Somali People Worldwide

We were all sitting around a long table at the coffee shop...laughing, reminiscing, and enjoying some really good coffee. The door jingled, announcing a customer's arrival. When he came around the corner within sight, I gasped-a Somali! I knew that Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in America (somewhere around 50,000); I saw it for myself when I lived here for a year before internship. But this time around I had a totally different perspective. I know these people.

The next day Jessica and I ventured downtown using the public transit system. I think we spent more time that day on buses and light rails than off of them! And we saw more Somalis than I could keep track of. It was so strange, seeing a woman clad in full Somali Muslim skirt and gimbis (head covering that only leaves the face revealed). We passed a butchery that promised "halal" meat (the Islamic version of kosher). All of this against a backdrop of skyscrapers and electronic transportation and a sky that poured rain all day. I wonder what these people thought when they first immigrated here. It must have been very frightening! 

You don't have to go far to find a cluster of Somali shops where you can get henna done or buy a prayer rug and some incense. They have really banded together to help ease the culture shock. Yet you can see the new coming through too. A younger Somali women, though still wearing a more modern headscarf, was using the latest iPhone. Who is reaching out to these people? The world has come to us. Are we ready?

Reality Check!

 

Do you ever want something so much that it makes you sick? It's that hollow, nauseous feeling in your gut, like you're about to explode or punch a hole in the wall or sit down and just have a really good cry. This is what it's like to dream and to hope, but to not be sure if what you want will ever be yours.

What can you tell a 6-year old girl who has no other dream than to go to Africa? Her fantasies are full of lions, roaring campfires, blazing sunsets, simplicity, perfection. She wants to explore and discover, to step into wardrobes and find herself in distant lands. She wants to be the heroine in a grand adventure. To emerge from peril to epic theme music. I mean, wouldn't life be SO much more inspiring with your own theme music?!?

What do you tell a 22-year old girl who is still living in that fantasy? You take her to Africa.

After living my entire life fantasizing about it, I actually got to go to Africa. And then it hit me...REALITY CHECK! My lions were nowhere to be seen, no campfires except a single candle when the electricity went out, the sky was pale and pasty, the culture complex, and everything was so IMPERFECT!

The tremendous letdown felt to me like death. Everything that I had imagined to be alive and beautiful and adventurous was ugly and difficult. My spark for life soon flickered out, and I spent my days like a robotic corpse just trying to put one foot in front of the other.

I don't want to fill a blog with negativity, but places overseas simply aren't what National Geographic make them out to be. I didn't think that I had any high expectations as I boarded that plane to Africa, but I soon realized who I was really doing missions for...me.

I was in Africa for 16 months. During that time I lived daily with people who stared at me, roosters that woke me before sunrise, the suffocating stench of burning trash-and that's just the beginning! Instead of spending that time serving God, I spent most of it fighting Him. I had to kill 16 years of plans to make MY hopes and dreams come true, never mind God's! All that time before I had simply used the name "missionary" to get me where I wanted to go.

Though I couldn't see it at the time, it ended up being to me really a beautiful letdown. It's that gross idea of "growing up" or "maturing". Peter Pan would shudder in his grave. But in Christ, we really ought to want that. At first it felt like I was just growing hard and cynical and pessimistic and critical of the world. And I guess it could have turned out that way if I would have let it. But then I realized, I can let my difficult experiences turn me into a bitter person or a better person. I can chose to be a victim or victorious. My beautiful letdown caused me to move out of my fantasy world into the real one so that I could truly start living.

Don't get me wrong, I still dream. There are still things I want so much that it hurts. But my outlook on life will never be the same. So go on ahead. Experience your dreams. And if it turns out quite unlike you expected it would, don't let it kill you. Just learn from it, and start living.