Mulling

The last few days have been pretty busy. We have managed to spend very little time in our house, just enough time to dump stuff and run out. Finally on Sunday night, Carl had enough and was organizing and cleaning at midnight. Ah, gotta love those melancholies.

Anyways, I have been mulling a few things in my head, between running to church, to school, to another church, to a missions night. I didn't have time to shower, but I had time to think. I guess that's a good thing, right?

On Thursday and Friday, we had workshops here as an MCC team and the speaker was an anthropologist who gave us a very interesting perspective on people groups in Bolivia. He gave us background information on cultures, how community structures are formed within a people group, how they view the family, the spirit world etc.. It will be very helpful as we work with those that come from a different culture than us.

He gave one example of an NGO who came in to a community and helped them start a heifer project. They had (if I remember correctly), given them a loan and a number of cattle to start their barns. It was supposed to be a business that would allow them to generate income. A year later, the NGO came back only to find that the barns were completely empty. When they asked what had happened, the people were happy to say that they had eaten all the cattle. Astonished and shocked, the NGO questioned further. The community said that they were able to call all of their scattered people together into one large gathering, the first in over 100 years. They reconnected and spent time planning for the future. With all those people, they needed to eat, so they butchered all the cattle. They thanked the NGO for all their help in improving their community.

Now the anthropologist pointed out that from the NGO's perspective, the project was a disaster. The community would still be left with no income and no way to further themselves. That is from one cultural perspective. On the other other, from the communities perspective, the project was a huge success. They were able to unite their people group. For them, the monetary potential of the cattle wasn't the point.

Interesting to think about that, eh? I certainly found it thought provoking.

So I'm hoping that with all this new information that we picked up, there will be a continuation of the discussion. I hope that we can continue to examine the differences (and similarities) of the different cultures we encounter. But I think more importantly, my wish would be that we could be more aware of our own culture, our own baggage (which implies negative, but I'm also going to say that it could be positive things as well) that we carry into a new culture.

Someone told me that they never realized a particular cultural quirk of theirs until they entered into another culture. That is a great opportunity to become self-reflective.

If I'm constantly looking inward, that will hopefully make it more likely that I will be looking outwardly as well. I already read Duane Elmer's book, Cross Cultural Connection (read it!!!) and now I'm reading his book Cross Cultural Conflict. An interesting read.

It's all part of the journey, I guess.