Sacred Saga Ministries - Jim's Blog - Back from the far Side of the World (pt. 1)

Back from the far Side of the World (pt. 1)

Posted on Sunday, June 6, 2010 at 08:24PM by

I have been back from Guam for awhile now. I think I have finally readjusted to Pacific Time. As you probably know Guam is an American territory in the far western Pacific Ocean. The slogan of the island is "where America's day begins." If you ever wonder if the world is going to end today, don't worry, it's already tomorrow in Guam!

The island of Guam is just a little larger than a postage stamp in the vastness of the western Pacific. It is one of the larger islands of Micronesia. But that is not saying much: it is about 6 miles wide and 23 miles long. It is also a study in cultural contrasts. Ferdinand Magellan landed in Guam as he circumnavigated the world. There he was met by the Chamorro tribe, the native people of Guam.

In Chamorro culture (as well as some other Micronesian cultures), there is virtually no comprehension of the meaning of “private property." By "private property" I don't mean real estate, rather the idea that anything belongs to an individual person. To this day in Chamorro culture, if someone admires and wants something which you own, all they have to do is to ask you for it and you are obligated culturally to give it to them. My missionary friends at Pacific Islands University have discovered, much to their chagrin, that this extends beyond those who are Chamorro. They have learned the hard way that when they lend something to one of the Islanders that they will most likely never see it again.

The modern Chamorros, are descended from the island's indigenous inhabitants and comprise the island’s largest ethnic group, about 55% of the population, while Filipinos comprise about 35%. Descendents of other Micronesian Island tribes comprise about 8% of the island's total population. This leaves the remaining 2% divided between Anglos and other Asian populations, particularly Japanese.

Despite the Western veneer the culture of the island is still Chamorro at its roots. We are all familiar with the Hawaiian “Aloha” as a greeting. In Guam the greeting is Hafa Adai (pronounced HALF A DAY) meaning “Hello.” Americans routinely observe (complain) that this is not just a greeting but also a work ethic! (roughly equivalent to the Spanish “mañana” which literally means “tomorrow” but connotes the sense of “not today.”

In our Western culture it is the individual who is at the center of reality. Among the Chamorros (and other Micronesians) it is the tribe, clan and family that are the important units as opposed to the individual. Disagreements between husbands and wives regularly escalate into feuds between the families of each spouse. One longtime friend who is a faculty member at PIU told me of one recent instance where a husband and wife had a big argument. Aunts on both sides of the family started organizing a family brawl that would bring his family together with her family where the families would fight. Two things about this were particularly incredible to me: that the husband's brother was approached by the wife's aunt who asked him which side he was on. The brother refused to take sides. The aunt said “that means you run your brother side.” He protested “no I'm not on either person's." "No you are on your brother side." She insisted. What to my western mind makes the situation even more bizarre is that one of the aunts involved in organizing this brawl was a Christian woman, who is a graduate from a Christian college and has a master's degree in counseling from a major American Christian college. To me this serves as a jarring illustration of how deeply we drink of our native cultures, and how our beliefs are shaped by our cultural conditioning. Behavior that from our perspective is utterly inconsistent with the claim to being Christian, is viewed as normative in this case in a foreign culture.

Dr. Don Smith, one of my former colleagues at Western Seminary, was a lifelong missionary. Much of his career was spent in Africa particularly in Kenya where he founded DayStar University. Don's expertise is in cross-cultural communication. He has observed that penetrating the culture is much like peeling an onion. You can have an effect on the first level of culture but underneath that layer everything else remains untouched. Ideally, over time the next layer of culture will be penetrated and transformed. Ideally this process will be continual over several generations and the culture will be penetrated by the gospel and transformed. But this is not a given. It is possible in the cross-cultural communication process to convey the gospel in the language and thought forms of people so that it becomes a part of that culture, but the parts of the gospel that challenge cultural norms are brushed aside.

Guam is a study in contrasts. Friends who lived there 20 to 30 years ago tell how primitive the island was at that time. During those days the chief American presence on the island was military and on the military bases the culture was first world American developed. But to step off the base was to step into the Third World with all its poverty and squalor. The situation is better than that today but there is still wide diversity running from developed world (first world) around Tumon Bay with its tourist hotels restaurants and the like, to the small villages on the southern and eastern and interior parts of the island that are virtually Third World. In some places the first and the third worlds meet one another in jarring ways—nice modern houses beside houses with corrugated steel roofs (or in one place I saw a corrugated steel house whose roof was blown off in the last typhoon about seven years ago).

While not a popular tourist spot for Americans, Japanese tourism and tourism from the Philippines is a vital part of the island economy. The heart of the tourist industry is near Tumon Bay. Here we find a hotel row which is reminiscent of the hotels on Waikiki in Honolulu, replete with chain restaurants such as the Hard Rock Cafe which caters to the tourist trade. (Although on a much smaller scale) Tumon Bay itself is protected by a magnificent coral reef. The snorkeling there is wonderful, although if you go at low tide the coral formations stick up above the surface of the water. But the tourist attractions include golfing and scuba diving. It is an interesting thing to see 20 to 30 Japanese tourists in full scuba gear including wetsuits being led by a couple of instructors who will keep watch over them on their introductory dive. (Why would anyone need a wetsuit to dive in 85° water?)

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