African Punctuality

So I preached today for the second time in Portuguese. It was much easier than the last time – I only needed about 1/4 of the preparation time. And I feel like it went even better. I sat down with some of the church leaders afterwards and asked them what they thought and they told me I had communicated pretty well. I asked them what they got out of it, and they started discussing some of the things I was actually hoping/praying that they would be able to apply in their lives.

It’s a funny thing really – I don’t normally like speaking in front of large groups of people. I can do it, but I get nervous and my voice usually gets all shaky and stuff. But it’s different in Portuguese. I think that I’m forced to concentrate so hard on what I’m saying that my mind doesn’t have a chance to be preoccupied with anything else. And maybe there’s a little help from above… ;-)

Oh, and get this: my pasty white skin apparently passes as a seminary degree. They were all calling me “Pastor Natan” (they can’t pronounce the “th” sound). Who needs to go to college for six years when you can just go to a third-world country and have a degree bestowed upon you? That’s what I’m talking about…

And of course, after church they brought out the food. It breaks my heart to see what they do for us around here. They look upon it as such an honor to have us there that they’ll prepare more food than the average family eats in a week. And that’s just in quantity. The things they prepare, most families probably don’t even eat once a month. Chicken, goat and eggs are definitely luxury items in Mozambique, yet they’ll do everything possible to prepare all three and more if they have any means possible. And then they’ll be insulted if I don’t eat more than everyone else. I feel terrible every time I have to deal with it, but I’ve come to realize that I’ll make them much happier by eating what they’ve made me than they would be by eating it themselves… It’s pretty different from our selfish American culture, huh? They just want to watch me enjoy it…

I noticed something else today that really gave me a glimpse into the Mozambiquan mindset. I’ve been learning Portuguese because it’s the trade language of the country, but most people don’t speak it, or at least not well. It was imposed on them when the Portuguese colonized the country, and everyone prefers to speak Makhuwa, the local language.

So while I was preaching, there was a guy translating from Portuguese into Makhuwa so everyone could understand well. What I noticed is that there are certain words that they don’t have in the Makhuwa language, and so they use the Portuguese ones. Kind of like the word email. Pretty much every language just calls it email (except, of course, the French) because it’s a new word that no other language had a concept of before email came to be.

What I thought was interesting is that the words for hour, week, month, etc don’t exist in the Makhuwa language. Which shows that the concept of time, other than the passing of a day, is foreign to the African frame of thought. It is a concept that obviously didn’t exist before the Europeans came and imposed it on them. Africans are late to EVERYTHING, and nothing starts or ends on time. It’s frustrating to a lot of people (I get a kick out of it) but I finally understand why.

I’m including some photos here from a hike that I went on yesterday. This place is about a half-hour drive from the city of Nampula (where I’m living for now) and is a good example of the rocky landscape around here.

Most of the land is flat, with these groupings of rocky areas.

This is a rare Mozambiquan scene with water in it. There’s actually a small damn up ahead, otherwise this water probably wouldn’t be there.

Another rare photo - for Mozambique anyway. Not many cows around here. It was funny, even the cows were staring at us because we’re white. A game of “Hey Cow” would be pretty easy around here…

Doesn’t this look kind of like Pride Rock? I really think the Lion King was based on the Mozambiquan landscape. I love this photo and I thought it would be a good one to end on. Until next time-