LOVE IMMIGRANTS -CROSS-CULTURAL MARRIAGE.

“Am not Right; you are not wrong” we are just different.

“Will you marry me?” after prayer and thoughts, my answer is Yes. While we are in Norway, Africa is just ‘one country,’ and Uganda and Kenya are ‘neighboring districts.’ As we leave Europe, we are sure we want to try this, and our song is “No mountain is too high, no valley too low.” On reaching Kenya, Africa's reality as a continent meets me, and Uganda as a neighboring country mile apart hits me. Anyway, we had promised each other that if love can stand the distance, we will go for it.

Long-distance Dating

I receive a phone call +256, and it's my Boyfriend but guess what, as soon as we talk for a few minutes, it's off. Ohhh, we are calling across networks in different countries; it’s an international call! Oops. Well, MTN had an offer of 99%, but you could only get it at that price from 2.00-4.00 am. So, change of sleeping system everyday date with my Ugandan boyfriend 3.00-4.30 am. We must go to work between 7.30 am.

Don’t ask me why I look sleepy in the office. 

No smartphones and internet, so every Sunday we go to a cyber café 2.00-3.30 pm for a messenger video call so we can see each other. Did you say Sunday? Yes, so everyone at church knew there is something urgent I always attend after the service.

Oh, I really need to see you; I have missed you! Me too. I am coming this weekend! Oh my, its 14 hours before I can see you but wait a minute I must work on Monday? Funny Anyways, I am coming. So, each of us must jump into a bus and spend more time on the bus than the actual visit time. Oh, I am broke. I can’t come this week! Ok, no problem.

Three things 1.we were committed to this, 2.we spent our resources to make sure it worked, and  3. we trusted each other and that the Lord was going to enable us to cross the bridges and live happily ever after.

What did I miss? which every other dating people enjoy? Calling my boyfriend and meeting after work over coffee, talking any time of the day, visiting him any time of the month, a hug and ice-cream any day of the month. Refusing to answer calls because I am annoyed. If you miss that call, it might take another 12 hours. 

You got to be kidding. “Ugandan’s eat people.”

We defined the time we would get married, and we hit the road. My mum first heard the news “did you say Ugandan boyfriend? No! go and pray and think clearer”. Well, when you tell people you are getting married in another country, faces change. I  very well understood that since even me, I think it's quite daring. Well, I got to have all my friends and family aware that I was going towards Matokke land, and this page cannot cover their expressions. 

All stereotypes come alive: My brother widely opened the mouth and asked in a joking way, “after all these years, you have decided to finally, be eaten by Ugandans”. “Ugandans eat people,” I call Robert, and he assures me he won’t eat me and that we will always have food in the house so incase of anything, I am safe!

What shocked me is that when you say you are getting married in Uganda, there are so many cultural blinkers, people don’t ask which tribe? If I brought a brother from western Kenya; I would have had some explaining to do but guess what? Robert, an eastern tribe from Uganda, which is our west, survived as the Ugandan brother. But don’t mind that worked for my good.

Well, Robert’s Dad had one piece of advice for Robert, “Be sure in case of anything in your marriage, your wife will go with the kids.” Yeah, that’s what I knew? Who goes with the kids? Anyway, let’s not start planning on divorce when we have a wedding.

First visit.

Surely you never feel the impact of a cross-cultural relationship until this day, at least for me. So Robert briefs me on the expectations, and yes, I tick them and am ready. Being smartly dressed is different from one culture to the other that I could overcome. Respect is different. Yes, what I have always considered respect was watered down that day when beside me following my Uganda girlfriends in trying to Kneel and kneel properly and appropriate times to appropriate people addressed by my father in law. I respectfully  looked directly into his eyes to respond, this is the worst mistake you could make, “ You don’t look at people you respect in the eye, especially a father in law.” I also couldn’t believe that this was going to be my new home. Mmm Gillian asked my friends, "are you sure you want to do this?  The food was different, and they understand when you cannot eat, and they will keep saying, “oh, is it your first time to taste this? and so grace is extended. My mum in law came to directly say goodbye, and I just learned we cannot communicate!!! Oops. Well, don’t worry, my arrival revived all the Swahili they ever knew, and we can talk a lot now, and I can say a few words. They have grown to be very dear to me, and my late Dad always spoke to me in English when I am kneeling, and my mum up to now will pick me up and hug me, so I ensure I am picked before I kneel.

Robert visits, and I prep my mum, and she is ready to host us together with 4 other close Kenyan friends; she messes up at the entry when she welcomes us and hugs all of us. Oops, Robert is not even supposed to be near her, neither shake hands, leave alone hugging.  Haha.

Who is right, and who is wrong here?

