An Asian Interlude

Before we get deep into Africa and Botswana in particular there is a short episode which happened in Asia which laid the foundation for our future call to Africa.

I (Rod) was serving in the New Zealand military in the early seventies when I received Christ as my Lord and Saviour. This is the subject of another story but suffice to say I was completely changed and enjoying my new found life in Christ in the city of Auckland.

One day I was asked by my commanding Officer if I would like to apply for the post of Maintenance Officer for the NZ Embassy in Moscow. Since my second sister Betty was about to be married in England I thought I would apply for the post and if accepted be bale to fly through London, attend her wedding, then go onto Moscow for the 12 to 18 month post.

On attending the interview in Wellington I was asked if I would rather go to Beijing and serve at the Embassy there. This confused me a little but said I would rather go to Moscow and left it at that. I met with my youth Pastor Gary Levens, we prayed and left it with the Lord. Foreign Affairs came back with the a final offer of Beijing which I took as the leading of the Lord. A few weeks later I was winging my way over the Tasman Sea to Sydney and then onto Hong Kong and eventually Beijing.

I spent 21 months in Beijing, a time when China was in tremendous change and turmoil. Mao died. The Cultural Revolution was coming to an end, and the new China was beginning to come forth with the eventual re-instalment of Deng who led china into its current state.

For me it was a massive change in culture having never been out of NZ before. In China everybody wore the green, grey or blue Mao suites. Individualism was not tolerated nor were relationships with foreigners (foreign devils!). As diplomats we lived in diplomatic compounds and generally shopped in shops provided for us. Travel was largely restricted except if pre-arranged. We were always accompanied by interpreters at each location travelled to.

As foreigners we were very conspicuous because of our western cloths and therefore objects of curiosity by the Chinese. I eventually got around this by wearing Chinese cloths and riding a Chinese bike. People still looked at me occasionally but there was a tremendous change in the way I was treated. In the huge department stores i occasionally shopped in I now had to push my way through he crowds where as previously I had a meter wide gap open up for me! At night on several occasions I was mistaken for being Chinese. This was a tremendous lesson on identification with the people whom I was living amongst although one could never completely pull down the divide that had been established during those days.

The most profound experiences I had in China were to be able to visit some of its most beautiful regions, to experience the power of the Tangshan earthquake and to be present in Beijing when Mao passed away. But over all was the influence of its people on me, the huge numbers of population living around me mostly if not all without Christ and shut off from its message and huge cultural distance between the Chinese and I. The Chinese culture itself is a very different one to my own but the cultural distance was made even more severe by the effects of the Cultural Revolution on the people and the way it made the Chinese distant from all other peoples.

This rich experience in China paved the way for me to be able to live in Africa having had extensive cross cultural experience in very difficult conditions.