Post 116 Extreme Hospitality

Nigerian Hospitality

If there is anything I have learned during my 30 years in Nigeria it is hospitality.  Nigerians have been so generous to us when it comes to hospitality, as they are to their own people. One can drop in on Nigerian friends and you are immediately invited to join them in a meal if that happens to be their agenda at the moment. This is true not only of the well-to-do, but just as much of the poorer among them. Now, there is a downside to that. Extending such hospitality to an unexpected guest can be at the expense of family members who may have to do with leftovers, especially children.

Any Nigerian who reads the above paragraph may object to it. Nigeria is a square box containing 400 different nations, cultures and languages. There is no way you can say anything about traditional culture that will hold for all of these cultures. Expatriates who have lived in other parts of the country sometimes marvel at our stories from the country’s Middle Belt. They have not always experienced such hospitality.  But for us, we have always been deeply impressed by that cultural feature.

And, of course, after being exposed to that for 30 years and having benefited from it so many times, it could not help but rub off on  us. My wife and I have also become very hospitable, so much so that the people among whom we now live in Vancouver, Canada, are amazed at how open our door is and how readily we have people we did not expect join us at our table. Thank you, Nigeria, for teaching us such a Christian virtue. 

Western Hospitality

Yes, hospitality is a Christian virtue, though not only Christian. Plenty of other people share that virtue.  But Nigerians tend to laugh at us in a kind of derisive way. They joke that, according to their experiences in the Western world, we are so inhospitable that if we want to visit our grandmother, we have to make an appointment at least two weeks in advance! I had become somewhat estranged to Western ways and denied that “accusation.” 

However, upon our return to the West, more specifically, to Vancouver, I found they were not that far off. Since I immigrated from my birth country, The Netherlands, at age thirteen, I have had little experience with my own grandmothers during my adult years. None whatsoever in Vancouver. However, I was surprised at how inhospitable Vancouver really is. Vancouverites will entertain you, but very seldom in their house. It’s just about always in a café or restaurant by which we are totally immersed here in downtown. It’s even true of the near-by church we attend, though, I am happy to report, not of my other church, the Christian Reformed Church.

And not only Vancouver.  When my wife and I were RV-ing through the American South and attended a city church, they welcomed the guests among them and assured us that they were very hospitable. If we needed a good restaurant for dinner after the service, all we would have to do is ask and they would point us to the good ones in town!  Hospitable?  Yea, right!  In contrast, when we attended a rather conservative Reformed type of church in BC’s “Bible Belt,” we ended up at the dinner table of a large family of seven children. We had never had any contact before. 

Dutch Hospitality--Stories

Why do I write of hospitality in this post? Because of the “extreme” hospitality we experienced in Lutjegast, my birth village in The Netherlands (NL) with a population of around 1,000.  It’s a follow-up to the previous post that I feel compelled to write; it was that surprising and extreme—but not everything extreme is negative. My parents lived in Lutjegast from 1929-1951. My father ran a barbershop, while my mother ran a growing family and, for a few years, a hair salon for ladies. I was thirteen when we emigrated to Canada in 1951.  By 2016 pretty well all memories of our Boer barber family had been erased in the village except among the elderly. 

Two days we wandered around in Lutjegast, partially by car, partially on foot. We came to the church where I was baptized as a baby and met someone living near it. We introduced ourselves, but he had never heard about us. Nevertheless, he invited us into his house for a coffee. There we sat in the dining room, surrounded by the entire family, drinking coffee and chatting about past when we lived there. That was the first one. An hour or so later, as we were looking for a niece who, I had reasons to believe, lived in the town. In the course of the search, we knocked on someone’s door. A lady opened the door and, after our brief introduction, again invited us inside for a tea with her and her husband. They had vaguely heard of some Boer family, but that was all. 

