There and Back Again

What’s it like to be home? It’s a frequent question we encounter in conversations with folks, some of whom we haven’t seen–or have only seen sporadically–in almost a decade. I mean, what else do you ask a person who just moved back after living for a long time in Africa? What would I ask myself in that situation? How do you talk to someone who has been out of your context for years? Most people are a bit at a loss. I would be myself, in the same situation.

But the communication divide might be more about the change in the US that has occurred over the last several years as much as it is about trying to bridge a cross-cultural chasm. In fact, it IS a cross-cultural chasm, even here. Every interaction seems to be searching for definition–where do you stand? No one is impolite enough to ask the question point-blank. But we are canny social creatures, searching for our own group above all else. Subtle signs are given. Alliences are formed, distance created. Are you in my tribe? If not, is it safe to be friends?

Maybe that’s the most challenging lesson I’ve learned living in Kenya and Ethiopia. No one is immune to the pull of tribalism. And the more we are afraid and the more we have at stake, the more difficult it is to reach across our tribal boundaries. We badly want the safety, trust, and familiarity of our group, our clan, our people. Our tribe.

But tribalism is BAAAD for human beings. At least it is when it becomes a barrier between groups that is impossible to cross. When one group has access to stuff and to power that other groups do not. When there’s fear and mistrust and eventually agression and violence between groups. Then tribalism gets bad, whether it’s in the US, or Europe, or Ethiopia, or South Sudan. BAAAD.

So maybe that’s my takeaway from my time spent overseas. I’m not immune to tribalism. Nobody is. But living outside of my own group for a long time has perhaps reduced a few walls and built a few bridges in my thinking and behavior. I come back a different person, and find a different country. Was I expecting anything else when I left?

Artwork by Lej Kiddus, who paints the lives of street dogs in Addis Ababa. The last photograph is our dog Mbwa and our orphan lamb, Sundae. They formed an unlikely Peaceable Kingdom in our backyard in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, building bridges between two very different tribes.