“Be Prepared For Culture Shock”

“Depression – The excitement and newness wears off. It gets replaced by irritation at the hassles and inefficiency, and annoyance with your companions.......” (Dr Ted Lankester, ‘The Traveller’s Good Health Guide’, 2nd Edition 2002, Sheldon Press)

Soon after arriving in Uganda we wrote on this blog about a ‘Cultural Incident’. Despite leaving us tired after the loss of a night’s sleep, the incident had its amusing side, we could laugh it off. If that was what culture shock meant, then we were confident we could handle it. So when a colleague in Kampala asked towards the end of the year if we had experienced the ‘Six Month Low’ we wondered what she might mean – we hadn’t registered Ted Lankester at that stage.

Of course, six months is a bit of a generalisation, but nevertheless when we passed five.....six....seven months, we began to relax, until......... Until the car started to go (expensively) wrong, important planned meetings were cancelled (and those that actually happened started hours late)....... Until our hard-won job descriptions didn’t match the work we had started to do whilst waiting for the job descriptions, and we realised that there were no resources to fund the work we had to do...... Until we found that local expressions of worship didn’t meet our spiritual needs, and that we left Sunday services feeling more frustrated than when we arrived....... Until it seemed that most callers at our house wanted us to pay their school fees, or to borrow money for some reason........ Until the culture shock we experienced interacting with transatlantic muzungus began to create additional tensions we had never expected.......... Until it became clear that the ethos of other mission agencies conflicted with our own, and we found ourselves with no Regional Manager to talk to........ Until......

Of course, little of this was new. We had been experiencing what we perceived as inefficiency in the Ugandan system for months – late, long and cancelled meetings. We had resigned ourselves to the unprepared style of worship and preaching in the Church of Uganda – wasn’t that one of the issues Allan had been asked to come to help address? The roads had taken their toll on our car since we had bought it, and the rise in fuel costs (as well as the rise in value of the Ugandan Shilling against Sterling) had been increasing our motoring costs, and we knew we had a lot more money and material resources that most of the people we lived with......... Indeed the only new difficulties were with other muzungus, CMS re-organisation, and.........ourselves, most of all, ourselves.

Ted Lankester writes in his book about four phases of adapting to a new culture, Elation, Depression, Recovery and Acculturation. He says, “just being prepared for them can be helpful. You then realize it’s probably normal to be feeling the way you are, rather than wonder what on earth is happening to you.” We read these words in the midst of Phase Two and wanted to throw the book through the window; I suspect that was all part of the Depression Phase.

Another part is the inability to write blogs, or at least the inability to write blogs that don’t end up in the depths of despair; which is why we didn't write then, but can now write this. It feels as though we’re moving out into Phase Three: 'Recovery'. Praise the Lord! And we know that it’s only because of the faithful prayers of our partners and friends back in the UK that we didn’t buy a one-way ticket home.

“Of course.....you still have bad days”, writes Ted. Maybe so, but God hasn’t abandoned us over the last five weeks or so – nor over the past 50-60 years, so despite the bad days we’ll probably be fine!