the musings of this nigerian gal

Culture Social Shock

Few years back, I decided to take my writing seriously. By seriously, I mean I started thinking about publishing.

There’s this friend of mine whose writing style I admire. I went to meet her, asking that she mentor me in this writing thing. One of the first thing she said was that I needed exposure. Simply put, I needed to start reading more than Christian fiction.

Then I was on a kind of fast, so my exposure was delayed for a long time. My first foray into non Christian novels was a failure, and I had to embark on another fast, and I just scrapped the whole exposure thing.

Until recently.

For some weeks now, I have been making some research, one that required me reading non Christian novels, and what a shocking adventure it has been.

The first novel, I dubbed it as there was something wrong with the author.

The next two was suspense, so I didn’t take too much note of the shocking details scattered through the pages. I was too consumed with finding out whodunnit.

The third one was a short story, and just like the first, it left me a little stumped , a little empty — for lack of a better word — and a whole lot bewildered.

Same with the next after that and the next after that and the next after that…

It wasn’t until the one I read yesterday — a memoir — that it finally dawned on me that this was no glitch. Instead, this — and the previous books — were the exact portrayal of many people lives.

Their normal.

And for the life of me, I could not wrap my mind around it.

I was having the social version of culture shock.

What happened to me was like when the white colonial masters came to Nigeria. They were appalled. They wondered, “you do this? You eat this? You drink this? This is normal to you???”

They couldn’t believe what was before their very eyes, because the thing with naivety is that it makes you believe your little world is the totality of the universe. And with that delusion comes arrogance.

A sense of disgust that makes every other thing unlike you and your little world, inferior. And with that arrogance comes a sense of superiority.

You are the world power, with a self-appointed experience to judge every thing and every person alien — this is probably why those over there like to imagine Africa as a place of barefooted, ignorant, uneducated people, so that they can be justified in dubbing us with outrageous names (but that’s just on the side).

All these things — arrogance and a sense of superiority — went through me at once. Both at the heels of my realization that what I was reading were people’s normal.

I went all, “are these the people God is sending me to? There must be a mistake. Imagine having to converse and interact with silly, outrageous, dimwitted, aimless (in my opinion) people? There must be a mistake somewhere.”

Just as I went all thinking that, a simple thought entered my heart, “because they are the ones that need Jesus.”

Just that sentence and my whole world was put in perspective.

Here is a thought: most of us Christians are comfortable with shining our light in the church because it is easier.

Shining your light in the world requires you throwing a towel over your shoulder, getting a basin of water and getting down on your knees to wash the feet of many.

And boy, you can bet that those feet are going to stink.

In varying degrees.

Bill Johnson often say that in this kingdom, we are called to rule as servants, and serve as kings.

That’s just it. Our way of influence is by becoming a servant.

Remember the words of Jesus? To become the greatest, you have to first become the least?

Many of us limit that scripture to joining the workforce of the church but it is beyond that.

God, it is way beyond that.

I guess that’s why Jesus said it is the meek that will inherit the earth.