My advice is to try to get involved in another visit where you are not the focal point and ask as many questions as possible.

Robert weds Gillian

Dowry payments, traditions beyond the two, venue for the wedding, Ugandan traditional introduction, Kenyan prewedding, wedding committees' role, the difference in wedding functions, changing dresses, food, Morning of the wedding which goes where?  Counseling, which church and which pastor officiates? Choice of the best couple, transporting church. I admit that everyone must deal with these, but it gets another layer when it crosses borders. Watch out for this and more. Due to the complexity, we ceased having dates but meetings where I had a big notebook and was the secretary as we shared our different worldviews and layer them to the Lord and looked at each other in love.  Do not take anything for granted; always observe, inquire, listen, and initiate. Take notes and pray about these differences. They can be a thorn in your marriage.

I will pause and say that you will need to be there for each other and make decisions together way before the marriage because there are already many questions and doubts to clear, and you must be fighting from the same side. Be willing to defend the decisions you agree on and, if necessary, use the cultural excuse.  For example, Robert decided not to have the Ugandan way introduction because Kenyans don’t know about it, and it saved us lots of money by doing my style of visit.

So, who moves? Who resigns? For us, it was Gillian moving to Uganda for reasons found in our notebook, meaning we discussed.  The only reason I was going to go to Uganda was Robert, who I deeply loved and love up to now. I cried and felt a sense of loss as we left our wedding venue.

What do you lose?

For the first time, It became clear that:

1.      I was going to be far from my parents and relatives. I don’t have a relative in Uganda, and as I waved to my mum, I felt a sense of loss.
2.      I felt I was inconveniencing my mum, especially because all over a sudden, she had to get passes for the border and start doing international calls together with the yellow fever vaccine issues, every once a year when she visited.
3.           I lost my dear friends who I had grown with and worked with, and I had to go and start a new social life with different people. Hope they don’t eat me!
4.        I must express myself in English even when I am making a joke. Nooooooo!!
5.            I was going to leave my church where I had relationships and submitted under.
6.           I was going to start experiencing a new culture especially food, and I felt like I had lost everything I knew, and I had only one constant 'God' and then Robert.
7.       Any call to anyone I missed was an international call.

 This list cannot be exhausted, and if you need more, inbox me or visit me. 

At this juncture, I must say that you must be sure you have God as your support system because so many other things don’t make sense and only God is the same. You are entering marriage, not only learning how to be a wife, but how to convert money, a new city, how to communicate, and everything is different.

The aggressive, creative free Kenyan Girl had been tamed down by the fact that I needed a tour guide on basically everything. Some of you need to hear from me, “Uganda and Kenya have two very different cultures.”

Turning the lemon into a lemonade

What do we cook, how do we cook it, how do we eat it were questions I had never had to answer in my life but here I was? Steaming food? Why? Eating with a folk? Why not a spoon? Who defines what yams look like? We go to the market, and we are going to, but arrowroots and my husband and I could not agree on what they are. We bought something looking like yams and arrowroots to cook. Who decides how the soup should be drunk? Is it in a cup or on a plate? 

It dawned on me that I was the stranger in Uganda ohh ok. So, I am introduced, and people ask all manner of questions about Kenya. I was so annoyed and tired of being the odd one, including people asking, “Oh, come from Kenya, where there is little food?” I wondered if I looked malnourished, but now, I know what they meant, and I can ask the same question to my Kenyan friends. I was supposed to know everything about Kenyan political, social, economic, and every relative that people had there. Oops, for a moment, I felt like an ambassador of Kenya to Uganda. Be ready to say, “I don’t know,” otherwise you will tell enough lies.

My new status is immigrant by marriage, feeling like a stranger, and the biggest temptation was to look for Kenyans when I found my way from the house. But I learned that I was hanging out with Kenyans who were basically in the business of comparing Uganda to Kenya and how Uganda needs to style up. I started hating Uganda until I learned that most of those friends would not be in Uganda permanently. They were either working here or married to Kenyans and so living Kenyan lives. I broke loose and decided whatever it takes to integrate and love this country, which I had decided for the sake of love to dwell in. Therefore, I stopped meeting some Kenyan friends and made friends with the Ugandans who off course, kept reminding me who I was “Kenyan and the stranger.”

I still held on to my constant 'God' and my husband, who worked so hard for me to integrate, including sending me to the shop to buy items, and I would be so confused about names, currency and had to keep calling. This was a good foundation for our marriage because I learned to fully rely on my husband, and he lovingly taught me how to do so many things Ugandan way. What happens up to now, so it’s a lifetime adventure that gives a sweet lemonade taste to our marriage and never gets boring.

