Not in the States...

Tommy Grimm
Katikamu Parish, Uganda
7/20/09

I love moments here where I think with a smile, “This would never happen in the States.” (I try to limit the number of times that thought is connected with a scowl.) Yesterday, I was on a ferry traveling back from a visit to an island on Lake Victoria. It was raucous inside, but from anywhere in the cabin, you could hear above the noise a woman singing hymns and gospel songs. As I listened to her belt “I Surrender All,” I considered how in the States, everyone would be either annoyed at her or embarrassed for her. But here in Uganda, it’s hardly unexpected or inappropriate. And if it did bother someone, he would let her know, and she would respond however she wanted, and no one around would feel even a twinge of awkwardness (except perhaps the visiting Westerners). As I wrote a letter to a friend and counted the minutes until I’d be terra firma, I was glad to share the company of Ugandans.

A similar experience occurred a couple of weeks ago. I was on a taxi-van with a couple Duke friends and three Ugandan passengers. An older woman gets on with her four grandchildren. There aren’t enough seats for her grandchildren, and the old ma’s lap clearly isn’t big enough to accommodate all of them. But these children need to get home, and the other passengers don’t have any special right to their squat of space, so the kids just crowd around their grandmother, sitting on the laps of other passengers or cramming between their legs and the seat. Not wanting to be left out, I grab one of them and place them on my lap (another thing I love here, how parents less protective of their kids with strangers). After we got out, my friends and I discussed how that would have been uncommon in the States, how we expect a certain amount of personal space in public settings. (When I see a movie in a crowded theater, I’m constantly thinking about the distribution of my arm rests, whether they’re being equally shared or not). Personal space is unheard of here.

I’m grateful for this extended time in Uganda because, hopefully, it’s stretching my social imagination beyond what I have lived and known in the States for the past twenty-six years. Through experiences like the ones above, I come to question why I have certain expectations and assumptions for who I am and how I interact with my surrounding community. The Church is called to be a peculiar people whose culture is formed around the gospel, but there is no non-enculturated space we can inhabit. Rather, it’s through living among strangers with strange cultures that we see how much we toe our social line and how we might better live out our Kingdom identity.