Hi, Mzungu!

Last week, in the Scripture readings, there were a few instances where Jesus was caught trying to go somewhere without being seen, and every time the people found him and came to him with some need. It says that they “ran throughout the whole region and carried to sick on mats to wherever they heard that Jesus was” (Mk 6:55). I imagine Jesus became pretty tired sometimes and wanted to just slip away unnoticed for some alone time with the Father. But He never said, “Come back tomorrow.” Whenever they came, He ministered to them. Sometimes the trick is knowing how best to minister.

I can sympathize with Jesus plight of not being able to get away. This past December, when my friend Michael (with whom I went to Africa in 2012) asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told him, “Black skin and a Ugandan accent.” This is not because I don’t like my skin color, but more because, in these parts of Uganda, a mzungu (white foreigner) cannot go anywhere undetected. There just aren’t enough white people around.

I can’t go for a leisurely stroll through the town without hearing, “Mzungu! Hi Mzungu!” Usually, it’s the children, and they are waving excitedly, so I wave back happily and say hello and I’m on my way. When the adults do it, though, I never know how to respond. Sometimes I am unsure of their intentions, especially when they try to prolong the conversation beyond just saying hello, as with some groups of young adults who think it’s funny to say things to me and then laugh at me because I can’t understand, or some who men who seem like they just to flirt or get something from me.  No, thank you. But this whole phenomenon of shouting “Hi Mzungu!” really puzzles me. In the U.S., if a child shouted, “Hey, black person!” they would be slapped. I guess here it is culturally acceptable to yell, “Hi, white person!” but it makes me feel less like a person and more like just a color. It makes me feel like the one speaking does not care about who I am as a person, only about some idea that they have about me based on the color of my skin.

Once when I was walking home, I came across a boy who was about 7, who greeted me with “Hi mzungu.” So I kindly said hello. They he continued, “Give me some money.” I very simply said, “No, but I will give you my hand, and you can shake it.” I shook his hand, and then he turned and ran away.

Just last night, I was on the front porch with the girl I live with (a secondary school student) washing my clothes when several of the neighbor children walked by carrying jerry cans (for fetching water). Seeing me, one of them shouted, “Mzungu! I have ten jerry cans!” Um….okay? I could tell she wanted something, but I didn’t know what she was getting at. So I yelled back, “That’s very good. Are you going for water?” “Yes.” “Okay, great. Have fun!” I continued washing, then the younger boy came closer to the house and knelt down (a sign of respect), and said, “I want sweets.” Ah! So that’s what they want! I told him I had no sweets. Shortly after that, the first girl came and knelt down and asked for sugarcane. What?!  I held out my empty hands and told her I had no sugar cane. She pointed at the sugar cane which (apparently) grows in our yard. (Note to self: know what is growing at your house.) I said to her, “That is not my sugarcane. That belongs to the owner of this house. Come back when she is home and ask her.”

I wish I could speak the local language better, so I could have a full conversation with the children about why I wasn’t giving them what they asked for. If I give money or sweets to the first child, I have to give them the other five, and by doing so I only reinforce the idea that that’s what mzungus do, that’s what they are for. It is an act of love to say no, so that perhaps they may also learn to love more perfectly, to value the other person for who s/he is and not what s/he has, and so that they may develop their own personal initiative and potential rather than depending on the handouts of others.

The people came to Jesus wanting something from him – some healing or help. Sometimes they came just because they were “starstruck” or curious. I am sure that many of them did not really care about who Jesus was or about having a relationship with him. But He didn’t ask for better treatment. He didn’t demand that they first be baptized. Sometimes He said no to the specific request they had, but He didn’t give them a lecture about how selfish they were for having requested it. Instead, realizing that this mission was not His own, He just referred everything to the Father and said, “Your will be done.” If You want to heal, heal. If you want to feed, feed. If you want to do something else instead, do it. “Behold, I come to do Your Will.”

I am not yet holy like Jesus. I still often get annoyed at being called mzungu, at being thought of as the “hot item” or as a money or sweet dispenser. But this is not my mission; it is His. In everything, my aim is to do His Will and to make Him known, even as I wave happily to a child on the street or respond with kindness to a stranger who just thinks it’s cool to talk to a white girl. Maybe that happy wave or kind word will become for them an encounter with the Lord which will change their life. I pray that Jesus would help me to be humble enough to accept being the nameless mzungu so that His Name will be known.