Thoughts Pt. 2

After another long restless night I give you Thoughts pt. 2. If you missed out Thoughts Pt. 1 make sure you take the time to look over it before continuing below. As always, if you loved it or hated it, let us know. A quick disclaimer: while reading the Thoughts series, please keep in mind that these are late night, sarcasm latent, unapologetic rants. Also, keep in mind that these commentaries mostly seek to comment on the negative aspects of the human condition and how they play themselves out in the form of greed, avarice (materialism), pride/comparison and all-around laziness in North American culture and that by pointing them out, I am in no way saying that I am above or beyond them, in fact I probably struggle and fall victim to them just as much or more than you do.

Stewardship (If only I had more money)
Stewardship. When the word comes to mind, it is usually in the sense of being a good steward, taking care of the responsibility given to you. In Christianity, the word stewardship is usually used in reference to being responsible for the things given to you from God. In Genesis, after God created Adam, He gave Adam responsibility to watch over beast and earth alike and to be a good steward of both, i.e. responsibility to use them responsibly (a responsibility that modern Christians often shirk for a variety of reasons). The word stewardship also applies to one’s money (how and where we spend it and how and where we give it away). We would all like to think that we are responsible people, mature and good things of the like, but the reality (regardless of age) is usually a lot less. Upon accompanying my African friends to the market place, I’ve been convinced that we (in North America) probably all fall short of being called stewards (let alone good stewards). The scruple and care that Africans take while buying and caring for their possessions is nothing short of anal. I mean sure we all fondle, fiddle and handle the apples before picking 5 or so, but what I’ve seen here is a whole new level of scrupulous. Whether it be beans, fruit, shoes or strainers, nothing is small potatoes (pardon the pun). An example, my friend spent a good 5 minutes examining every strainer available to make sure it was the best possible one before buying it. If he was going to spend his hard earned money he wanted something that was going to last. 5 minutes! Five minutes (that seemed like an eternity to me) to decide which dollar-store-quality strainer he was going to buy! My same friend takes that kind of time to pick out everything… no matter big or small, expensive or cheap. And when he goes to the market, he knows exactly what he’s going to buy because he’s already thought about it long and hard. In those insufferably long 5 minutes (insufferable because my Pavolovian-conditioned attention span is the size of a gnat’s see joy), I had time to consider my course of action had it been my money and decision to make: I would have bought the first strainer my eyes laid sight upon (regardless of quality or relative price +/- a dollar or two) and had I gotten the strainer home and it broke within a week, I would have probably returned to the same store and spent another $2.50 on a new strainer hoping that the machine or Chinese kid who put it together did a better job this time around. I would have treated that strainer like I treat most of my possessions, as disposable and replaceable. Yeah, I can easily buy a new strainer, I have the money, but that’s hardly being responsible with what has been entrusted to me. The worst part about my typical North American mindset is that when that neighborhood kid comes to the door looking for money for a school in Africa or to feed the hungry, I’ll turn him away because I don’t have enough money for his charity or I only support a select few others and I’ll probably think a thought like “if only I had more money I would be more inclined to help you out, sorry”. What if instead, we treated everything we have as if it wasn’t so easily replaceable? What if we stopped and thought about the quality of what we were buying and if we really needed it or not? I’m sure we probably wouldn’t have that closet or crawlspace full of boxed up crap. Cups and dishes, books and irons packaged away, collecting dust. Fact is, if you stop and think about the excess that you live in and then consider that people around the world (or just around the block) are struggling to save up enough money to buy that same very crap that you have sitting in our basement, it’s enough to make one sick (or at least minutely depressed). If being a steward means being responsible, it probably looks a lot different than dusty boxes of crap. It probably looks more like, garage sales, the Salvation Army Thrift Store and giving things away to that needy family a couple of blocks over. And mostly it probably looks a lot like responsible spending.

P.S. JoAnna and I are spending our last weekend here in Kigali relaxing and spending time with our friends. One thing we neglected to mention in our last blog was that we bum-rushed the gates of a concert with about two thousand other people. Yeah! We were waiting in line to get into a big pan-african dance/music festival and the crowd starting pushing against the gates. The police and military police could do nothing as a wave of about 4-5 hundred Africans (and four muzungus) found their way through before they were able to close them again. My one concern at the time was squeeze your toes tight and hold on to those flip-flops! We did. All is well and we will be leaving Rwanda this next Thursday.

Love,

Alex and Jo