The Story You didn't Hear
The Story You Didn’t Hear
“Mama Thandi, I have to go to my meeting. We will have to talk about this later.” Voices were raised and I felt my anxiety rise as I spoke.
“How dare you ask me where I was? I found someone to cover my class.” Mama Thandi, one of the Mamas at the South African AIDS orphanage where I was volunteering, asked in her normal, loud manner. ‘Mama’ is used for an older woman as a term of respect. The children called me Mama Deet.
“Well, that person didn’t show up, so I had to teach your class. It’s not a big deal, but in the future if you’re not going to be here, I just need to know.” I responded, trying to bring the conversation to a close. Mama Thandi was a large woman, both in physical size and in personality. I had worked with her for seven months, and for most of that time I had felt intimidated and uncomfortable around her.
Wanting to move away from her, I walked to the small staff room to print some papers for my meeting. She followed me, standing in the only doorway. I felt cornered. Her voice continued to rise in volume, and my voice rose to match. I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other, but I remember, eleven years later, precisely how I felt: scared, confused, and anxious.
Even now, I shake and get teary thinking back to those tense minutes. When I stood up to leave, she blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let me out. Mama Thandi closed the door, and suddenly I was trapped in the small staff room with her yelling at me. I shook all over. I used the phone to call security. The security guard came, but Mama Thandi told him in Xhosa to leave, so he did. Now the enclosed feeling worsened as my legs started to shake and I could hardly stand. After he left, I screamed for anyone who might be nearby. The other two teachers came and told Mama Thandi to let me out.
Eventually my tormentor said, “Oh, she’s just acting. There’s nothing wrong, but I’ll let her go anyway.” I sprinted to a close by small office where I knew she wouldn’t follow. To my coworker’s surprise, I ran to the corner and cried while they tried to figure out what was going on.
How had it come to this?
We were both women devoted to the ‘least of these’. We were both Christians. What had gone wrong with the loving environment of this AIDS orphanage that this could occur?
Looking back on it after many years and some wisdom gained from counseling, I can pick out the patterns that were impossible to see at the time. I had seen upsetting behaviors in Mama Thandi (not her real name) since I had arrived there seven months earlier, but in an effort to fit in and be accepting and loving, I had chosen to say nothing. When I finally did talk about her to my white expatriate ‘boss’, the only response I received was, “It’s your fault, you just don’t understand her culture.”
Afterward, other female coworkers came to me to tell me how afraid of her they were, how she had intimidated them, and how she had even locked them in a room. They told me all this in confidence, after it had happened to me as well. They weren’t willing to tell the administration.
It turns out that Mama Thandi was a manipulative bully. I was just one of her many victims because I simply asked her where she was after I subbed for her class all morning.
Why had this happened?
I have noticed a positive trend in the area of missions/relief work where everything is moving to be led by local people. How exciting to see “In many countries strong churches have grown in the meantime and self-confident leaders have taken over the leadership. Often missionaries work under their leadership or in cooperation with them. Missionaries are no longer pioneers who develop and put into practice projects independently.”[i]
Unfortunately, I also see this trend with the clear potential of going too far, or of being executed with insufficient training or guidance. In this AIDS orphanage I loved being able to work with local women, and I became good friends with two township ladies who both had very little education and were HIV positive. Things were different with Mama Thandi, though. She had a 3rd grade education, but I was placed ’below’ her, even with my years of teaching experience and a Master’s degree, purely because she was a local person. The white expatriate and South African people seemed to not want to be seen as the type of white people who had been so oppressive to the blacks in the past. They went out of their way to not have expectations, to not discourage, to not push, to not aggravate the local black South African Mamas.
We, the international volunteers, were seen as the ones who just came and tried to change everything and then left without caring about the culture.
So, while this trend of moving towards the local people having more leadership is a positive one, it is not the end-all, be-all of where we should be heading. I would unprofessionally diagnose Mama Thandi with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, probably from some abuse or trauma she experienced under Apartheid, which she would never talk about. This trend of the local person always being right covered up abuse over many years that really should have been handled differently.
I share this very personal story with you because I see a similar trend in the Wycliffe Associates organization.
In many cases they are throwing nationals into a translation job for which they have no training. True, you can say “We don’t need a white person to do it for them.” But it does not have to do with skin color. It has to do with training and ability.
Could someone like Mama Thandi be picked for a MAST translation team? Yes, easily. Active in her church and Christian ministry, she would be the top pick. In a MAST setting she would also speak the loudest, making sure people followed her way and telling the quiet people they were wrong. Other participants would feel bullied but never tell any leaders.
This isn’t just a possibility, this is reality. We heard from a WBT translator in Papua New Guinea of a local man who found his way into leadership at a translation project, was quickly found to not be a good fit and a dishonest man. After leaving that translation project he went over and was a translator for the MAST team nearby that was starting out.
In an environment where a lack of training, a lack of accountability, rushed timelines, and a headlong rush to fulfill unreasonably high expectations exist side by side, abuse is often found and covered up.
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