I smiled and shook my head, trying to explain to my students that what they said, though sweet, didn’t make any sense to me. It just wasn’t something we said in English, but they insisted on saying it anyway.

Meanwhile, I was feeling a lack of productivity in my life since my main job at the time was putting on an after-school program for a bunch of children two afternoons a week. The rest of the time, I was too busy trying to learn a new language and adjust to a radically different culture to do anything else. My own culture had centralized work as the core of a person’s identity, and so I felt like a failure.

Then I talked to Adam. We had the time, so I asked him to tell me his life story. “Okay,” he agreed. “My name is Adam. My father’s name is Simeon, and my mother’s name is Rosalie. I was born in . . .”
The way he began his story struck me, revolutionizing my idea of identity. Most eighteen-year-olds in my home country would introduce themselves quite differently: “My name is Bill, and I’m a Senior at ______ school.” I would have begun, “My name is Eliza, and I’m a nurse working in _______.”

In the West, we’ve focused on work to the extent that we’ve forgotten the impact of relationships. But Adam reminded me that relationships define identity much more than work does. Finances, sickness, and so much more can easily change my identity, but I will always be a daughter to my parents and a sister to my siblings.

As I learned French, I started hearing “Merci pour toi,” or the more respectful “Merci pour vous” more often. They both meant, “Thank you for you,” but at the time, I still didn’t understand what it meant.

As I spent my free time visiting with people, I came to value simple interactions more. I learned more about communal cultures and began to understand that although I had previously labeled many of the people around me — particularly the men — as “lazy” because of the hours they would spend visiting, they were actually performing a vital function: building relationships. In a world where nearly half of the population lives in poverty and there are no reliable banks, insurance companies or government welfare systems, you need to have strong relationships in order to survive. When you can barely put food on the table, relationships ensure that your children can receive an education or medical care when they’re sick.

At this point, it’s been almost two years since I came to Central Africa. Because I wasn’t busy with a job that took me away from home for hours every day and left me exhausted at the end, I have spent most of my time visiting with people, either in their homes or mine. As a result, I have accumulated a treasure of cultural understanding and, more importantly, relationships. I have seen bridges built across chasms of misunderstanding. But the greatest reward has been seeing my friends grow in their knowledge of God.

“Merci kuma (Thanks again).”

More and more, my friends try to speak to me in their local dialect. We all speak French, and I only understand a handful of words in their mother tongue, but I see their efforts as an attempt to adopt me as one of them. As they explain words and phrases to me here and there, I have started to understand better what they mean when they say certain things in French or English. Like, “Thank you for you.” It makes so much sense in the context of an intricate, communal culture that uses a comparatively simple language.

It’s true. They could be more specific: “Thank you for the food” or “Thank you for paying for my school.” But that’s not what they want to say.

“Thank you for you.” “Thank you for being who you are.” “Thank you for building a relationship with me.” “Thank you for taking the time.”

As I come to the end of my time in Central Africa, I have been thinking about the impact that Adam and the others have made on my life. Yes, I have helped them a lot, and they have told me often that only God can repay me for what I have done for them. But they will never understand what a difference they have made for me.

They have given me a family when my own were far away. They have filled my life with love and light and purpose. They have reshaped my identity.

But to try to explain that would do injustice to the measure of the gift. So, with them, I simply say: “Thank you for you.”

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