Living Simply

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about living simply. It is a concept that though my parents never (that I remember) explicitly said we are trying to live simply, is something of their faith that I adopted for myself. And blessedly, my husband too, believes in living simply. We have tried to live without a lot of stuff. But since moving to Maputo we have had to reevaluate what living simply means for us.

One reason we’ve had to re-examine it is because we had to furnish an apartment, which made us feel like we were buying a lot of stuff (we were but that comes with the territory). One of the key questions was the durability of whatever we purchased, thinking ahead to whatever MCCer comes after us and inherits our purchases. An important factor for me in living simply is the difference between frugality and cheapness. Something might have a low price tag, which appeals to my wanting to be a good steward of MCC’s money, but if it isn’t good quality, it really isn’t worth buying.

Another reason that causes me to think about ‘what does it mean to live simply’ is encountering wealthy Mozambicans. Recently, I arranged a host family for our new SALT participant. Katie, the SALT participant, will be here for a year. After CCM sending out a letter requesting volunteers for host family, the only one that volunteered was a woman in Matola, a suburb of Maputo. The family has money and I know she does not understand MCC’s desire to live simply. In their house, they have multiple televisions in one room, several guest cottages out back and a couple of gazebo-like places for hanging out outside. They are definitely not the norm of Mozambique that I know.

For most of my life I have thought about living simply as an attempt to identify with the majority of the world’s populace—living simply so that others my simply live. Embarrassingly, only recently has the idea of living simply occurred to me as a spiritual discipline, like prayer or fellowship with other believers. Living simply, as spiritual discipline is a means for pursuing a closer relationship with Christ because I am not burdened by a lot of material things.

Living simply as a spiritual discipline opens the discussion to the poor. If I live simply in order to identify with the poor, it doesn’t make sense to those who are poor and could be construed as patronizing. A spiritual discipline opens the door for all to enter and journey together, drawing closer together and to Christ. So then for me, as I am coming to understand it, living simply is living with enough and being content with what I have. It can also mean taking into consideration what others have and eliciting others’ advice about purchases and lifestyle decisions.

The concept of enough is an odd one. It doesn’t make sense to my selfish desires of wanting more or hoarding what I have. Having enough means different things for different people. I’m sure that some people think that Joél and I live a bit too austere and other people think we have too much. It’s probably a little of both. But I am content with what I have? Not all the time. For example, I would really like a new pair of strappy sandals. I can easily justify it, especially since the ones I have just broke this morning. I could easily go to a cobbler—there are two within a block of our apartment to have him sew the strap back onto the shoe, but really I want to use it as an excuse to buy a new pair of sandals. If I would ask people I knew in Chimoio, what to do, they would recommend a cobbler and our nanny here would too. I don’t know what our new work colleagues would recommend. Friends and family in the States, would recommend I buy a new pair of shoes—it’s not worth hunting down a cobbler in the States to repair 10 year old shoes. I hear both sets of advice in my head.

Yesterday we took Nadia to a park where she could run around and play outside. We left the park feeling very alone. We don’t really fit in at the park, though it is filled with other foreigners, their children and nannies. There is a really nice café, a play ground, soccer field, and paths for walking or riding bike. We feel like we do not fit in at the park because we bring our own child and watch her instead of bringing our nanny (who only watches her when I’m at work). Also, we chose not to go to the café—it’s a bit too expensive for our taste—where all the adults hang out. So we are on the grass, playing with our daughter, where the nannies are congregated, looking after other people’s children. We normally walk to the park, though yesterday we drove. Our car, a MCC car with its bush road wornness, does not compete with the shiny new luxury SUV’s. Going to the park makes us feel lonely and like we are doing something odd in trying to live with enough. However, when we get home to our apartment, it feels like we are making the right decisions for us—choosing to live in a Mozambican neighborhood, choosing to live in a small apartment with primarily locally made furniture, choosing to buy the majority of our food and groceries from street vendors and local shops.

I am also coming to understand living simply as how I govern my time. If I try to live with fewer material goods in order to not be encumbered by things in my pursuit of a relationship with Christ, the same should also be applied in how I spend my time. Living in Mozambique has given us the luxury of a lot of family time. We do not have evening engagements very often which take one of us away. I have found that I really value the long dark evenings (the sun goes down early year round) with Joél and it’s been good for our relationship. Living in a different culture has its challenges and for Joél and I who are processors, there have been many evenings when we have talked about what we are experiencing, trying to understand, and ending in prayer.

A spiritual discipline is something that is a process. One does not attain perfection or reach a place where one can say that he/she accomplished it. Thankfully, in pursuing a relationship with Christ, he walks along side of us and teaches us what we need for our own journey.

Jenny is always texting on her phone to friends, colleagues and for work. Guess who else is texting.

Navigating Maputo
This week we had the 2 SALT and 1 YAMEN participant from Brazil arrive here in Maputo. Jenny did the orientation for them this week. We had fun taking them to the market, to the beach and around town on the weekend. In the market we passed by people selling everything from shoes, toenail clippers, hair extensions to baby toys. It was backed with people shouting out their wares, people sorting through clothes and people dodging one another. It was one of those times, however, that I realized that I have aculturated because I am totally comfortable there and I have no fear anymore. It is as if I were in a mall on a Saturday afternoon and totally relaxed. I wonder how the new people who were with me felt, however, being there first days here. We sent two of them on there way and Jenny organized a language teacher, conversation partner and host family for the SALT participant who is staying in Maputo to work with me in the CCM Programs Department.

Katie, the SALT participant in Maputo successfully navigated the chapas with one of her host sisters. She is staying outside of Maputo in a town called Matola which can take 1 1/2 hours in rush hour to get into the city. Since the host sister was not available to take her home we had to figure out a way to get her home. After various questions to colleagues and acquaintances we were successfully managed to find out where we needed to go to catch the bus but no-one was willing to help and no-one could tell us what the schedule of the buses was. This is not surprising. I was surprised there was a schedule at all. So in any case we decided it would be best to go down and wait at the bus stop.

Now Maputo is a lot larger then Beira and Chimoio which we are used to. A LOT LARGER!!! There are so many buses going all over the place and the bus stop downtown was packed with people going to the miriad of places where they live in the city. Beira had only a handful of chapa routes and Chimoio, only 2. Fortunately, after 4 years in Mozambique I am used to large crowds of people where I stand out and chaos and I no longer fear it. People called me 'White' and tried to sell us stuff as we passed and I smiled because I felt at home. We asked around and I finally was able to locate where the spot was. We watched as people crammed themselves into the back of the buses.

"How are we going to get you in?" I asked Katie.

"Oh, that was the way it was this morning, you just have to push and shove," she said.

After a while a nice woman asked us if we it was our first time here. She seemed trustworthy so I said yes, we are getting a bus for Katie. She directed us toward the train station about a half mile away. By this time it was getting dark so Katie and I walked to our car and drove there as fast as we could and drove down just in time to catch the bus which was about to leave. We were lucky, I would have ended up taking her out to her place in which I would have missed supper and probably arrived late in the evening. I was glad to leave because as the dark approached I knew that the place where I was would get more dangerous for a person like me if I hung around.