Here is a class assigment I thought some of you might find interesting :)

I’ve spent my time since arriving in Africa adjusting from being an independent college student to fitting in with the daily routines of a family again.  One aspect of African family life I’ve noticed is that each member of the family does chores and other daily routines for the entire family, not themselves.  In fact, almost everything they do at home is for the family, and they rarely do things independently for themselves.  This is completely opposite of the typical American routine, where one spends the majority of one’s day doing things on his or her own agenda.  In America we are taught to look out for our own needs, whereas Africans are taught to look out for the needs of their families.  Americans learn to be noncommunal from their families and their education.  In his article The Teaching Behind the Teaching, Parker Palmer talks about how the classroom setting not only trains students to be noncommunal, but anticommunal.  We are taught to look out for ourselves in education and life settings, as “only the fittest and smartest survive”.  While this is the motto in America, the motto which best fits Ugandan values is “it takes the whole family for the family to survive” or “it takes every family for a village to survive”. 

            While African life is community based, African Christianity has revealed itself in the communal form as well.  In my experience here so far I’ve noticed that in many households, there is one member of the family who is the religious leader, normally the Mama or Tata. Their faith impacts the household’s faith and the rituals which take place in the home.  I have especially noticed this with my own Mama.  Mama is the religious leader in the family.   She believes in praying before meals and before bedtime or “rest” as a family.  She is in charge of determining who will pray and when we pray.  I’ve also noticed that nobody in my family outwardly pronounces an independent, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  They are a Christian family, so they place their trust in God as a whole unit, but each person does not visibly have his or her own individual faith or spiritual disciplines.  For this reason, it has been slightly difficult to connect with my family spiritually, because I am used to basing my Christian faith off of my personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus.  John Taylor speaks on this issue when he writes “until we have felt our individuality vanishing and our pulses beating to communal rythms and communal fears, how can we guess what the Lord looks like who is the savior of the African world?” (16). African faith looks differently than American faith.  Until I learn to look at God through the eyes of my Ugandan family rather than simply my own eyes, I will never understand their faith in the Lord.  However, if I can train myself to be a communally-driven person, only then will I understand the true value of family and communal faith.