Our neighbor ladies are mad at
us…again. On Wednesday last week, in the
middle of the school day, one of the ladies went into our yard and started
picking mangoes off our tree. They have
their own mango tree, plus there are three other trees on our property that we
allow them to pick from freely. But this
mango tree has the best mangoes, and it happens to be behind the fence that
separates our yard from the other residents on the property. This has been the barrier we have established
to keep some measure of privacy and to try to reduce the risk of having things
stolen from us. It’s been there all
along, and no one has ever had a problem with it. Yet on this particular day, Jen happened to
intercept the lady as she was taking mangoes from the tree behind the fence. Jennifer says the woman seemed embarrassed as
she smiled and walked off the property, mangoes in hand. Just as Jen was explaining this to me,
walking out of the school for lunch, we caught the lady’s sister doing the same
thing. So I walked over and asked her to
please stay out of our back yard. That’s
when things got ugly.
The woman started ranting and raving,
literally shouting at me. It’s important
to note that these particular ladies shout a lout. They shout at our neighbors, they shout at
the girls, they shout at each other.
They seem to always be angry about something. And today it was our turn. At first they started yelling out that the
mango trees belong to them. Their
descendants planted the trees, therefore they should have access to them. Then they started telling me (remember this
is all shouting) that they had always treated me like family, that despite our
differences in skin color we were the same family, and I shouldn’t treat my
family like this. Then they began
yelling out that we were always mean to them, never did anything for them, were
rude, never visited them or greeted them, etc…
The women even tried to tell me that the Bible says we are not allowed
to keep people out of our yards.
During
this whole time I tried calmly to reason with them (I know, dumb mistake). I tried to explain that we’ve always tried to
be nice, allowing them to come into our compound to get water, do laundry,
etc. I explained that we were fine with
them taking mangoes from the three other trees.
I explained that I didn’t even mind her taking mangoes from this tree,
as long as they would ask for permission first.
I told them that the landlord had given us permission to lock all the
gates to the property, and that everything inside the compound belonged to us,
even if we wanted it the other house on the property. I also questioned the ladies’ sense of
family, seeing as they have tried to sell us bananas they picked from our own
yard, they regularly make fun of us and call us Foté (white-man), and they
never come and greet us, as they say we should do with them. I was going to remind them of the bread we
often buy them, the Christmas gifts we gave them, and the kindness we show to
their girls, but I simply couldn’t get a word in. The women were just too loud.
Now all of this also happened to occur at
the same time that our team was having a rather important meeting with the New
Tribes Field Leadership Team (FLT). Of
course they couldn’t help but hear all the shouting and came out to see what
was going on. Immediately the ladies
buttered up to Cees and started repeating all the insulting things they had
said to us. They also greeted a couple
of the FLT members and began accusing us in front of them. I felt so ashamed and embarrassed. What an awful missionary I must be, causing
all kinds of problems with the neighbors, totally culturally insensitive,
etc.
Thankfully when we went inside, everyone
on the team, FLT included, told us this was very cultural. In fact they indicated their surprise that we
hadn’t had a blow out like this yet.
Since this is a shame culture, people defend themselves when they are
guilty by passing the blame and inventing lies and rumors to make the other
person look like the bad guy.
Interestingly enough, our house helpers also told us that they believed
the women were clearly in the wrong.
They told us no one in Guinea would ever walk into someone’s yard and
take fruit from them without asking first, especially when there’s a fence.
For a whole week the women stayed mad at
us. They ignored us when we waved or
said hello. They refused to accept gifts
of bread. They tried their best to make
us feel bad in every way. If it weren’t
for the fact that we were rather glad they weren’t in our yard as much, I think
it would have worked. We felt bad that
they were mad at us. We felt incompetent
as missionaries, to have offended our neighbors over a few mangoes. And we felt horrible that these women are
completely closed off from receiving anything else from the Christians, let alone
hearing about Jesus. But the truth is (I
feel a little guilty saying it), they are really difficult women to live with,
and I also felt rather happy they weren’t bothering us anymore.
Still, in an effort to maintain peace and
harmony, to repair bridges and to ease my conscience, this past Sunday I went
over with a bag of mangoes as a peace offering.
It just so happens at that exact moment, the ladies had laid out literally
hundreds of mango shreds, drying in the sun.
They clearly didn’t need ours. No
matter, I forged on and went directly over to the woman I had had the conflict
with. “I’ve brought a bag of mangoes
from our tree for you,” I said with as big a smile as I could muster.
“Non!” was the
reply.
“You’re still mad at
us?” I mused soothingly. Nothing.
“Come on, you can’t stay
mad at us forever. It will make you
sick,” I continued jokingly.
“I still can’t believe
you would treat us like that,” was her reply.
“But why? What did I really do?” I cooed at her. “Listen, all I want is for us to live in
peace and harmony. Let’s forget this
whole thing and move. Forgive me,
please.” Rather quickly she broke down
and accepted my peace offering and smiled.
Just then the other sister walked out and
started shouting (again) at her sibling for having given in so easily. I couldn’t help but laugh as I walked
away. Thankfully the women now respond
to me when I greet them. They’re still
trying hard to be angry, but they’re at least a little friendlier. It still baffles me that people can live like
this, hoping to gain something by holding a grudge. Yet they do this to each other on a regular
basis. And the crazy thing is that it
works. People here can’t bear to be
ostracized and shunned. Their status
depends very much on how much people around them like them. For this reason, sadly, most relationships
are very superficial and selfishly motivated.
You maintain your connections with people mostly to maintain your status
in the community. If people don’t like
you, they gossip about you and then you lose your place of importance or value.
As Christians it is so comforting to know
that our value does not depend on pleasing fickle human beings, but instead on
pleasing a constant, loving God, full of grace and mercy, justified by the
blood of His Son. And, in His case, there
is nothing more or less we can do to gain or lose His favor. His love is unconditional. If only we could learn to love each other
like that, what kind of society would we have?
A perfect one, I suppose. One that’s
a lot more like the Kingdom’s, that’s for sure.
