.jpg)
But in a way all that awkward locking, unlocking and assuming unusual positions to get the alignment right is a bit like what it’s meant for us to live and work cross-culturally in Africa for the past decade. American Thanksgiving this week, November 25th, happened to be the ten-year anniversary of the day Linnea, Caroline and I first arrived in Ethiopia. Bill got there about a week before us to set up our new home while the girls and I stopped in Cambridge for them to say good-bye to one phase of life before encountering an entirely new and alien one. It was such a relief, after a long intercontinental flight with a 10- and 12-year-old, and a midnight drive from the Addis Ababa airport along dark and mysterious potholed streets, to collapse into beds Bill had already made up with our own familiar sheets and comforters. Ever since then our lives have been about ‘unlocking’ many of our comfortable preconceptions and our assumptions about what’s normal or even what’s ‘Christian’ (astonishing how much of Africa culture is closer to a biblical worldview than my own American experience is), and ‘locking’ ourselves into a commitment to new communities and new perspectives. In the process it sometimes takes a little extra ‘leaning in’ and fiddling a bit with things we can’t quite see clearly in order to open the doors to new relationships. No one said it would be easy. But I wouldn’t trade a day of it. (Well OK, maybe one or two specific days I remember…) I feel so unbelievably privileged to be part of the emergence of Africa as the global center of Christianity in the 21st century and to have been given a small role to play in it. This Thanksgiving I am very, very thankful for eight years in Ethiopia and these past two years in Kenya and all God has done during that time. I’m also very thankful for the many of you who have stood with us as partners and encouragers during those ten years. We are blessed!
And hopefully there’s more to come. Who would think that after teaching in Africa for ten years I’d still constantly be stumbling across basic cultural and worldview assumptions my students hold that are (surprise!) quite different from mine. One of the things I’ve been doing this past term at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST) is working with the new cohort of PhD candidates on critical thinking and academic writing. All these years I’ve been marking student papers and scribbling the same corrections in the margins over and over and over again, until it finally dawned on me—fairly recently, I confess—that the repeated ‘mistakes’ in the students’ writing are actually very specific cultural patterns of organizing and presenting ideas that leave an imprint on their English writing. On the internet I eventually came across what other people are saying about something called ‘contrastive rhetoric’, which looks at how patterns of communication learned in home cultures can affect international students trying to succeed at UK and US universities. So what I‘ve tried to do this term is help the PhD students become more conscious both of Western conventions of academic writing and of the ways similar communication works in their own communities (which means I’ve had to learn more about how it works), so that they can choose just how ‘Western’ or ‘African’ they want to be in any particular piece they’re writing.
Of course what would be even better is if we—really, they—can find or develop a writing style to use in their doctoral dissertations that speaks both to the international academic community and to their home cultures. One of the most enlightening things we did as a group this term was to have each PhD student write a short essay representing an example of persuasive oral ‘expert rhetoric’ in their own village or community. I asked them to be as imaginative as possible and to make up something that spoke in a way they felt particularly comfortable with. (I wanted to see what sort of styles and patterns they would use.) They came up with all sorts of great things, mostly along the lines of someone trying to convince their village to do something that would benefit the village as a whole. Lots of great stories, clever proverbs, and African ways of showing appreciation for the elders were in there, along with a less explicit and direct, more involve-the-listener way of communicating. When we read and discussed the essays in class the students kept saying things like, “This feels so comfortable.” “This is us.” “Why can’t we write like this all the time?” One quite gifted Sudanese doctoral student said, “If books were like this I could read four hundred books. But I struggle with books because it’s difficult to figure out what they’re trying to say.” They were intrigued to start putting some descriptive labels on their own styles of communicating. (One said, “I didn’t even know we had a style.”) So now our goal as a group is to try to come up with some way to do academic writing that’s scholarly and also truly African—in spite of the fact that given Africa’s primarily oral cultures there are hardly any local models of writing styles at all. If these students can find their African ‘voice’ in their own scholarly writing it might be a significant move forward for other emerging African theologians as well. Who knows, it might work. We’re just making this stuff up as we go along.
The NEGST term finished with exams this week, and while these students are having a break till January, Bill and I leave tomorrow for the town of Eldoret in western Kenya where we’ll teach a three-week module from 29 Nov - 17 Dec for NEGST’s cohort of MA extension students there. I’ll be teaching first-year Greek, while Bill does Old Testament Theology. Eldoret is a regional agricultural market center but unfortunately isn’t particularly known for anything else. I’ve been asking friends, both Kenyans and foreigners, what there is to do in Eldoret for three weeks, and the answer seems to be “not much”. I guess that means Bill and I will have plenty of time to get caught up on reading and email. Oh well.
