EMU students are no strangers to intercultural experiences—the “Intercultural Programs” page on my.emu.edu lists past trips students have taken from over the last twenty-plus years—but how much do students know about the time their professors spent abroad?
Living abroad can be a different experience for every individual; this was the case for Associate Professor of Elementary Education, Ronald Shultz, Associate professor of Business and Leadership, Lindy Backues, Professor of History and Program Director, Mary Sprunger, and Instructor of Social Work, Debbi DiGennaro. Despite the uniqueness of each country and situation, all had rich intercultural experiences that impact how they view the world today: Shultz in Peru, Backues in Indonesia, Sprunger in the Netherlands, and DiGennaro in Kenya.
The reasons each went abroad are varied: Ronald Shultz was sent by Eastern Mennonite Missions to open a bilingual christian school called “PROMESA” with the support of the Peruvian Mennonite church. In Kenya, DiGennaro had a position as a program administrator where she was in charge of personal, finance and programs in a faith based Non Government Organization. Backues went through the Millennium Relief and Development Incorporation to lead an Non Government Organization called “Sumbangsin Nuansa Tasikmalaya,” which translates in English as “a small contribution to the city of Tasikmalaya.” Sprunger traveled to the Netherlands for the first time at seven years old thanks to her father’s job as a history professor. She lived there for a year, and later returned for three months at 14 years old, for two years as a graduate student, and another year with her current family.
As is fairly common during intercultural experiences, each of the travelers gained new understandings as they navigated the adventure of the unknown. That adventure allowed her to “see life through different lenses.” She described her children walking barefoot in the sunshine, learning to make incredible tea, learning swahili, and navigating Nairobi on the left side of the road (Nairobi being a British colony).
In their pursuit of new understandings, Shultz and his wife were intentional to immerse themselves more in the Peruvian culture and “understand the lifestyle of people they were going to work with” by living with a family in a house with “mostly dirt floors.” Laughing at the memory, Shultz added, “and guinea pigs that would go running out under the tables!”
For Backues, some of the deeper understandings emerged in reflection. Moving to Indonesia in 1989 with his wife and daughter impacted his perspective on the United States and how big everything is: “the people are big [tall], buildings are big, plate sizes are big, stores are big,” he listed off.
Another reflection Backues came away with was the importance of community. His experience in Indonesia introduced him into a simple lifestyle where deep-tradition-based community is emphasized. “We weren’t insiders, we were belongers,” he shared, going on to explain that he was included into Indonesian culture by locals who allowed him to wash the bodies of community members who had died. In this way, he was part of the grief.
Importance of community was also one of the takeaways that Sprunger had from her experience growing up with influence from the Netherlands and then submerging even more into Dutch culture by studying going back as a Grad student, “[In the Netherlands,] there is a strong emphasis on how to live together without one person taking to much space, so you will often hear ‘Doe maar gewoon’ which means ‘act normally.’”
For Shultz, community involvement played a big part in his cross-cultural experience. In 2004, Shultz left America with his wife, Regina, and his three children (ages four, seven and nine at the time) Through their experience, his family became bilingual and bicultural thanks to six years of building tight connections in church and the neighborhood they lived in.
Some of the professors’ families grew because of their intercultural experiences. Backues and his wife, Donna, adopted a son while living in Indonesia.
Likewise, Sprunger met her husband, Rachid, and got married in the Netherlands: “[Rachid] is not really Dutch, he is Moroccan, so that is all blended up in there,” she said. Sheconsiders him to be the best thing that Netherlands gave her.
Although living abroad had its positive sides as mentioned previously, there were some negative experiences that professors faced. When Sprunger was seven years old, she had a hard time with the language at school because her teacher spoke little English. Now, she speaks conversational Dutch, so communicating is no longer an issue, however, she never got used to the communication style: “They are very direct and they will just tell you what they are thinking. You might think: ‘Oh, that person doesn’t like me.’”
Sprunger was not the only one who needed to adjust to a new language. “Shultz and his wife had prepared for the new language and culture before going to Peru, but it was adjusting to that different culture to serve and help fulfill the church’s plan that was a challenge: “There were times when there was nothing else that we could do except for pray about a situation,” Shultz said. Fortunately, “we saw God answer our prayers over and over and over again.”
Of the struggles faced by Backues and his family, diseases were a cause for concern: during their time in Indonesia, they contracted typhoid, cholera, and dengue. They did not know that living in the slums, which they did for four and a half years, required them to clean the water to drink it, which they eventually learned to do. Another challenge that Backues had to face was the negative sides of a traditional society: “I don’t romanticize local people in Indonesia, I know that there is no perfect community. How women were treated, including my wife, was not always good.”
DiGennaro also witnessed mistreatment, commenting that East Africa is a place where there are major humanitarian concerns. “We had a number of friends die,” DiGennaro said, “western friends living in Africa,” because of armed child soldiers, accidents, or other non-natural causes. In addition to this, DiGennaro experienced the difficulty of navigating the transition to adulthood. As she had moved to Kenya in her 30’s, she reflected that “it’s hard enough to become an adult in your own native place, but to become an adult in another place, you have to think harder, and grow faster, and become stronger, and become wiser.” The dichotomy of the extremes she witnessed is a key part of DiGennaro’s experience. “I feel like Kenya was very hard on me,” she said. “My time in Kenya… it was beautiful and horrible at the same time.”
While much of the EMU-Intercultural conversation can focus on the students participating in trips, EMU also boasts professors who have had rich intercultural experiences of their own. This multitude of experiences—the positive, the negative, the beautiful and the horrible—shaped the worldviews of the professors who faced them, and who now teach us.
Students interested in having a cross-cultural trip through MyEMU Intercultural Programs (https://emu.edu/intercultural/future-programs), where the destinations and the interest lists for the next trips can be found.
