I’ve been thinking about the internet meme that’s going around about #firstworldproblems lately, and this will be today’s coffee thoughts — where I just write some thoughts until I’ve finished my morning coffee.
I know this meme is a joke and most people are writing things in the vein of exaggeration or sarcastically nipping at people for whom these “problems” are true.
Since I’ve been living in Peru for just over 3 years now, and consider myself to have grown up by middle class standards — well by North America’s standards, at that — I do get a kick out of this meme, but mostly from a different perspective than other Westerners. By no means have I experienced affluence in my life. But it has amazed me to see how by comparison, many of my Peruvian friends still think I “live large”.
For the first two years of living in this country, I lived in Miraflores, which is considered the third safest area in all of South America to live. It’s more of a tourist area of Lima, the capital, and has security guards on every corner, basically. Since Lima is not a city that’s growing outwardly by expanding its city limits, due to shanty towns and people setting up squatter-like camps on the outside, Lima grows upward and all over town you see neighborhoods being demolished to make way for high-rise apartments. Not to mention this country’s economy is one of the fastest growing ones in the world.
But that’s neither here nor there. I’m merely saying as a gringo moving here from North America, I first opted to live in a room in a nice house with access to a shared kitchen and living room. Then I migrated into a mini-apartment of my own, walking distance from a major park and lots of Americanized restaurants and fast food franchises I recognized from back home. I found my integration into the culture to be gradual instead of sudden.
Then last December I moved here to Chorrillos…
I can step outside my house and walk two blocks and look to my left and see a mini mountain (or is it a large hill?) with shanty towns. We are building a missional community of believers in Pacifico, which has no paved road, but just dirt. People might not have running water, but have cable TV and satellite dishes on top of houses that resemble what to me would be considered a shed to us.
As a result of being in charge of developing a men’s ministry in our fellowship, I’ve been visiting and spending time with different men personally, and one of whom in particular I’ve been spending a lot of time with. He also doesn’t realize how much I’ve been learning from him, as opposed to him learning from me. Even though he doesn’t have internet or read English I still won’t mention him by name, but will just call him Hermano (which is Spanish for ‘brother’). Hermano and I went for coffee several weeks ago, near my house.
This was before I realized “going for a coffee” was a completely different cultural idea to him.
He gawked at the menu, trying to understand what these various options of coffee were. He told me that to him coffee is coffee and he doesn’t understand what a cappuccino is or why people would put whipped cream on top of it. But he decided to order the same thing I was having and give it a shot.
My heart didn’t completely sink, but I felt silly, maybe even stupid, for inviting him into something in my world, but not making myself available to do something more in his culture and his world. Kinda like how Jesus descended from His heavenly abode to make himself one with us in our earthly abode.
Touche. Lesson learned!
I have two garages that I don’t use since I don’t have a car. For the author’s benefit, I should mention that in December the place I moved into is a three bedroom apartment (it’s the first floor of a three story house I share with two other families). I’ve converted one of the rooms into an office I do my tent making work from, as well as blogging and podcasting. Since I moved in, there’s this big long chunk of plastic that’s been sitting on the ground outside the garage door on the side of my house where my office is, which I’d see every day from the window. It really needed to be moved, but it was too big for me to figure out how to throw it away.
On another occasion more recently, after walking around the neighborhood after having a bite to eat together just the two of us while Hermano shared about his family and Word walk to date, we went back to my house for a moment. When he saw that piece of plastic on the ground, he asked me if I was going to use it.
I sneered and said something in Spanish like “use it for what? It’s garbage I need to get rid of.“
Hermano looked at me with some level of incredulity and said “Steve, it’s not garbage. I’ll take it if you don’t want it.“
I asked him what he wanted it for, and his response made my heart sink:
“I could use it for a roof on part of my house.”
I played along and said “sure, take it”.
But I was cut to the heart.
Not just because something I thought was trash was going to be used for someone else’s home. But I felt cut to the core for expressing that out loud to someone who’d more than appreciate a simple piece of plastic to enhance their home — which I’ve been to many times since.
I watched as Hermano placed the plastic on top of his car and tied one end of it to the right side of his passenger window/door, and drove away while holding the other side with his left hand out the driver’s window while driving away, presumably to his house that night.
These are just some of my thoughts in regard to being careful what we say not realizing what might be trash to us is a treasure to someone else trying to get by.
I’m learning a lot more from discipling him than he is from me, I’m sure of it.
