Eyes Wide Open

We received all sorts of backhanded compliments from friends as we packed up for Malawi in late 2010. “You guys are so great for going off to Africa to serve God! We really admire you.”

“Are you going to come and visit?” we would respond. Long pause. “Um, probably not. Seems a bit risky for our kids…”

Turns out that quite a few of our friends and neighbours thought we were saintly but stupid; keen to serve God in central Africa, yes, but sacrificing up our kids in the process. We would be moving to a malarial region where qualified doctors are few and far between, where we couldn’t be assured of quality schooling, where our families would be long plane rides and many time zones away. Health, education, family—all the things that young parents like us were supposed to set as priorities.

My wife and I are neither saintly nor stupid, although there are moments when we wonder if our friends’ hunch about the latter was right: like when we had to (gingerly) clean out a nest of lethal black mambas from our garage, or those nights when we drive around in the darkness with a feverish child slumped in the passenger seat, searching for the house of the one Filipino or Dutch pediatrician who gets dropped into Zomba by the UN from time to time.

All in all though, our kids are thriving in Malawi. From the very first day, they began to take in their new country and its culture with their eyes wide open. Sophia (born in 2006) and Mio (2009) were already being raised bi – culturally (Germany – Canada) and bilingually before we took up our mission appointment with the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s International Ministries office. This has certainly helped them to absorb a third culture, and to welcome a Chewa sister, Aliko (born 2011), who joined our family from an orphanage in 2012. More to the point, kids seem to enter new living situations without all the cultural prejudices and rigid standards of what is “normal” and what is not. Only a few weeks after arriving in Zomba, the kids tidied up their toys before bedtime by trying to stack books and Duplo blocks on their heads—just like the women they had seen on the roadside carrying water and wood.

As they process all the new things they hear, see and experience, they throw some disarming questions at us. One Sunday, sitting through another three – hour church service, the kids squirming in the pew as the mbusa (minister) yelled and pounded the pulpit, mopping sweat from his face with a hanky, Sophia whispered to us, “Why is he always screaming ‘Jesus?’ Doesn’t he love him?” I had to pass that on to my students come Monday morning!

In fact, it’s often been a blessing for us to experience Malawi through our kids’ eyes. We get so disheartened by the myriad problems around us, by hunger and poverty, by hundreds of thousands of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS, by hospitals with little medicine and even fewer doctors, by corrupt leaders in church and government. Sometimes it’s hard for us to see Malawi as anything more than the sum of its problems. But our kids are good at seeing people.

Last year I came out of Zomba’s grocery store with Mio and Aliko in tow. Lying on the curb in front of the store was a beggar, his body twisted over backwards by cerebral malaria, clothes and hair matted and dirty from having to drag himself with his arms through the streets. I tried to herd the kids to the car but they veered over to him instead, having seen propped up beside him a short wooden stick he used to propel himself like a paddle. Aliko asked him his name and Mio admired his stick (a stick being a great treasure for a four – year – old!). “He has a great stick,” enthused our son as we got into the car. I looked at the man and saw only problems: poverty, pain, disability, injustice. Our kids looked at him and saw a person with a name, and even with something to share with them. The kids aren’t oblivious to the suffering all around them, but they tend not to reduce people to these problems like we come – here – to – fix – Malawi missionaries are apt to do. And this has been a real gift God has given my wife and me.

When we came back to Canada this past summer on break, we were startled by how our kids looked at our home culture after almost three years in Malawi. A few days after arrival in Vancouver, we visited the mall to pick up some supplies. The kids were stunned as we strolled past the shops and through the vast food court. Shiny floors and blinking lights, sizzling smells and trays of fast food, window after window after window of tech and toys. There were far more (and much nicer) things in this one mall than in all of Zomba’s shops combined. Mio, who has spent almost his whole short life in Malawi, grabbed his head with both hands after a few minutes and whimpered, “I feel like my head is breaking.” So as much as Annika and I pray that God keeps safe our three kids in the “strange” culture in which we live and work, we also pray that our mission appointment in central Africa will teach our kids how to look strangely at the questionable aspects of their home culture.