Warm Culture

The past eight weeks have in NO way made me an expert on African culture, but I have really enjoyed gaining insights from those who have spent much of their lives in Africa. Africa is a warm culture, which shakes up my Midwestern box a bit. Warm culture countries place a high priority on inclusion, community, and preservation of relationships as opposed to individuality, schedules, and confrontation. What does that mean?
A few lessons I have learned so far:

• A person is welcome, even expected, to show up to any social gathering in the community, even without an explicit invitation. 
• Extended family such as aunts or cousins are referred to and treated as immediate family; they are "mothers" or "sisters."
• When asking a local for directions, they would rather make up directions than tell you they don't know the place you are looking for and be seen as unhelpful.
• No business can be conducted before inquiring about a person's wife, children, parents, crops, cattle, health (and a variety of other topics).

These are just generalizations and I'm sure I will discover many others over the next two years, but I am enamored with warm culture. I have been pretty blessed to learn alongside my Sub-Saharan "family" the past couple months as we have gotten a small taste of this culture. 

Traditional meal time…

Rice, beans, ugali, and smoked chicken :)

Refining the art of eating without utensils

Outdoor cooking

Many snake stories being shared around the fire

An evening without electricity