Seven Days

Culture stress Africa-style: and maybe a lesson all of us can learn because no matter where we live, there’s always someone around that has a different culture than us.

The squeak of the front gate announced the arrival of Fessehaye. I sighed and pinned another shirt to the clothesline. 

Why does he think he can just walk into our yard unannounced? 

Fessehaye, appointed caretaker of the house, took his job very seriously. He watered the handful of plants, puttered about the otherwise rocky yard, peeked into the above ground water storage tank, and generally checked in on things. Which felt more like a nuisance than a help to me. His job assignment came before we were tenants, but somehow he still had a key and, apparently, a job. 

Surely now that we live here we had privacy rights…right? 

I pulled another shirt from the laundry basket at my feet and grabbed a wooden clothes pin. 

Fessehaye’s feet crunched on the rocky pebbles as he meandered through the front yard and began making his way to the side yard where the clothes line stretched the length of the house. His foot steps stopped at each flower or bush. He fancied himself a gardner and was beyond upset with me at Christmas when I chopped down the bush in the front yard to bring inside and use as our Christmas tree. 

To me, it was a thorn bush. 

What’s one less thorn bush in a land filled with them? 

To Fessehaye, it was a prized plant he had carefully nurtured to thorn-bush majesty on our property. 

Fessehaye appeared around the corner and smiled. 

“Good morning!”

Did he not realize the inappropriate presumptive-ness of his uninvited stroll through our yard?

“Good morning,” I murmured, continuing to hang laundry.

“Where is Kris?”

“He is at work.”

Fessehaye eyed the line up of freshly washed clothes fluttering in the breeze. His eyebrows arched. “Do you wash clothes every time?”

“What do you mean?” I kept working.

Fessehaye’s eyes moved down the clothesline, silently counting each item. “Every time you wear your clothes, do you wash them?”

What kind of question was that? 

“Yes,” I replied. 

Fessehaye straightened up tall, eyes sparkling. He pointed to his shirt. “Seven days.”

I sighed and stopped hanging clothes. I willed myself to carry on the conversation with this man. It was the only polite thing to do. “Seven days what, Fessehaye?”

“I’ve worn this shirt for seven days since I last washed it.”

He beamed.

I grimaced.

Culture stress. 

I struggled to act with grace when I felt the stress of living in a culture so different than my own. I thought to myself that wearing a shirt for seven days was gross! And it was even gross-er when done by someone who was already getting on my nerves.

When I felt culture stress, it was hard to remember my perspective was not the only one, and maybe not even the correct one! 

Fessehaye spent most of his life in a war. He grew up doing without many things that I took for granted. Water was one of those things. Even when freedom finally came, it didn’t automatically bring all the amenities back with it. Free Eritrea was still an Eritrea that battled water shortages.

It must have seemed wasteful to Fessehaya that we washed our clothes after each time we wore them. Not that doing so was wrong on my part, but looking back on my own attitude, I see lots of room for improvement.

Sometimes, a different culture just feels wrong. But when we stop to think about the situation from a different angle, we just might gain a new appreciation for the people among whom we live. 

Fessehaye and I never became best buds, but I did learn a lesson about grace and perspective during my future interactions with him.