Our second day in the village, a Saturday, we were supposed to meet a cousin of mine who lived elsewhere. We would meet at the church in the centre of Lutjegast. We arrived early to find a spot where we could visit, but did not find anything. The only thing open was a hair salon. We entered to ask them about a place in the village where we could have a coffee. The lady told us that the village really does not have a suitable place for that, but she immediately invited us to visit with our guests around the table in her shop and she would serve us coffee!  We did not accept the invitation since it was not really a suitable environment for the kind of visit we envisioned. But it was another amazing hospitality event.

Soon my cousin and husband drove into the church yard. The custodian met us and after the by now customary introduction, he not only showed us the inside of the renovated church but also invited us for a coffee and cooky in the church hall, where we could sit as long as we wanted. 

Personally, I think that pattern of hospitality to strangers is remarkable. My appreciation for my birth village soared. I am in the process of writing a more detailed report of this hospitality in the Dutch language to be published in the local village paper to express our appreciation not only, but also to make sure they enjoy a positive self-image. They are not just some village duds as some city slickers may think; they display the image of God in their hospitality. 

But we ran into this trait throughout our trip.  We had three main hosts in three different parts of the country and all went far beyond the normal standards of hospitality. Two of these were friends from different phases of our history, but they were absolutely superb. One of them housed us for ten days and nights. The most unexpected was the owner of Hotel Friesland. He took a liking to us and several times invited us privately for a tea and cooky.  A hotel owner! 

Concluding Comments

All in all, I am still a bit dizzy about all this hospitality. Can’t get over it. That’s why I write about it in such glowing terms.  Thank you, my Dutch friends, both old and new. And to my Nigerian friends I can only caution them that whatever unpleasant experiences they may have had in the West, their description of hospitality certainly does not resonate with my Dutch experience. I should probably close with a preemptive admission that race may at least partially account for the difference.    

Post 97—Do You Have a Cigarette?

Het is geen man

Die niet roken kan

Smoking in Lutjegast

That little vignette is one I grew up with in my Dutch village Lutjegast. It means simply that if you don’t smoke, you’re not a man. And our village meant it, seriously. As a young boy, I knew every single person in the 1100-person village, barring none. And I knew a great deal of child-appropriate stuff about almost everyone, barring one or two.  But there were two categories of people who puzzled me: those who were not married and those who did not smoke!  That married thing affected both genders, but the smoking only males. Women did not smoke, period. One who did would hardly be considered female—the complete opposite. 

And smoke the men did—with a few exceptions, but they were not men anyway, these mysterious creatures. Everyone, from pauper to pastor smoked. Though pretty well all Christians in today’s Canada oppose smoking and see it as an unhealthy addiction, that was not the case in Lutjegast or in the rest of the country. Even our church elders during their monthly meetings would smoke cigarettes, pipes or cigars, possibly accompanied by wine.  My Dad, a serious Christian, was one of the main cigarette merchants in town. As Christians, we were strictly opposed to so-called “worldly amusements,” but smoking was not one of them.

As to myself, during my early teens I was eager to join the ranks of adult men. One of the rights of passage to arrive there was to smoke. So, I would rush the season by occasionally “borrowing” a package of cigarettes from my Dad’s supply and share cigarettes with my friends. Just imagine the hero I was!  Ah, yes, we were getting there!

Imagine our surprise when we immigrated to Canada in 1951. For the first time in our lives we met Christians who thought smoking sinful, especially Baptists.  What kind of Christians are these? we wondered. Smoking sin?  Aw, get off the pot (pun intended)!  We were from a Reformed church in The Netherlands and smoked lustily right after our Christian Reformed (CRC) morning service—outside, for all to see.  We became known as the “smoking church,” a derisive distinction among Canadian Christians.

That was the 1950s.

