Transitioning Cross-culturally— to the Good Old USA

by Richard J. Gehman

The Lord called us to Africa in the 1950s. Extensive cross-cultural ministry training served us well when we arrived in Kenya in 1966. But when we were set to furlough in the United States, no one suggested that we would suffer culture shock. After all, we were just returning home.

The Lord called us to Africa in the 1950s. Extensive cross-cultural ministry training served us well when we arrived in Kenya in 1966. But when we were set to furlough in the United States, no one suggested that we would suffer culture shock. After all, we were just returning home.

What a shock we had during our first home assignment! Over the years, however, as we transitioned back and forth numerous times, we became more adept in making cultural adjustments. We retired in the US last year, yet we are only beginning to come to terms with our bicultural identities. This article reflects on the cultural adjustments missionaries face when transitioning between cultures, especially when returning back to their homes in the United States.

MATERIAL AFFLUENCE
We never lived as pioneers in the African bush. We were comfortably settled in a former “mission station” that evolved into a private university campus. Our homes were modest but comfortable. Supplies were adequate—not abundant, but adequate. We never suffered materially.

But that first trip home, we suffered cultural apoplexy. Supermarkets with amazing options on every shelf overwhelmed my wife. I found myself emotionally perplexed, perhaps envious, when visiting a former Bible school classmate’s magnificent home. In hindsight now I believe it was a very modest American dwelling, but at the time I thought the house was ostentatious. On one home assignment when a friend picked us up at JFK Airport to take our family of four back home to Pennsylvania, the spacious van was offensive. The van was actually modest, but in Kenya we were used to squeezing into public vans and taxis that would even leave passengers’ limbs hanging out windows and doors. I didn’t object to comfortable seating, but why so much wasted space?

During another furlough we wanted to build friendships in the church where we were staying, so we joined a small group. But to our horror, the group was unable to do anything without spending tons of money, or so it seemed. For them it was part of life, but we could not afford it, so we left the group. Facing home assignments during our first twenty-five years scared us to death because of the overwhelming cost of stateside living. Many missionaries in our agency end up taking on extra jobs to make ends meet. Could we survive? Somehow, by God’s grace, we always managed.

Transitioning between poverty-stricken Africa and affluent America has become easier as we learned what to expect. On that first furlough the switch from driving on the left to the right side of the road was a major hurdle. But after making that transition nearly ten times, changing sides was no longer so hard. In retirement, however, we still struggle to find our footing in this world of affluence, to know how to live within our means. While most people retire to a smaller income than they had when working, we find it necessary to have double the income we had in Africa, and it does not go as far in America.

Still, we can truly say with the hymn writer, “All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.” We never lacked anything we needed when serving in Africa, and God is providing for us in retirement in the States. The rich experience of serving cross-culturally is a far greater reward than the monocultural life of most affluent Americans. It is amazing what little we need in order to enjoy life. Africans taught us much in this regard.

PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
We all know that American culture is individualistic. Most Third World cultures are centered around relationships. Having lived my first thirty years in America, I have never lost that individualism. As an only child, I grew up learning to be content with privacy and the absence of in-depth relationships with extended family. Kenya is more Westernized than many African countries. Many city-dwellers are losing their traditional close ties with extended family. People were very busy on the college campus where we served. The teachers’ time was devoted to their families and ministry responsibilities.

Sometimes people lamented the loss of the old community spirit. Having said that, living in Kenya for thirty-seven years has changed us so that we now have a felt need for more and deeper relationships than the average American seems to need. African hospitality means you can pop in any time for a visit without prior arrangement. Visits are always welcomed with a cup of tea and a bite to eat. Home fellowship around the table is synonymous with building relationships. Food and fellowship in the home is part and parcel of everyday life in Africa.

Relationships in America, however, tend to be more superficial and impersonal. Seldom are you invited to someone’s home for a meal. After traveling several hours for a meeting, you may be greeted by the offer of a motel room and restaurant meal. Americans are often too busy for a home visit and home-cooked food.

That’s so strange to us. These superficial relationships can be painful on home assignment. Meeting good friends from the past involves a hearty handshake and warm smile, an exchange of pleasantries and, after a few moments, a farewell. That is the depth of the relationship for another four years.

The absence of home fellowship has been painful at times, even a sore point that requires divine grace. On one home assignment we lived next door to devout Christians from our church. We never once set foot into their house. When we were about to leave and return to Kenya, I thought it desirable to say goodbye so we knocked on their door. They came to the door to say goodbye. But in Kenya it is offensive to greet someone at the door without inviting them in. How many missionaries have offended Africans by talking to visiting Africans on their front porch instead of inviting them inside? By American custom we often transact business at the door without inviting the person inside. We learned the hard way that in Africa one always invites a visitor into the house first and welcomes them with some food, before getting down to the business at hand.

