Craig

I also reflect on several cross-cultural experiences where I have been the guest. There are the trips I took to supply orphanages in Belarus, where we knew that the cold meats, cooked chicken and cheeses we were provided with in great abundance we’re at the expense of the hosts, all of them were very poor. I think of a trip to Ukraine where I was lecturing in a Bible school, and the (to me) embarrassing deference they would pay to me as their teacher despite my attempts to level the playing field. I also visited projects we supported in The Philippines on several occasions and I would always be given the only air-conditioned room in the village.

James

Oh Craig, that brings to mind something I learned (embarrassingly!) when I lived and worked in Delhi. Ruth (my wife) and I had just organised and delivered an 8 week course in tailoring to a group of 20 people who lived in the slums of the city. Either they (or a close relative) had just recovered from Tuberculosis and the skills they had learned along with the sewing machines they had been given meant that they could bring a new earning stream into their household.

Our plan was that in the six months that followed the course we would visit each new tailor once a month to assess what difference the newly acquired skills had made. We had it all worked out – we would visit 4 or 5 households each week. Each visit would take 30 to 45 minutes and so we allotted 2 afternoons a week of our time, which also allowed for travel in between visits. Such a western mindset!!!

We were accompanied by Javeriah  – a 16 year old who acted as translator and slum-navigator for us. Despite our encouragement to call us James and Ruth, she could not and always called us “Sir” and “Maam”! On our first visit we were welcomed very warmly. Instantly a vinyl mat was placed on the floor and we were invited to sit around it with the family – the children were sent off, but soon reappeared with food and drinks that they had just bought. We knew enough of the family circumstances to know that this would have cost them a good deal of money. We were aware of this and also that our schedule (which from visit one was disappearing into the distance!) so we tried to politely decline. I can still recall the looks of confusion. We had assumed that we were the hosts of this meeting and had failed to recognise that we were actually the guests of sacrificial hospitality. It took Javeriah to courageously (for she would never normally speak to white western elders in this way) take us to one side and say “Sir, Maam, you must accept their hospitality because if you do not they will see it as an insult and shameful to them.”

Needless to say, we sat back down around their “table”, enjoyed food, drinks and conversation and reassessed both our schedule and more importantly our place, not as host but as welcome guest.

Helen

It’s so interesting hearing about your experience of spending time in other cultures, and how being a guest affected you.

My own experience of cross-cultural mission involved a trip to Uganda to visit a school set up by a friend of mine.  We had the privilege of staying with the Bishop of the region during our trip and the hospitality we received from him and his family and was amazing, despite them having so little: no water or power, and very little money. We had the chance to see a lot of the area as well as spending time with the children at the school. The entire time we were there I felt out of my comfort zone; I wasn’t sure how I should behave in many of the situations I found myself in and the poverty of most people we visited was well beyond my experience. 

The whole trip was such an eye opener for me. Not just because I was experiencing a different culture, not just because I recognised the privilege of my own life by comparison with the hard life of the people I met, but also because I experienced for the first time the disadvantage of being in the minority. I  didn’t know the rules of the culture, where we were going, who I was meeting, or even what I was eating sometimes! For once I was the one who had to rely on the kindness of strangers. 

What I learned was that being a guest can be an experience of great discomfort if you are in an unfamiliar culture. You don’t know the rules or expectations, and as such it is very humbling. You rely on, and have to trust people you don’t know very well. I try to remember that now, when I host people in my space.

Craig

Two things stand out to me from these stories. The first is a reminder that that they are all about who holds power, where it comes from and what they do with it. But we might think that the host has the permission or the confidence to be dominant, but we don’t see that evident in these stories – at least not in the forms we are expecting to find it! This illustrates a feature I find in Christian communities wherever I have travelled: there is a Christian family kinship that crosses cultural boundaries in a way little else can.

The second thing that jumped out at me was the role money plays in all these encounters. I had forgotten that I had travelled another country because we had already given, or were about to give, money, free education or material support. This made me powerful even before I set foot in the country. I love what Javeriah did James – her integrity made her risk the material support you were there to provide. You could have taken offence and never returned! These stories make me want to think far more deeply about what we can learn from encounters with anyone who is different to us. We don’t have to get on a plane to learn from others.