Several years ago I was talking with a missionary who told me how hard it was to communicate with people from a vastly different culture. The example he used was unforgettable. He was working with a primitive tribe that knew very little about hygiene. In fact, they knew nothing about the concept of a toilet. This posed an obvious danger to the health of the tribe so he tried to explain to them their need for a latrine. They listened through translation as he tried to explain how to build one. He sketched out a rudimentary drawing that looked something like this…The men of the tribe studied it and said they could get it done. The missionary left the village and promised to come back in a couple of weeks to check their work. When he got back they proudly showed him their new outhouse. To his great surprise, something had been lost in translation and the outhouse looked like this…Instead of digging underground they had simply built it 16 feet above the ground! “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Needless to say this design posed new dangers and would not lead to a healthier village.