The big family news this month is that it looks like we’re about to sell my parents’ house! We have a signed sales contract and the closing is tentatively planned for mid-December. I’m holding my breath, not quite able to believe this 3½-year saga may be drawing to a close. If the sale goes through it will be a huge burden lifted from my shoulders as the executor, it will relieve some of the financial pressure on us from trying to maintain the house, it will give me the chance to move on from my parents’ and brother’s deaths, and it means Bill & I can start looking for a small house to buy in the US since we currently have no permanent ‘home base’. So you can see this is a very big deal. Thank you so much to all of you who have been praying us through this long sad tale. God is faithful.
The other happy news is that Linnea (22) and Caroline (20) are coming to Nairobi for Christmas. They arrive just three days after we get back from Eldoret so I’ve been busy baking and filling the freezer in advance. Then two days after Christmas Linnea’s boyfriend William will join us for a couple of weeks, his first trip outside the US. We’re looking forward to some great family time and to showing him a bit of Kenya.
So that’s our news and here are our current prayer points:
- Praise for a good term just finished at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), and prayer as we prepare our courses for next term: Systematic Theology and Contemporary Theology for Bill; Exegesis of Greek Narrative and Exposition of Acts for Stephanie.
- Prayer for our travel to Eldoret in western Kenya from 28 Nov - 17 Dec to teach at NEGST’s extension program there: first-year Greek for Stephanie and Old Testament Theology for Bill.
- Praise for the sales contract for Stephanie’s parents’ house, and prayer that the sale will be completed in December. This has been a 3½-year ordeal and we’re excited that it may be coming to an end.
- Praise that we ended the SIM fiscal year with all the financial support we needed. And please pray God’s blessings on our wonderful and faithful supporters!
- Prayer for safe and smooth Christmas travel from Virginia to Kenya for Linnea (22) and Caroline (20) on 20-21 Dec, and Linnea’s boyfriend William on 26-27 Dec, and for wonderful family time together.
And may God grant each of you, our friends around the globe, relaxed and worshipful holidays this month with your own friends and family, celebrating his goodness to each of us in Jesus Christ.
Christmas blessings,
Stephanie
for Bill, Linnea and Caroline Black
Recent Bits & Pieces
NEGST Ladies Fellowship
NEGST women students, wives of students, and staff women got together this month to show off our various cultures and traditions. I love this photo of women from Eritrea, Sudan, Zambia and Malawi listening to their friend from Kenya explain some favorite foods.
Showing how to pound grains and spices in DR Congo
Demonstrating how Kikuyu ‘aunties’ welcome a new bride
Then everyone got to taste the food samples (my favorite part!)
NEGST ‘Grace Group’
Every Friday morning from 10-11 we have small fellowship groups on campus with students, support staff and faculty members mixed together. Here’s our ‘Grace Group’ meeting at one of the student flats.
The snacks: ubiquitous tea (above) and steamed sweet potato and arrowroot (below).
Happy Grace Group members (wouldn’t you be if you got a hour’s break from class or your office on Friday mornings?)
Bill savoring a cup of Kenyan chai
Stephanie’s Greek Class
There’s probably not much that can be as mind-numbing as two hours of Greek syntax just after lunch every Tuesday and Thursday (who came up with this course schedule?!) so we do a lot of keep-everybody-awake-and-moving stuff like getting up and writing on the chalkboard
Here’s the whole class, mostly MA/MDiv students and a sprinkling of PhD candidates relearning their Greek. They’re an all-star group—but don’t tell them I said that!
Springtime in Kenya
While those of you in the northern hemisphere enjoy autumn leaves, we have these amazing purple jacaranda trees that burst out all over Nairobi. I took this photo on my walk home from my office.
The tree tomatoes ripening in our garden have been attracting all sorts of great birds—and monkeys, too
This one was gleefully tormenting our dogs while making sure to stay safely out of reach on the roof
And on the other side of the ocean…
Caroline (left) demonstrates her college spirit at a UVA football game
As far as I know, this was the only one she went to all year. But maybe I’m underestimating her passion for American football???
Linnea (far right) trick-or-treating with her Somali little sisters (center) in the ‘Bridging the Gap’ mentor program for immigrant families she helps direct at UVA. Evidently they wanted to be vampire cheerleaders but Linnea convinced them princesses were better.
