When one does missions overseas there are stories of trials or faith testing, stories of sharing the good news/relationship building and there are also stories of cultural learning. God has blessed me with all of these different types of stories, the one I am going to share today is a cultural moment. So as I have lived in North Africa I have been getting used to this new “collectivist” culture. To truly understand what it means for a people to be collectivist it usually takes a culmination of many personal discoveries. Just yesterday I had a crazy moment that helped me understand the culture more. I had just finished my Arabic class with my language tutor and I was looking for a taxi to go home. I asked my tutor if I could find a taxi in this area of town and she said “how about you try a motorcycle taxi?” I said okay, why not. So I put my phone in my pocket and I walked over to this motorcycle guy under a tree and he said it would cost 5 (of their currency)
As I was about to hop on the motorcycle a man ran up to me and grabbed my phone from my coat pocket and then bolted away! I didn’t even notice him take it but thankfully my language teacher noticed and she yelled. As soon as she yelled 7 men ran to the guy, grabbed him and started shaking him. After shoving him he returned the phone to my tutor and she brought it over to me. Afterwards the men apologized on behalf of their country and exclaimed that this man who stole from me was not one of them, they do not accept him as their own. They claimed that this man brought dishonor to their country. They said they would have beat this man if there were not police around.
I thanked all of them for their help and for returning my phone. This whole interaction helped me understand public shaming more than I did before. Also the idea of someone bringing dishonor to their whole community has been something that is hard to understand but it started to make more sense. I imagined if someone had robbed me in New York, nobody would stop the robber and apologize on behalf of New York, that isn’t in our culture as a country, now someone might help me but the theft wouldn’t be a community transgression and most likely wouldn’t result in a community effort for the sake of Americas honor.
In the end I learned that I need to be more careful with my belongings, and I learned so much more about the shame and honor system of culture all because I got robbed!