Small town girl in the city

“I don’t want to live in a city,” I have always told people, and it is true. I am a person easily overwhelmed with the constant assaults to the senses that are found in the city. I have an irrational fear of public transportation, I hate the feeling of walking along the sidewalk and feeling pushed along by a crowd, and it stresses me out to hold my purse tightly against me for fear of thieves. Because of my upbringing, it is no surprise that I prefer small towns and rural areas, where drivers actually stop for pedestrians and where the natural world is nearer. I don’t want to live in a city, I said.

This summer I have lived in two cities.

In May I lived in Halifax with a joyful group of university students and leaders. We focused on the invisible of the cities, the marginalized ones, the victims of this unjust world. I think those people are the most interesting and cool. Spending the month in Halifax made me appreciate the city more. One of the things that most bothers me about cities is the feeling of inadequacy I get when I walk through them. I begin comparing myself to others: the fashionably dressed ones, the people talking on their cell phones while hurrying down the street, the people who actually know what bus they want to go on. And I inevitably feel like the clueless one, like the new kid in class with no one to show her the ropes. But hanging out with the folks at the drop-ins and on the street was refreshing. These people are unpretentious and interesting and if they were my friends I think I could change my mind about living in the city. Being in Halifax made me lose my idea that we are either “City mice” or “country mice” and reminded me that we are all just humans in the end.

For the past few months I have lived on the outskirts of Nampula, the capital of the same-named province in Mozambique. The living situation here is a sort of mission compound, and I only go into the city once or twice a week. For the first couple months, every trip into town was really stressful, and I could not go to the market without getting a headache. If I find Halifax—the familiar, small city—overwhelming, imagine how I feel about Nampula! Take my initial antagonism towards cities, multiply that by a language I don’t know and add people shouting “Hakuna” (white person), men catcalling marriage proposals, guards carrying machine guns, people peeing on trees on the sidewalk and crazy motorcycle drivers and this equals a totally overwhelmed Hannah.

Somehow I survived, and now I can go into the city, even on public transportation, without tensing up as if I am about to write a mathematical economics exam. I still do not think I would like to live in a city for my whole life but this one is growing on me. For instance, the other day a friend and I were crossing a busy street that is part of the rotunda. We did not want to cross when it was unsafe so we just stuck close to a couple of stooped, barefoot old women. The women thought we were so funny and had a nice laugh out of it as we finally crossed the street together at a safe time. I love these moments that remind us that despite differences in age, ethnicity, social status and language, we are still human.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

Nampula

The rotunda

No road rules

Just had to add a couple of sunset photos