Strangers and Pilgrims

 Four Student Missionaries Practicing the Art of Bowl Balancing

A/N: The following poem was inspired from observations made during my yearly vacation in the U.S. from my work in Cameroon. It struck me how my husband and I can cross two cultures without even thinking. Because of our time overseas, we will never have the same perspectives and insights. We have joined the relatively fortunate few who can say they’ve lived internationally. The following verse in Hebrews reminded me that our real citizenship is in heaven.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded by them and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”                                                                                                                          Hebrews 11:13

I.D.E.

It’s short for Interdivisional Employee

The title denotes work as a missionary

Commissioned to travel across the land and the sea

An ambassador of love in a new country

It’s a calling of excitement and adventure

With a small dash of difficulty to be sure

However extended you choose to venture

You will never emerge the same ol’ trencher

You used to belong within society

Cocooned within a wall of familiarity

Now life’s ejected you from its propriety

And you roam around with some anxiety

Your passport cover that’s within your berth

Has a color telling your place of birth

It’s a name that no longer gives much worth

To that peculiar patch of nascent earth

Typhoid malaria and midgets bold

Are just as normal as the common cold

Cockroaches and mosquitoes fourfold

Are no more foreign than the flies of old

Black white brown red or other hue untold

Dark wiry hair or tresses straight and gold

Blue eyes that calm or brown eyes that are bold

All are unique and lovely to behold

Adjustable hot water bathroom showers

Cultivated garden with neat rows of flowers

These novelties are pleasant and pass the hours

But none surpass a ‘net speed that empowers

Quiet skies with no flying jet from Boeing

In contrast noisy markets and roosters crowing

Your ears can recognize the sounds out flowing

You sleep even with taxi horns a blowing

You jam forward in funneling queue with a wink

Or stand in neatly cordoned lines without a kink

You can place your demand for fish chips and a drink

Or order ice cream from a menu on the brink

It’s nice to swallow water straight from the tap

But Berkey filters easily fill the gap

Water is quite wet anywhere on the map

Filtered or bottled you just untwist the cap

Traditional Braids and Dress

White man, nasara, mzungu, and names akin

Whatever others call you with a cheerful grin

All remind that whatever color of your skin

You’ll never be a native or blend and fit in

Always an enigma in the current population

Not once an ordinary citizen of the nation

Never a common local of current habitation

You float between different worlds like an aberration

Your culture is distinct and its own creation

Based on your experience with some frustration

Life’s not confined to one style or summation

A variety but God’s your one foundation

Even if you wanted to return to days of old

You would never fit within that former rigid mould

Branded alien foreign wild and uncontrolled

A single country can never keep you in its hold

Whether for the better or for the worse

You must now trek long and forever traverse

A broadened view of third cultural verse

Where strange and different is not a curse

You may settle or you may pick up and go

You may return and live in former chateau

Or make another place your lasting furlough

Or even stay within your current escrow

No longer a self-centered and brash young fox

You realize that now you think outside the box

On the fringe of social order wearing socks

New perspective on things that used to flummox

You’ve become a wandering pilgrim in waiting

A promised rest for body and soul awaiting

One day when Jesus appears heaven translating

Your spirit will be complete full never hating

Within heaven you are perfectly understood

Communication’s great and quarrels are withstood

All are together in unity and are good

Your lonely wandering heart is home as it should

At last you’re a pilgrim and a stranger no more

Upon the weary travelings you’ve closed the door

Your soul is content upon heaven’s dazzling shore

The label I.D.E. is gone forevermore

Closing Tradition at Church with Hand Holding - Can you find the white man?

“Now therefore, you are strangers and foreigners no more, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”                                                                                                            Ephesians 2:19

Workhorses

Have you ever considered your "workhorses"? What do you rely on daily?

Daily I rely on my Berkey water filter. It gets filled at least once but often two or three times per day. While I have the far less expensive Sawyer filter as a back up, the Berkey looks very good on the counter top.

The Berkey is handy to be sure. But without water to the tap, it'd be a slog to fetch water. While most Mission compounds I have been to have water, I am not sure all have it pumped to the house. In Buea, water is not distributed to most homes. Rather community pumps serve most people. Water to the tap (and a 2000 liter storage container) have given us continuous water access since we arrived. That also means showers. (For reasons still unclear to me water pressure wanes after 8 pm.) Water to the tap also means flush rather than pit toilets!

Showers remind me that I also have hot showers. In our new bathroom hot water is within a couple of minutes and in the other bathroom, you need to remember a couple of hours ahead to turn on the hot water heater.

Hot showers remind me that electricity is used throughout the day. Electricity is to more homes than water. Both water and electricity do "fail". In the dry season water can be "off" a day at a time. Where as power outages during the dry season seem to last between 30 minutes to an hour. But during rains, the power can be off hours at a time.

Electricity reminds me that my laptop is used daily. I am working on forms, brochures, emails, photographs, facebook; igoogle, etc.

Which brings me to the internet. As slow and as expensive as it is we use it daily. We really noticed it the other weekend when lightning fried our MODEM. (The MODEM has been replaced and Camtel installed a line surge protector). Also with electricity we have a frigid refrigerator. But when the power goes off for hours at a time, it doesn't seem to hold the cold as well as I'd hope for. No electricity - lights, no hot water, no internet, and a warming fridge.

The stove operates without electricity, but you do have to remember to purchase new bottles gas every now and then. We use it daily.

Many of these things, if not all, provide similar comforts to how we lived in the USA. Life would be different without them. Though not impossible. After all that is what people used to do many years ago (all over the world I might add).