Materialism:

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now…but I just haven’t gotten around to it (it’s always girl’s night out, as you now know). As my time here is nearly over I have been seriously pondering what I’m going to take away from this experience…what I’ve learned…and I have come to conclude that materialism is a serious vice which I am culpable of. Back home, I am thousands of dollars in debt, I have very little to boast about in my personal bank account, I have a partially unreliable car (at times), a meager house, etc. Not that I’m ashamed of any of these things…but my point is that I am no “high class” girl. I would be labeled “middle class” at best. I don’t own the best clothes, the best house, or the best car (even though I often wish I did).

Conversely, I am “high class” of Addis. In spite of the fact that I live in an apartment much smaller than my house back home, that my material and financial wealth has not changed, that the light in my bedroom never seems to work, that we are using classroom desks for kitchen counters, that we are washing and re-using plastic bags and tin-foil to “save money”, that I am not paid to work here, that I have no car here, etc. etc. …. I am treated as a celebrity and I truly am “high class”. Why? I have food every day when most people on the streets can’t even afford bread (which costs the equivalent of 10 cents), I have a bed to sleep on when most people outside Bingham’s gates are sleeping on the ground with a tarp (or without), I have a worker who cleans the toilet and makes my bed for me like I’m royalty (even though we pay her a measly $4 every two weeks or so), I own more than one single outfit, I have the opportunity to shower in order to stay clean, I have access to an abundance of purified water when most people outside the gates are drinking the mud out of the ditches alongside the roads (the same ditches that are used as toilets), etc. etc.

It’s so strange to think that in America I am middle class but in Africa I am upper class. How can my class change so spontaneously simply by traveling 20 hours away? Africa and America are two completely different worlds and being here has made me wonder what’s “right”. I will be going home soon to graduation gifts, a fancy wedding, and loads of wedding gifts…all while people in Africa are starving to survive. Is that “right”? And while my “class” in America will probably never change…my “class” in Africa won’t either. In America we have been manipulated into thinking that we need to constantly climb the corporate ladder by increasing our material wealth…but even the homeless in America are better off than the homeless in Africa.

I really haven’t come to a complete “resolution” regarding this issue because I’m still in the pondering process…but I just felt like sharing. If you are reading this and you are in the “lower-middle” class in America…I pray that you don’t merely see this as a cool means of telling your friends that you are actually in the “upper class” elsewhere in the world. Likewise, if you are in the “upper class” in America I pray that this post doesn’t make you feel excessively guilty over having what you have. That’s not the point of this post. My point: perhaps just to clarify that materialism isn’t exactly a virtue…but I’m really not sure.

I’m done teaching full time…now I’m phasing out of the classroom slowly. Spring break around the corner and I’ll be home and married before you know it. A few prayer requests real quick:
Pray for the thousands of people who are living on the streets in Addis Ababa
Pray for Dave and I as we’re trying to sort out where we are going to be living and where we will be working following our time here in Africa

Pray for the loads of work that I’ve procrastinated on…that I’ll get it done before graduation. (Procrastination, I’ve learned, isn’t quite the “virtue” after all…)

-Nicole