Yup,

You read that right.  Not cross-cultural 'experience'.  Cross-cultural 'incident'.  Thursday evening we trekked across the street to the home of our new neighbors Absalom and Esther.  Absalom is a pastor from Tanzania, East Africa and Eshter is his wife.  Absalom has been here in the United States for four and a half years.  His wife and two sons were finally able to join him here last month.  Maya and Absalom had spoken with each other and agreed on a time that they wanted to have us over.  'Tomorrow' he had told her on Wednesday afternoon.

So, we showed up at the door and knocked.  Esther answered the door and said, "Oh how wonderful come in, come in, so good to see you and we all introduced ourselves and she took our coats and we talked for a little bit and she showed us into the living room where she invited us to sit, and the kids were all playing and she spoke with us briefly about where we were from and then she left, closing the doors to the living room, (which was to conserve heat).  She returned about ten minutes later and said, "I just called my husband and he is on his way home now.  We thought you were coming tomorrow night."

So we're in the house already for twenty minutes, shoes kicked off, kids playing and that was the first inclination I had that we were unexpected guests.  Giving Maya the 'I thought you said today' look, I said, "If it is better, we would be glad to come back tomorrow."  And Esther said, "Oh no, you are here now, we must have coffee and chai (tea), I will go prepare it.  And from that point on, I felt like we were working with two different scripts.  We had our script of embarrassment and guilt for imposing and showing up unexpectedly.  And they had their script of joy that it is a wonderful gesture of friendship when you show up with your family unannounced. 

When Absalom returned home, he said, "Oh this is very good!  I was thinking Friday when I say tomorrow.  I still need to work on the English eh?"  And he laughed heartily.  And he and Esther spoke briefly in Swahili (which I happened to understand a little if you don't go too fast) and then he turned to us and said, "We will make dinner - it will only take about an hour.  It was about 7:30pm.  On a school night.  But now I was in a different script.  And leaving without taking dinner would be incredibly rude, no matter how hungry the kids are or no matter how close to bedtime it is.  They completely changed their plans for us. 

So we sat and talked a lot about a lot of things.  Whenever you get two pastors together it is not hard for the conversation to keep going.  The coffee they had from Tanzania was amazingly effective caffeine-wise, so I had no problems staying 'alert'.  We ate dinner and talked more, getting home at about 9:30pm. 

What a wonderful experience!  (Or incident).  The next day, their oldest son, David came to our house and said,"Mama Christopher" (which is what you call a person - the name of their oldest child - I am Baba Christopher) - he said, "Mama Christopher, my mom says if I come home from school and no one is home I am to come to your house.  Is this ok?"  And Maya said, "Tell Mama David that you are Karibu Sana - very welcome -  here." 

The first of many cross-cultural events I suppose.  But according to all the literature about various cultures in Africa - we actually got it right by just showing up unexpectedly.  Go figure.  As Absalom said that evening, "This is better than our plan.  God's plan is always perfect."  Have a good week.