Recent Update. Relationships/Marriage

Neven teaches Arabic and is in charge of the greenhouses here on campus. I like her. She is really tall, which is an insignificant detail. She’s also very straightforward, which is very unusual for an Egyptian, especially a woman. It’s very refreshing. I like to know where people stand, and it’s nice to not have to guess what someone’s thinking. I’ve asked her to teach me Arabic, and she’s excited about it. Students have taught me some words, but they have not taught me how the language works, so I’m really hoping to learn quite a bit. I’m excited. Taylor started coming with me. That’s good.

Neven and I are in charge of the play for the Christmas program. We were instructed that there was to be nothing to do with drinking or drugs in the play. Stupid instruction, I thought. Then I remembered: No… that’s a very good guideline. Nothing should be assumed. The last time I was here, there were some people that were really pushing for something along those lines. And I think it was the last line or two that mentioned something about, “Oh, it’s Christmas. Let’s forgive the drunk man that murdered my family.” “Okay.” Yes, I exaggerate, but that was the story line—I kid you not. Not this year. We’re doing the nativity story. Gladys suggested that we ask a man who sometimes works on campus if we can borrow his baby camel for the play. Neven came to me last night and said that we couldn’t. “Why not?” “Because he ate it.” So that’s that, I guess.

In my junior and senior Bible classes I’ve been teaching a lot about marriage. I am not married, nor do I have kids, yet they still take me seriously. Haha. I guess that works. This past week we split up the girls and the guys. Pastor Tom talked with the guys, and I took the girls and talked to them about physical abuse in relationships, waiting for a guy who is worthy, rape, and how we teach people how to treat us. On Monday I will be teaching them about female genital mutilation. Egypt and Sudan have the highest rates of FGM in the world. I believe that it started along the Nile and is a tradition that persists. It is apparently less common than it was ten years ago, but I am sure that some of these girls must have undergone it. I want them to learn about what exactly happened, why it is pointless, why they should never make or allow their daughters be cut, and what the hymen has to do with virginity. It is still a very common practice here for the family to come the day after the wedding to see the bloody sheet. I was mortified when I first heard that, but now I’m more used to the idea of it. I mean, who needs privacy anyway?

One of my Egyptian friends got married a couple years ago to a non-Egyptian guy. We were at her house, and her non-English speaking family was talking in Arabic about the wedding that was coming up and about how they were going to come over the next day, etc. Her fiancé got very serious and said to her and me in English, “They will see nothing. If they want to see blood they can go kill a goat.” I started laughing and was so proud of him.

I wish that marriage was more respected and treated more sacredly in American culture than it is. And I have come to appreciate how highly marriage is regarded here. But there are downsides to every good thing, and here the downside is that girls sometimes feel like they can’t get out of relationships. Dating around is not an option. Reputation is just about everything, and a girl who has dated too much in her past, or even at all, may not be looked at as an acceptable girl to be with. Even if a guy is fine with her, his family might really have a problem with it. And her family is all paranoid that she will seem loose and dirty. But I strongly emphasized to them that it is better to feel pain and shame and be talked about now than to be miserably married to the wrong man for the rest of their lives. I am excited about teaching these girls to make decisions for themselves. I am all about honoring parents and authority, but I think that here, especially within the conservative Upper Egyptian cultures, families don’t know how to mind their own business. Everything is everyone’s business. I put a lot of emphasis on “…a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
Who is he leaving?
His mother and father.
Who is he becoming one with?
His wife.
So who is he supposed to put first, his wife or his parents?
His wife. But Miss, the Bible says to honor your mother and your father.
You can and should still honor them. But you are one with your wife. You must be united to each other. And you must put each other before your parents. Love them, honor them, but you may have to establish boundaries with them so that your marriage can work.

I do not want to turn them away from their families, but when everyone in their extended family lives in a single apartment building all on top of each other, or even within the same house, the controlling mothers-in-law run wild.

Before we split up the girls and the guys, I began to touch on domestic violence, and I realized that I had to cross a couple guys off my I-don't-think-he’d-hit-me list. It was surprising and yet not. I heard reasons like, “No, it’s not good, but we are only human and sometimes we can’t control ourselves,” and, “We saw our fathers do it all our lives, and their fathers did it, and their fathers did it. It’s part of our culture and it’s what we know.” I explained as best as I could why it is very faulty logic to think that that is acceptable even if “by accident” and added solid Biblical reasoning. But me explaining all of that may have just sounded like someone who didn’t want to get hit. So I let the big 6’4” man, Pastor Tom, finish that one off.

I have high hopes for these students. They are good. And I am so thankful that we can teach them these things. There have been so many things that I have just considered common sense, but then I realize later through something that I’ve seen that I learned that information in school at some point. So hopefully what we are teaching them will become like common sense.

I told the class that I was going to marry someone who would teach Sabbath school with me someday and we’d have the young people from our church over during the week and eat and talk about God. Ashraf smiled and said in a That’s-cute,-let-me-pat-you-on-the-head-for-your-sweet-idea voice, “There’s no one like that, ya Miss. There’s no one like you.” “Ashraf, you can come to my wedding someday.”

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” –Psalm 37:4