To begin I would like to recommend a treasure of a book (unfortunately now out of print) by John Charles Kerr called Hidden Riches Among the Poor: Reflections on the Vibrant Faith of Africa. Mr Kerr has served for a number of years in Kitwe, Zambia (one of the countries next door to Zimbabwe). The following quotation is one of the best written synopsis of the region that I have seen. *
...you notice a kind of softening of attitudes in Africa. For starters, there is an easing up on all rules and regimentation. Pockets of efficiency probably exist on the continent but, on the whole, Africa is under a soft haze sprinkled with laughter and the notion seems foreign. There are no distinct lines of demarcation here, no precision. There is more of a blending, an almost infinite tolerance of the vagaries and digressions of life. Watercolor seems the perfect medium, with sightly blurred edges, wide margins, wide margins. Africa is a very human place.
In Africa there is no "point A to point B" transit. Rather there is something like "point A to point Z," with so many interesting happenings along the way that you may never reach your destination. The process of getting there is just as important as actually arriving.
This was pretty hard on us, the esteemed visitors from the industrialized and well-managed west. Either we change and enjoy the ride or we go away muttering invective. We need to change not just how we make progress but the kind of people we are. Africa is so resistant and tough that it forces a softening on you. Here the idea is not so much to impose the imprint of our know-how and programs upon a setting and 'have an impact." Rather Africa seems to say, "Let me impact you!" Africa forces you to become malleable. It allows you to be acted upon rather than just acting.
This makes Africa a wonderful setting for change. Of course, it does not impose change against one's will. But it offers to those who enter its life something like a liberation. Africa makes you feel like you have cast off a hard shell and entered a new kind of freedom. The margins of life have widened. The hard lines we have imposed upon ourselves gave way a little.
Slowly but surely, one's thinking undergoes the same transformation. It seems to me now that Africa has accomplished in two years, in its soft yielding soil, what several years of Western resolve could not manage: meaningful change. The indirect approach of Africa, which seldom like to address any issue head-on, may have produced what the concentrated approach of the North American mindset was utterly incapable of. it is as though your life has been exposed to the diffused light of dawn rather than the intense glare of the searchlight. Africa, obdurate and resistant -- as thousands of missionaries and visionaries who lie beneath its soil would testify -- Africa, the most unchanging of continents, has a residual power to change us. I think of Africa along the lines of the 'cornerstone' (1 Peter 2:6) of Scripture, which has the power to grind you to pieces if it falls on you and to break you if you fall on it. It seems ironic: the continent which seems to have the least to teach the western mind turns out, for me at least, to be the agent of change. I find Pierre Pradervand's Listening to Africa to be aptly titled. Africa has much to teach us, about achieving consensus, about giving, about patience, about relating to the elderly and vitality under duress -- if we can listen.
Africa can teach us about time... time that is not tied to the pursuit of objects and money; but to an openness and spontaneity -- the time of just being and having relationships, rather than doing or achieving. Above all, it is the time of the present moment, of living in the now, rather than in a constant projection into the future... Africa has a unique and profound sense of kairos (the master moment of golden opportunity). If it is true that the continent needs to master chronos (the tick-tock that keeps us rushing from one appointment to another), without being mastered by it, we need African kairos more.
And Africa does more than teach in a didactic sense. As you enter into its life, she imposes change on you the way strong African fingers break off a piece of cornmeal sahdza and work it into an edible lump, ready to be dipped into hot sauce. In this same sense it functions like the best of teachers. One can only hope that it will retain its cornerstone strength for the good of the human race, right to the end.
* Quoted with the permission of the author...
Lee Beachy
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