Shock & awe

Culture shock paid me an unwelcome visit on Saturday. Perhaps I should’ve seen it coming. I had jokingly dubbed the past week “palpable tension week” at the office. On Friday, I was once again heckled by schoolchildren for being Chinese. I rounded off the work week by spending Friday night eating overpriced muzungu pizza and feeling out of place at a table of white ex-pats.

I woke up on Saturday hot and bothered. Hot from the heat, then quickly very bothered by everything to this damn place: the heat, the congestion, the pollution, the unrelenting stares from adults and children. I can’t step outside the flat without melting into a puddle of sweat or step outside the compound without getting a facial of dirt and exhaust. I can’t walk ten steps without boda drivers or vendors offering their services, their wares or their hands in marriage (no joke). If I take them up on their offer (of services or wares), I have to haggle to bring down the foreigner tax. I can’t even walk home after a long week at work without getting the Quasimodo treatment from rugrats whose only exposure to Chinese people is Jackie Chan flicks.

I spent all of Saturday shut in, grumbling and growling about stupid this and stupid that. It did not help matters that the pizza from the previous night had set off all sorts of lactose-intolerant gastro-intestinal reactions. I pined for my independent and self-sufficient life in America, where I can hop in my low-emission Civic and drive myself to the beach and breathe all I want and be completely invisible in public. Is that too much to ask? To breathe and not be a walking public spectacle?!

I was sorely tempted to spend Sunday indulging my still foul mood. After some negotiations with God, I hauled my resentful ass out of bed and readied myself for church and all the steps required to get me there.

As usual, the taxi (bus) waited until it filled with passengers and stopped for gas and turned off the designated route, so I had to walk a few paces more than usual to get to church. The ushers welcomed me but nobody else noticed as I found a seat. I was late and people were already singing in worship. They were singing songs I know, songs I know by heart. I closed my eyes and let my voice melt into the group’s; I felt myself disappear. Even the usual (and usually awkward) greet-your-neighbor interactions felt comfortingly familiar. I’d found sanctuary.

The ushers handed out palm fronds and I realized it was Palm Sunday. It’s the beginning of Holy Week and the tail end of Lent. In the midst of the move and travel, I had forgotten all about this period of commemoration of Christ leaving heaven to walk and live and suffer as a regular human in a hot and dusty land. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the culture shock in that transition.

I walked around downtown after church and saw lots of people dressed in their Sunday best, palm fronds in tow. Somehow the city and its people felt restored to me (or vice versa). Like them, I am a child of God. I’m sure I look as out of place as ever, but I don’t feel it so keenly anymore.