Faced with the strange experience of saying goodbye to these friends on the porch, I manifested both the African and American part of me. I felt offended not to be invited inside for a farewell and a word of prayer because I am part African. So I eased (pushed?) myself into their house without their welcome because I am also an American. I felt a need to be with them in their house and to have them pray for us. But that did not happen. An African would never force his way into the house. And yet, my feeling a need to enter the house reflected my African enculturation.

Missionaries are half-and-half people. No African would ever think of us as truly African. Not only are we white, but also many of our values are not African. But Americans do not understand that although we are Americans by birth and citizenship, we have imbibed another culture. It’s been said that bicultural people are the happiest in an airplane, flying from one culture to another. Not fully at home in either culture, we are gifted in transitioning between them.

In retirement we are now faced with life in America. Those around us treat time, work, money and activities as far more important than relationships. We must reach out to others by welcoming them into our lives via our home. Otherwise, a valuable biblical lesson learned in Africa will be forever lost on our part: “Practice hospitality” (Rom. 12:13). “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it”(Heb. 13:1-2).

MODES OF SPIRITUALITY
Personalities differ as do cultural expressions of spirituality. When observing the piety of others cross-culturally, we are prone to make exaggerated judgments, either in elevated praise or depreciating criticism. As Jesus warned us, “Do not judge or you will be judged” (Matt. 7:1). At the end of the day, evaluating another person’s relationship with God is beyond the ability of mortal man. Yet we can make some general cultural observations.

Africans in their culture have lived close to the spirit world, which intersects the natural world. Both are real and vivid to them. Instead of finding a natural explanation for a certain phenomenon, they find supernatural explanations. No germ leads to an illness, nor does a person die from a car accident. Behind all sickness and death are spiritual agents. For the Westerner, however, the spirit world is at best distant and remote. American evangelicals do believe in it but don’t experience it like their African brothers and sisters. We have been squeezed into a materialistic, Enlightenment worldview in ways beyond our comprehension. For Americans the emphasis is on the rational, visible and scientific.

These cultural features have great implications on the modes of spirituality expressed in Christian faith. For Africans, prayer is very meaningful, and they engage in it fervently. While they love linear exposition of the word, they are generally not comfortable with American-style inductive Bible study, unless they learn to do that. For Americans, however, Bible study is more meaningful because they are drawn into rational discussion of the Bible’s meaning. Prayer does not have the same meaning or priority to Americans, so it seems to us, for the spirit world is less real to them and they feel less dependency on the eternal God to provide for their needs.

Prayer plays a far more prominent role in the life of the African believer than it does in the life of American Christians. African Christians pray before everything: not only before a meal but before taking any cup of tea or morsel of food, before setting out on a trip and when returning safely, whenever someone was sick or in need, before one would leave a friendly visit in a house. When I visited students in the dormitory, they would often ask me to pray before leaving if I had not initiated it myself. Prayer meetings were multiplied on the campus of our theological college. Not only did roommates pray together, classes prayed together, ethnic groups prayed together, the entire college prayed together. All-night prayer meetings were common in churches and in our college. Africans often raised long, beautiful prayers infused with biblical theology.

Coming to the American church is truly a culture shock. Prayer here simply does not have the meaning it does in Africa. Prayer meetings have all but disappeared except for the few older people who gather during a weekday when all the hale and hearty are engaged in other activities. When prayer is part of a mid-week service, the other activities, including the Bible study, consume most of the time. At best prayer may consume ten to fifteen minutes including prayer requests and arrangements for prayer. In my observation, those who feel capable of praying before others are surprisingly few. Their prayers are often undeveloped, if I may pass judgment. Here we have all kinds of human solutions, from medical doctors to psychiatrists, from scientists to sociologists. Dependence on God is not so deeply felt. In Africa people are more conscious of their dependence on God and the value of prayer.

I remember my shock and annoyance on our first home assignment when our Bible school class had a reunion in our house. The class president questioned whether prayer was needed before refreshments since it was not a meal. It was supposed to be a joke, but the hilarity was both foreign and offensive to me. We always give thanks for all things; we learned that in Africa.

CONCLUSION
Transitioning cross-culturally back to our “home” in America will be as great a challenge as when we first went to Africa thirty-seven years ago. It will require humility, love, grace and patience. We will need to identify with the people, come to understand them and love them. We must avoid judgmental criticism that is so easy when dealing with people cross-culturally. And hopefully, after a time we will be able to enter into the lives of our new circle of friends in ways that will bring positive change in others and in ourselves. This transition is always a challenge. But the rewards are great for those who persevere.

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Richard J. Gehman served for thirty-seven years in Kenya with the Africa Inland Mission in theological education, eight years as principal of Scott Theological College.

EMQ, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 174-178. Copyright © 2005 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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