Baptist versus Reformed

The tradition continued for some time after our immigration to BC, also in my own life. Though I was too young to be a dedicated smoker, Dad did occasionally allow me to smoke a cigarette. I have several pictures from that period of my smoking, one of them in our living room right after coming home from church. Over time I became a regular smoker, though never a heavy one. I actually went in and out—quit and resumed, quit and resumed. Later, during my 50s in Nigeria, I would smoke an occasional  cigar or pipe, but Nigerian Christians severely reprimanded me. I eventually gave that up as well, not because I considered it sin, but it hurt my throat and vocal chords—which, I guess, did turn it into a sin, since we are not to abuse our bodies. My Dad, he was a chain smoker for some 40 years.  

Fast forward to the 21^st century—2016. Somewhere along the line at around 60, my Dad suddenly quit cold turkey and from there on chastised anyone who could not manage such a drastic change—really, kind of hypocritical. But today you will hardly see anyone smoking after a CRC service. Neither will elders smoke during their meetings. We’ve become Canadians!  Indigenized. Smoking is sin, we now argue vigorously. The Baptists were ahead of their time. Well our time anyhow. Not just time wise, but even ethic-wise.   They were right; we were wrong! Wow, that was a hard one to swallow.  Baptists more right than we Reformed?  Was that possible?  Well, they were, possible or not. Some of us are still smarting from that humiliation! 

But in Canada we’re pretty well on one page on this one now, Baptist or Reformed, Christian or Secular. There’s a strong awareness that smoking kills and is, in fact, one of the most ferocious killers in the country.  Many places are now out of bounds to smokers, including restaurants and city parks, most major buildings, not to speak of church facilities. Remaining smokers are feeling the pressure and are defensive. Things have turned topsy-turvy.  Now it’s almost a matter of

                                                                  

                       Het is geen man

Die nog roken kan

“It’s not a man who still smokes,” but now women (vrouw-en) have to be included as well, like:

Het is geen man of vrouw

Die nog roken wou

By now you can probably figure it out! But, just in case, here it is in the Queen’s English:

It is not a man or woman

Who still wants to smoke

Doesn’t quite sound like a limerick in English, but it makes the point.

The following public practices have become offensive and are seen as ill-mannered:

         

Smoking in any crowd, thereby forcing people to inhale your secondary smoke, even on the sidewalk, at a bus stop, in the park or on the beach.

          Dumping your cigarette butt carelessly on the                 street. It’s considered littering, especially when               your city has attached butt trays to lamp posts for           that purpose.

Smoking yourself to death at my expense. Of course, that holds for all unhealthy practices, some of which, I am hesitant to admit, I practice as well.  So we all end up in the same ball park.

What of those who argue smoking is part of our freedom?  Should it even be that?  When it creates so much sickness leading to death and I have to pay for the results of your addiction through our medical system? Why should I?  Our forced insurance system logically leads to a great increase of my public responsibility for my health and for a restriction of my freedom to smoke or engage in other personally harmful practices. I have at least the moral, if not legal, right to demand you stop. Through our insurance system, we have become each other’s keepers—exactly where Jesus wanted us to begin with. It took a Baptist preacher-politician to get us there almost over the dead bodies of the RCMP. 

Even as a human right smoking is now frowned upon.  The last couple of days there’s been a story in the media about an employer who for years has refused to hire anyone who smokes, on or off the job, even at home. Even in “human rights-cracy” Canada, so far no one has sued him. No one has yet tried to make a quick legal buck of this practice? That says something about how far we’ve come—a long way indeed.

What of those who argue smoking is part of our freedom?  Should it even be that?  When it creates so much sickness leading to death and I have to pay for the results of your addiction through our medical system? Why should I?  Our forced insurance system logically leads to a great increase of my public responsibility for my health and for a restriction of my freedom to smoke or engage in other personally harmful practices. I have at least the moral, if not legal, right to demand you stop. Through our insurance system, we have become each other’s keepers—exactly where Jesus wanted us to begin with. It took a Baptist preacher-politician to get us there almost over the dead bodies of the RCMP. 

The best solution to all this is to encourage each other to live our lives along the best health guidelines as possible and remember our responsibility to each other.

Now try that last version of that Dutch limerick on your smoking friend!