Wednesday, June 08, 2011<\/p>\n
What can I say\u2026Lubumbashi, we are finally here! It has felt like we have waited for so long to make this move, but we are so happy to be here. While Kigali became a huge learning experience in so many ways, it is good to no longer be living in \u201ctransition\u201d. Although\u2026we have only been here for 1 month, so I guess we are still transitioning, but it\u2019s good to feel like we can begin settling. Since our arrival, we have been slowly trying to learn the city, and the change in culture, which we are finding is completely different from Rwanda in so many ways.<\/p>\n
The first initial difference we noticed was regarding dress. When we first arrived in Rwanda, while I didn\u2019t have a lot of expectations, \u201cdress\u201d was one of the expectations I had. I was expecting that the appropriate dress for women would be long skirts and long pants. I packed only a couple of long skirts, with the plan of getting others made once we arrived. I also packed only long pants, although my wardrobe in the states during the summer was only capri-pants. After only a short time in Rwanda, I learned quickly that it is a fairly modern city, which is slowly advancing. In the large cities particularly, you may see men wearing shorts, and women wearing capri\u2019s, and skirts that end just below the knee. When I had some skirts made, I had them made to just below the knee, instead of to my ankles. I acquired some capri-pants from multiple missions\u2019 teams to Rwanda, as well as some friends that lived in Kigali. These quickly became my everyday wardrobe, and it was nice to wear the clothes we are used to wearing. It was common to see Blake going to town in shorts and sandals, and was uncommon to see Blake wearing pants \u2013 unless to church or a meeting.<\/p>\n
What have we learned since our move to Congo\u2026dress is one of big concern here! Congolese culture is totally different from Rwandan culture, in that it is still very conservative. One of our first days going out to town, Blake dressed in his \u201cusual\u201d and me in mine. We both had to laugh at the fact, that before we were allowed to leave our District Superintendents house, we were both asked to go and change clothes. We felt like we were back in our teen years, being told what we couldn\u2019t leave the house in! I in my knee length skirt and Blake in his shorts and sandals, walked back into the house, quickly digging through our entire checked luggage for my only long skirt\u2026and Blake\u2019s jeans and closed shoes\u2026not to mention digging to bottoms of bags trying to find his socks. <\/p>\n
Of course we had our expectations of \u201cwhat will Africa be like\u201d before we came in 2010, but after our \u201cdelay\u201d in Rwanda, we still had hopes of wearing the same clothes we brought with us from Rwanda. When we are at home on our own property, dress is not as big of a deal, but as long as we are out in public, we have to learn to adjust to our new wardrobe! Blake is finding himself running low on socks(another blog for another time)\u2026and I am repeating my same 1 long skirt almost every day. Thank you to the Love Works team from Point Loma Nazarene University that just left me with my pick of long skirts. This will definitely increase my ability to wear clothes appropriate for the culture, so I do not get sent back home whenever I leave my house (smile)!<\/p>\n
I am sure that this is just the first of many times we are going to find ourselves out of touch with the culture! What can we do? Learn from it, laugh about it, and move on, until we find the next thing we \u201cwill have to go home and change\u201d from! All I can say, is I love being in Congo\u2026where Blake would say, anything is possible in Congo. (Still working on trying to get him to write a blog about some of his experiences in his travels to Congo over the last year \u2013 if you want to read his perspective \u2013 convince him to write!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday, June 08, 2011 What can I say\u2026Lubumbashi, we are finally here! It has felt like we have waited for so long to make this move, but we are so happy to be here. While Kigali became a huge learning experience in so many ways, it is good to no longer be living in \u201ctransition\u201d. Although\u2026we have only been here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.berry1.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}