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Published: July 28th 2006
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Hippo Pond Tree at Ngorongoro
This isn't the tree in the story, but it is one of our favorite places to stop and eat lunch in the crater! THE AFRICAN FACTOR
If you have ever been over to Tanzania to help with the campaigns, serve as missionaries, or you’ve just sat around long enough to hear the many exciting stories of someone else who has, then the term, “that’s just the African factor” may ring a bell. With all of the differences in cultural thinking, normal ways of life, and just the average way to get things done from day to day is going to vary no matter where you are in this world. As missionaries you have to learn to take the African factor into consideration when working hand in hand with the brethren there. But it dawned on me this morning as we’re traveling about meeting so many new faces here in the states and getting ready to go, that there is also an American factor that I am quite sure that the brethren in Africa have also had to adjust to, and take into perspective when missionaries and campaigners travel over into their lands. The plain and simple definition of both is just the oddness of the way something seems to be handled or done differently than perhaps we may have done them ourselves or thought they should have occurred.
One morning we were sitting out in the church yard gathering together for an all day Ladies Seminar on Training our teachers, when we noticed something unusual. There was an older African man, barefoot, climbing up a rather large tree just past the church grounds, slowly climbing up hatchet in hand, to the very tip top of this tree. He then proceeded to hack off each and every limb one by one with that rusty old hatchet as he slowly worked his way down. Looked like hard work, and a very “African Factorish” or noteworthy story for the day. Well as we watched him through the open windows of the building throughout the seminar, he work long and diligently on chopping every single limb down to the very bottom. It took him from early morning, through the afternoon and on into the evening to get this great feat accomplished, then the oddest thing happened as he reached the ground, he wiped his brow, sat down his hatchet near an old wheel barrel and then picked up a chain saw and proceeded to chop down the tree from the base with a loud Buzzzzzing thump as it quickly fell. “What? Why?” you had to ask yourself as you saw it happen. So perplexed as to why he didn’t just do that in the first place, but then I kind of chuckled as I thought about it and said to one of the campaigners, “you know what, that’s just the African factor.” You see it was cheaper for him to work hard all day at doing something the more difficult, hard, time consuming way, by the sweat of his brow, than it would have been for him to purchase the gas to power the chainsaw to do it the quicker and more efficient way.”
Now, as we Americans put ourselves in that situation, what would we have done? Simple answer is that we tend to take the quickest route, our time driven scheduled life runs us through day to day trying desperately to get more done, as we check our schedules and look at our watches, to be more efficient, to be in control, to have all the answers, to be self reliant. There are times when I think that the Africans if they only knew how we spend our time, our money, and our days, would simply shake their heads and say, “You know what, that’s just the American factor.”
May we all be blessed with the hard working, patient heart of a servant, giving God control of our lives, allowing Him to use us for His glory. In His time, and through His will. ~Julie Richardson
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Betty Wedgeworth
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Good Lesson
Wonderful story--and a good lesson for us all. Oh, if we Americans could just slow down, enjoy our families and friends more, and learn from other countries and cultures. May God richly bless your family in this work.