Community

One of the things we have observed and truly admire about Guinean culture is the depth of the sense of community. We’re going to share a few unusual places where we’ve seen community manifested while being here. 

You’ve probably heard about the extension of the African family unit. Someone’s relation to you is basically upgraded at least one step higher than how we describe relations in America: an uncle is called your father, a cousin (or even close friend) is your brother or sister, etc. This is how you see these people and how you introduce them. 

I think in our Western search for clarity, we both hate the fluidity of this idea but love the specific meaning it allows us to apply to people close to us. When someone we went to college with makes it big, we use the same word to describe them as we use for someone we’ve roomed with, laughed and cried with, vacationed with, and fought with: friend. Or how often have your heard someone describe their cousin as “more like a sister/brother”?

The second place we see radical community in is closely related. Due to the absence of a formal social security, retirement fund, life/health insurance system here, Guineans use a (perhaps more Biblical) very reliable, informal system: the family. When you don’t have money for an operation, you ask family members instead of depending on insurance, knowing that they’ll be asking you at some point as well. Or when your “mother” and “father” get old, you help feed, house, and care for them just as when you get old, your “children” and “brothers and sisters” will do the same for you.

Part of this may be a necessity in a culture where most people live on the edge day to day. And although there are opportunities for people to abuse the system and mooch, as long as almost everyone is committed to the system (and most are) it works beautifully. The relational servanthood may be a little closer to God’s heart than the American independent, DIY, earning rewards.

People often accuse Africans of being poor planners (in fact, part of our ministry is to help improve Guineans’ ability to plan businesses), but we recently had an experience that showed us the reality of what we call “poor planning”. 

We brought cold medicine with us when we came even though the weather is never cold here (94 inside our room at bedtime last night), the rare cold can knock you down for a few days. With limited suitcase space and not expecting to deal with colds as much as malaria and the ebola virus (in case you haven't heard about the Ebola Outbreak in Guinea) we only brought a little. The girls that moved in with us in January did the same since we warned them that cold medicine is not available here. But I got sick one more time than we expected so naturally I asked Kelsey (Read Kelsey's Blog) for some of her medicine which she of course agreed to share with me. Suddenly I realized that if Kelsey gets sick, she’ll have to use Katie’s medicine and if Katie gets sick, everyone will tell her she should have planned better or “saved for the future”. 

This experience brought a new dimension to how we might advise people to plan ahead in business. In Luke 14:28-31 Jesus encourages us to “count the cost” before building a tower or going to war. But in Luke 3:11 He tells those of us with two coats to share with him who has none-and to do the same with food. Furthermore, Matthew 5:40-42 says we should also give our coat to anyone who asks for our tunic, give to those who beg and not refuse those who wish to borrow from us. Sounds a lot like Africa to me.

We also found community in business. We wrote a while ago about our confusion at why multiple people would set up onion stands right next to each other (Read it HERE). While in Conakry, a Ghanaian man explained how Fulani people do business and through that we learned a new level of depth to community. He told us that after a long learning process and apprenticeship, a father will finally allow his son to open his own shop-right next to his father’s. The idea being that it doesn’t matter which guy you buy from, the money will stay in the family, PLUS you’ve doubled your client base. 

I’ve often wondered why vendors will give money to someone else to give change. when your margins are slim, how can you give someone money to use as change? Because they’ll give when you ask and no one keeps trap.

There’s an intersection on SR19 in Elkhart, Indiana where there are two Speedway gas stations kitty corner from each other. I always thought that was dumb. They should spread out and get more customers. But the reality is that it doesn’t matter which direction you’re driving at that intersection, Speedway is easy to pull into and Speedway gets the money either way. Plus, they aren’t competing with BP or Marathon right there.

Similarly, it seems TV stations are always competing for our attention, but it doesn’t matter if you’re watching MTV, VH1, CMT, or BET, you’re watching a Viacom station (You should see what other media Viacom owns).

We’ve even found community in traffic. More than I do now, I used to get really irritated at drivers (particularly motos) who would turn through an intersection or out of a driveway without even looking. In America, that says, “I’m more important than you so I can do what I want, you just have to get out of my way.” This invariably leads to increased heart rate, loud honks, inappropriate gestures, and the occasional violent outburst. Here, I noticed no one ever seems upset when they get cut off. They just see it as an opportunity to be hospitable and help someone get safely to their destination, knowing soon they will be the ones making that turn and someone will help them out too. 

I mean, it does seem a little narcissistic, egotistical, selfish and maybe not servant-like or Christ-like to let someone have it for an inconsiderate maneuver that set us 3 seconds behind schedule. If a lady was carrying too many groceries to her car, we’d offer to help, right? That guy needs help merging into traffic. Maybe. 

Lastly, in airport we recently saw Muslims gathering at the complimentary Mecca-facing prayer mats at prayer time. Total strangers from different countries would greet each other, wash, and pray together. The structured Islamic faith actually fits perfectly into the community culture here. But the freedom Christ has given us to pray anytime, to spend time with him rather than to earn something makes us look pretty independent and is therefore seems to be a major obstacle to Christianity taking hold here. Islam is an excuse for community but Christianity isn’t. Doesn’t it seem like maybe we’re doing something wrong?

A lot of the community aspects we’ve seen here seem to be things the church could (or maybe should) be doing in America and we plan to start with “the man in the mirror” (Michael Jackson).

Although this post was only “click-friendly” and heavy on dialogue, our next one will be very “photo friendly”.