about to see the biggest of steps and it's pretty near.  In our last newsletter,  we asked for prayer over lots of things that needed to happen and in the last month, lots of things have.  Here's a summary of our recent victories:

We finished our exams and we're done with French language school.  Exams at our school are by far the most stressful thing we've dealt with in many years.  Monday, June 30, we had our closing ceremony and received our diplomas followed by a small party at our school.

Chris, with his French professors, Cécile and Anne-Marie

Lori, with her French professors, Anne and Catherine

We have started selling off some items.  My bike was the first thing to be sold.  We have two other bikes spoken for already, so that's a huge load off of us.

We have already received our Cameroonian visas.  The paperwork and fees were sent a couple of weeks ago on a Wednesday and we received them back three days later!  We were blown away by the promptness and seamless service from the Cameroonian consulate here in France that handled our visas.


We finalized (read: paid for) our plane tickets.  We got a pretty decent deal and the flight times are as ideal as one can get for flying into Yaoundé.  We'll be leaving from Geneva on the 29th of July and flying through Brussels on our way to Yaoundé.

Some faithful friends from Lynchburg delivered our items for shipment to Cameroon to the JAARS facility in North Carolina about ten days ago.  This was weighing on our minds, worrying about how we would engineer the delivery from afar, but we are so thankful for those that took care of this for us, as well as for a fellow missionary at the JAARS center who met them and helped get it all taken care of.  We had all of this stuff stored in Lori's mom's basement in Virginia during this past year.  It will be included in a container to be sent to Cameroon in late July.  We hope to see our things in about two months after that.  In the shipment are several kitchen items, some school materials for the kids, my tools, some audio recording gear and some of the kids special items (lego, stuffed animals, etc.).  And going above and beyond, the faithful delivery drivers also added some mosquito nets to our shipment.  Amazing!

Some of our things headed for Cameroon.
Thanks Kelly!

We sold our car, "The Silver Bullet."  It was a bit of a process, having to get it inspected (required here before a sale can happen), having some work done on it, dealing with government paperwork (this part reminds us that language learning will never end…).  We had a ton of fun with that car, but it's nice to have the sale wrapped up before we leave.  The Silver Bullet will spend the next year in the Paris area with one of my colleagues, a fellow missionary who will be interning at a church of African expatriates while taking some theology classes in French before heading to Ivory Coast in a year.

Our faithful friend that climbed
 many a mountain this year.

Some other faithful friends arranged for us to have some things shipped to Cameroon.  One family facilitated the shipment of a crockpot and a clildren's Sunday School class from Grace 210 EPC of Hampstead, NC is going to send some school supplies for our kids.  Also amazing!

I've arranged the closing of our bank account, internet/phone account, and mobile phones.  This is hard because of having to do this over the phone (talking on the telephone and understanding jokes are the two hardest things in your second language).  But we're getting through it.

What remains is to arrange our transportation to the airport for the 29th of July, sell a few more things, and pack.  But in the meantime, we're grateful for answered prayer in seeing many things checked off of our list before parting.

T is for Translation

Again it has been way too long since our last post…this whole life in language school thing is difficult. Nonetheless, I want to share with you all the concept of Translation, which is at the heart of what Wycliffe does.

I wish it was possible to sum up in a simple blog post the extent of what I have learned in the past few years of being with Wycliffe, especially about the process of translation.  But that's not possible, so understand that, like a picture of the Grand Canyon, this post or the links at the end WILL NOT do justice to the complexity of the process.

One might think translation is pretty easy - substitute this word for that and voila - it's done.  But anyone that has become fluent in more than one language will tell you that it's not that simple.  I understood this and believed it intellectually before French study, but now, it's so much more real.  Some things simply don't translate easily and require a circuitous explanation.

Additionally, language is not just a different set of words.  It also encompasses a logic set/progression and contains within itself a different mode of thought - even in languages that are relatively closely related…like French and English.  My teacher is constantly reminding us, "Don't try to use English logic to form this phrase.  You have to think in French," or something like that.  Or in frustrating moments, there's the reminder that, "There's not really a word or phrase to express that in French."  Or even more frustratingly, there are things in French that don't exist in English…and one must absorb the nuance of meaning through time and experience.  Now imagine negotiating the relationship between two languages of totally different cultures.

Translators have a tough road of training that certainly includes a lot of linguistic study.  When Lori and I were at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in Dallas, we were amazed at the difficulty of the courses for the linguists.  They study phonetics (sounds of a language), grammar (how grammar systems function and the possibilities therein), semantics (discovering the different levels of meaning in language), research methods and so much more.

But know that their job is not just mechanical.  To know a language and to understand the nuance well, it is essential to involve oneself in the culture.  This facilitates understanding the logic contained in a language.

We were also amazed at how smart the linguistic community at GIAL was.  Absolutely brilliant, these people.  To do what they do, with so many variables to consider in how languages might operate, demands creativity, patience, and frankly, a truly gifted intellect.  I can assure you that people out in the field doing Bible translation are very, very smart and do a job with so many facets that most of us would become frustrated before we started.

In conclusion, as I re-read this, it so doesn't capture the depth of what I'd like to express.  I knew it wouldn't, but it's still frustrating.  As such, I'm putting links to two videos that Wycliffe has put together.  One of them gets at the complexities of translation itself.  The other tries to develop the whole process from initial contact with a language to final product and all of the other activities that accompany Bible translation in order to make it more effective for a community.  Enjoy.

Translating for Understanding: https://vimeo.com/46427344

The Road to Transformation:  https://vimeo.com/43033345