Culture Shock

Written: March 3, 2008

Culture shock... you know you are going to get it when you move to New Orleans. You can’t help it. Even people who have lived here their whole lives will tell you that the things you see here are unlike anything you will ever see anywhere else (and not just at Mardi Gras time). Last Sunday was my culture shock. In retrospect, I actually think it affected me a lot harder than I thought it would. My Spirit was tight, my heart burdened, and in some ways, my mind kicked hard against the things I was seeing and internalizing. This past Sunday, our children’s volunteers had to go out of town, which left me to teach Sunday School. And, while it went off without a hitch, over the past few weeks, I have come to grow a bond with a few of the younger girls in the class. They are all related somehow, although I probably need some sort of flannel graph or intense flow chart to understand it all. However, they told me that they had a project due the following day for Black History Month. Understanding that they had very limited funds, I volunteered to take them on a little trip to buy the necessary supplies for their project. Innocent-sounding enough, right? Our pastor, Dr. Taylor, picks this family up and takes them home each Sunday, so I decided to ride along with them in order to receive permission from their parents (who had not been at church that day). Once we arrived at a little, dingy, white and green shotgun house in an area of town that could have been confused with Mexico for its rough roads and potholes, the girls asked me to come in and meet their mom. This, naturally, made me a little uncomfortable as I had been passed by a handful of rough-looking guys in their late teens on the way in. Nevertheless, I, a blonde-haired, Caucasian girl in her twenties, wearing some preppy button-up gingham shirt and khaki pants, comes walking into this house swarming with people who are strikingly different from me in virtually every way. Let me stop here to reiterate that I absolutely love these people and do not judge or look down upon them in any way. I mostly just want to paint a portrait of how very out of place I was in this home, and how humorous I saw the situation in my head... but most of all, I hold that picture as a snapshot in my head. I walk into this house, people strewn about all over. Finally, we reach her mom, lounging on mattresses on the floor with a few others in a back room. As I stood there and asked if I could take her daughter and her cousin to purchase project supplies, I wondered what they thought. I certainly did not want to come across as anything but loving towards them, but the situation opened itself up to all kinds of misunderstandings of my intentions. Nonetheless, their parents agreed, and I was back at three to pick them up. I pulled up, got out of my car, and half the family was outside on the porch or lounging nearby (on a car, on the steps, all over). They explained to me that the girls would be right back... that they had just gone to the store. So, there I stood, not wanting to be a bother, but definitely standing awkwardly in front of their house as they look at me from the porch. This lasted about 5-7 minutes before the kids come bumbling up the street. Although I had planned to only take the two girls who actually had projects due, I ended up with five. How? I’m not really sure. It was all a flurry of activity. So, off we go. The girls in the back seat are explaining to me which “store” to go to. As I weave through left and rights to get out of the neighborhood, they yell to me that the store is on the corner. Then, I realize that the store they want me to stop at (with five little children) is the liquor store/ corner mart. I have seen this little, green store with intense safety bars on all the windows and doors before, but had never actually considered going into this place. At that very same moment that I am trying to register my horror at this store, some man standing in the middle of the road starts yelling at me. I think he was intoxicated beyond all reason. So, for the safety of everyone involved, I decided not to stop. Here is the part where I question whether or not I should have stopped and just acclimated myself to the neighborhood of these kids, but, since I am a single, white female toting five kids that are not my own, my maternal instincts decided otherwise. So, we went to the Dollar Tree in the middle of a fairly clean mall. Everyone in the store looked at me with a different look of wonder. How had I come to be responsible for five little children that were not even my ethnicity? Why on earth was I trying to corral five kids on my own? Had I stolen them? They seemed to be having a good time, so perhaps it was okay. Still, they weren’t quite sure what to make of the whole situation. I had to laugh, except that I had my hands full with two posters, five toys (one for each person), and school supplies. Some man in the line behind me offered to hold the posters, just so I could hold everything else and make sure the kids weren’t breaking any of the tacky mermaid sculptures nearby.
Later, we made a pit stop for ice cream and headed home (which they strongly protested). As I drove home, absolutely exhausted, I was too overwhelmed to think. But now, as I sit outside on a windy night, with my lamp plugged in to an outdoor outlet, I think back on this time, and know that I have grown. Perhaps naively, I am less afraid of these neighborhoods that I still don’t fully understand. I know that we do not live similar lives, but I no longer fear them because I don’t have any experience with them. I grieve at the aspects of various cultures that lead them into cyclical cycles that will be very hard to get out of. The kids told me that very few in their family have even finished school. There is little respect for any possessions, so all are either instantly destroyed or lost. I am so grateful to the Lord for showing me that which I could never have learned otherwise. How do you teach a better object lesson than spending an afternoon with a handful of kids from the rough neighborhood you are trying to reach? So, while I am grateful that no children were harmed in the making of this story, and that no one turned me in, believing I had stolen someone’s children, I did actually come away with more than culture shock. I came away with a deeper love for a culture I am only just now starting to understand.