Oh, we hadn’t discussed that and noted in the ‘notebook’ I thought to myself, the whole area of death rites and beliefs, who does that when they are in love? So we lose our sister, and oops, I was met with a shock on how differently we relate to dead people and the rites around them. Then I remembered that when I die, I will be buried here!!!!!! Now I have kept reminding Robert that there have to be some days to plan for burials. Hence, if you communicate to my culture that someone is dead, they start planning, so when I receive a call that someone is dead in Uganda, I have to respond instantly by stopping everything and packing and go. 

Does it matter where you are buried and the rites around your body?

Dual babies

Roy and Bernice join us, and oh, what a joy. How about naming?  What language are they supposed to speak? Oh, and I had forgotten circumcision for the boy child, when and how should it be done if it should be done anyway.

 I repented for the many times I had always thought it was irresponsibility not to teach your kids your mother tongue. So what language are they supposed to learn? I guess Our communication medium for me and Robert is English unless it's classified that we do Swahili and then Norwegian if we must coordinate a robbery. When you visit, do try them and see how many languages they speak.

But my awakening moments have been when I must defend at the borders that I am not child trafficking, and at one point, I decided to breastfeed just just just. The questions go like, "are these Kenyans or Ugandans," well, now I know it depends on who you ask and when you ask it. Roy is happy to be Kenyan when he is in situations requiring proving international and gets very Ugandan when we are visiting Kenya. 

 How can you have different passports from your kids? Yes, I do, and it's until I travel alone with the kids that I must be aware and always carry a marriage certificate.

Well, how many of you keep a passport with you every time you leave home, being a foreigner has meant that I must always have my passport and a residence permit to explain what I am doing in Uganda. 

I have one document that shows I am Ugandan, and that’s my driver’s license and my National social security funds due to poor systems.

So what do we do to celebrate different seasons like Christmas? Whose style is the best? What should we pass to our kids? What heritage do we want to give them? Robert might need to remind me if it’s in the ‘notebook’ but what I know is we have a cross-cultural house. And the advantage is that almost everything works, no food can’t be eaten including grasshoppers, and white ants, it can also be cooked in all styles including the shared Norwegian culture that keeps us very alive.

Let’s finish seriously.

In his article migration as missions, Robert Gallagher argues that “migration served an important function of the mission of God in the Old Testament in two major aspects. First, as detailed in the Mosaic covenant, God’s people were to love the stranger in their midst, and in doing so, offer an invitation to participate in the community.” I have seen what it means to be rejected and received well as a stranger, and now that I have settled here, I look for people who are strangers so I can serve them.

  Second, “God’s people in migration were potential agents of transformation in developing a faith in the Lord within those nations they came into contact. The case of David’s migrations to Gath shows the intersection of migration and mission. Because of the political turmoil within Israel, David was forced to immigrate to Gath, which provided him an ongoing opportunity to intermingle with these Philistines. As a result, king Achish was brought to some awareness of the Hebrew God, which influenced the inhabitants of that city's evolving destiny. Whether deliberate or accidental, David showed that migration played a role in the mission of God and should be considered as a strategy of the church today.” I am a missionary to Uganda from Kenya, and if I am allowed, I can be used by God to transform lives. It’s worth noting that I have experienced a great mission fulfillment as I served as a foreigner more than I would have in my country, where I know everything.

 Migratory movements of God’s people continue to serve as an important facet in the global spread of the Christian faith to bring about God's mission.

Do not sit back and pity yourself. Find out why God decided to scatter you to another land.

Pilgrims in the world.

Gallagher “God accepts us as we are, on the ground of Christ work alone but if he accepts us “as we are” and transforms us into what he wants us to be and further than that that we inherit the pilgrim principle which whispers to us that we have no abiding city and warns us to be faithful to Christ who puts us out of step with our society.” By becoming children of God, He puts us into a new set of relationships with other family members of the faith, which we must accept. We have dual nationality and trio nationality and are loyal to the faith family, which links us to those countries we move to. We must learn to love and live with our brothers and sisters and pray that they will understand we have one share nationality and citizenship.

 On the other hand, praying that they can receive us well as married immigrants and when we are received well will play the role of serving others we met and are strangers and different immigrants' categories. 

For you considering a cross-cultural marriage: If God has led you to it, go for it and don't look back. Keep an anchor of Christ all the time. Join the new family of believers and practice family there as well as in your new-found home. Try to receive cross-cultural marital counseling and keep a cross-cultural couple near you as a family.  Enjoy the sweetness that comes with this undefined life. 

Robert, my husband, says hallo. 

  Dedicating this to all you through mission endeavors are getting to meet brothers and sisters in the family of God and are saying yes till death do you part. Dedicate to the movements around GLA, I serve Africa, MCN.and others. 

You are not alone. 

Gillian the Pilgrim.