boxing days day

At LAST! The internet has been really slow....
Well, Christmas in Africa was fun, and I was so full I didn't have dinner last night or breakfast this morning...We had a large meal on Christmas eve, waffles for christmas breakfast and a buffet lunch for christmas lunch.
Its strange celebrating christmas away from family, but not really sad. I think I missed home more in the days preceding christmas than on the actual day :)possibly because I was living with the Russells who are a family family.
I got some interesting presents including an awesome African Injambe drum from Owen and Lois here at En Gedi.
Just over a week and I'll be off to Zanzibar and snorkelling + wimming for six days! Can't wait. I've used my spare time reading a lot and spending time with the other missionaries here. Missionaries are so cool

On another note, I thought I might post up these quotes which are creating a lot of thinking for me about my heritage from the West. Please don't get me wrong, I love NZ in many ways but I think we really don't understand or can be bothered understanding what is going on outside the 1st world, and heve very little patience for understanding other cultures unless we are that way academically inclined. I see this in myself as well as others, and we are totally ignorant of our ignorance.
For one thing, we think the rest of the world is so different, but really it is quite the contrary, conpared to the rest of the world we in the West are the strange ones.

Look at our 'tolerance' ideals we expect the rest of the world to have, like us:

Openness-and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings-is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought that they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all

-Allan Bloom

(Now in the previous post I quoted a book who tried to show that this is how we are today, politically, and in a way I believe he made a good point, looking on from an aitheistic veiw point. But in a way we should also strive to correct wrongs, because there is a right way to run a government. We often have to support the lesser of two evils in a world of grey. What do you think?)

Citing a terrorist attack, Meic Pearse wrote

Too many westerners take refuge in simplistic explanations: fanaticism, extremism, 'fundamentalism', insanity. Such dismissals advance the task of comprehension not one jot; they reveal more about the speaker than about the things, or persons, described. They indicate not so much an understanding as a refusal to understand. All these epithets indicate, in practice if not quite in theory, a mental banishment: "these things are so far distant from my own feelings or judgements that I shall make no attempt to understand why these people, in their own estimation, act or think as they do." And thus we are condemned...

It is a choice not to take anothers culture seriously.

its so interesting, living here in Africa for a short time to see the good and bad effects of westernism (whatever that is these days). In some ways it is fantastic to see an attampt to advance the education system of Tanz, and a goal to push the millions of students to a high level of education, and to increase the number of children able to attend High-school (a tiny ammount at the moment). But, of course, it is also a danger as we will probably (unknowingly) impart some unhelpful parts of our culture onto them if we aren't not careful. Tanz is still a pretty poor country, although hugely rich in natrual resources. It is the raping of Tanz by other countries which adds hugely to the problems here, as well as the underlying corruption.

Anyway, my thoughts aren't that clear at the moment...but do you get my drift?
There are awesome things happening and great advancement going on due to missionaries in Tanz, and I'm excited to be a part of it. But, if you find it in your heart, please pray us westies would be sensitive, carefull and watchfull in this interesting culture.