Can A Water Bottle Be Offensive?

It's the token trademark of us Western missionaries.  We tote our water bottles along wherever we roam.  In a place where the drinking water can give you typhoid and there is rarely A/C to relieve the 100+ degrees, safe drinking water is no laughing matter.  As a community, we teach our children to always pack a water bottle and give them snazzy water bottle holders.   At the expat church, kids can get a happy check mark by their name in Sunday school three ways:
1. Say the memory verse.
2. Bring a Bible.
3. Bring your water bottle.

It's that important, folks.  Makes complete sense, too, after our newbie mistake of not carrying our own water once led us to buy Emily a cold sealed bag of juice in a village market.  She was sick for eleven days after that, possibly from germs found on the outside of the juice bag. We've carried our own water ever since.

We have a national friend who recently started spending more and more time with Westerners.  As a result, he received three different water bottles from various people, yet he continued to show up without water to activities at which there was clearly going to be a need for water (like a full day of work).  If you had asked me a week ago what was going on here, I would have chuckled, "It's that little cultural stereotype where Westerners like to plan ahead while Burkinabe like to live in the moment."

I would have been wrong.

Our friend explained to us, "The heart of the matter is hospitality.  In our culture, the guest is to come needy in order to give your host the honor of caring for you."  

It's true, the first thing to do when someone visits your home is offer them a drink.  

"If I show up with my own water," he continued, "then before the visit begins I have already said, 'I do not need you.'"

Can you hear the wound of saying "I do not need you" in such a communal society?

The lesson of the water bottle is this: we have come to West Africa needy.  We need wisdom to understand a world so different from the one we knew, and we need grace from those we unknowingly offend as we learn our way into this new culture.