Concrete Walls

There was a recent blogpost that was posted by A Life Overseas called you’re doing it wrong.  It gives a list of the various polarized views on how to integrate into a society and culture that is vastly different than your own.  Many of these things I have wrestled with myself and I still wrestle with.  I want to devote my next few blogposts to share some of my own thoughts regarding these various perspectives.   http://www.alifeoverseas.com/youre-doing-it-wrong:

• You missionaries living in guarded compounds, you’re obviously not really invested in your community. You alienate your neighbors with barbed wire topped fences.
• You missionaries living in houses and apartments in local neighborhoods, you are risking the safety and well-being of your family. Thank God for those missionaries in that guarded compound nearby that welcome you with open arms and shelter you in times of trouble.”

The fence and the security post of the ACSI Nigeria office 

Coming from the U.S, towering concrete fences seem quite daunting, isolating, and foreign.  This makes it easy for my thinking to gravitate towards the first point.  It was normal growing up to know all the well-trodden shortcuts between our neighbor’s yards to get to their houses or to the next street over without having to walk around the block.  For the most part, we were free to roam between our neighbor’s yards.  There were a few exceptions, those that had chain link fences because of pets or young children, or who probably wanted to keep the Kluitenberg Kaos out of their yard.  But the chain link fences in many ways were transparent.  We could still see which bush the misdirected Frisbee or baseball ended up in, when our neighbor was out cutting the grass, and when not to go near the fence because their dog, who bit my pet rabbit, was on the prowl. 

Unlike my experience growing up, fences have become my new 'normal'.  When I first came to Nigeria in 2015, I attended a Bible study at the house of one of the U.S embassy staff.  Driving up to the gate in itself was a shock.  A mile-high fence with electric fencing and barbed wire ran across the top, armed security guards cautiously welcomed us and would not let us enter the compound unless our name was on “the list.”  Once we entered, as we stood in awe of the beauty and extravagance of this four story mansion, the couple living there were quick to explain that they only use the first floor of the house. 

In Sierra Leone, driving through hill station in the capital of Freetown, it wasn’t difficult to notice that it was always the NGO compounds that had the tallest fences, the most security guards and the most excessive houses.  Off in the distance, you could see the American embassy resting on the top of a hill, the fence so high you could hardly make out the building that was swallowed up by the fence.  In Jos, Nigeria, the headquarters of many different mission organizations, it is not hard to spot communities of missionaries living in guarded and walled compounds.  These experiences have prompted me to gravitate towards the first point, automatically assuming that missionaries and other foreigners living in heavily guarded and secured compounds are not invested in their communities. 

I have now found myself living in a concrete jungle, where sky high fences and security guards almost seems to be the norm.  I am currently living in a walled compound, connected to a school, with barbed wire running across the top of the fence.  Because the school owns the compound, we have school security guards on duty 24/7.  On top of that, we have armed guards with guns on duty in the evenings.  The compound is tucked away from the hustle and bustle of the main road in a little neighborhood that consists of more walled compounds concealing more apartment buildings.  Even though you have come to your friend’s gated estate more than 10 times, you still can’t enter into the estate until you call your friend, who calls the security guard to inform them that they should let you in. 

Because of the hustle and density of the city of Lagos, it takes on a personality like any big city, where you hardly know your next door neighbor.  It has become increasingly more and more difficult to invest in community and to develop deep, authentic relationships.  It is easy to blame the fences, the traffic, or the busyness of life.  The communal and relational culture that is unique to West Africa has slowly begun to fade away in Lagos, which has begun to result in feelings of loneliness and isolation.  

I have begun to wonder if these concrete fences are what have caused us not to invest in the local community?  Is it the fence itself that causes that feeling of isolation and loneliness in a giant city of over 20 million people?  Is it the fence itself that causes us not to know our neighbors?  Living in a culture that is built upon relationship and community, I am beginning to think that it is not necessarily the high-walled concrete fence that defines whether or not you are really invested in your community.  It is up to you, the individual, the family, the person, living behind the fence, that defines how isolating that fence will be.  It is up to you to make that fence inviting, to welcome people into your life behind the fence.  It is up to me to find ways to welcome my neighbors into my house behind my fence.  The fence itself does not determine the hospitality of my home.