The words you don't want to hear

"This is your captain speaking. We will have a slight delay." Not some words you want to hear when sitting on the tarmac.

I have been doing my best to proceed with the water system at Mugonero Hospital. In doing so, I am torn between working towards the goal of reliable water, and working to please the donors. Too often, I must choose to listen to the donors' requests or listen to logic and reason because doing both is impossible. After hearing this and that from the donors for months, my time ran out. Patience fizzled. I couldn't take it anymore and neither could my superiors. With so much need elsewhere, I packed my bags and headed out, full of gratitude and frustration. Frustration because the people who claim to help are one of the biggest hindrances. Frustration that none of the people I had tried to help even cared. Frustration that I had spent 6 months trying to improve a hospital while accomplishing nothing more than acquiring a stack of messy papers, organizing a pile of rocks, and buying some buckets (ok, so it was a pile of quotations, a 125 cubic-meter stone foundation, and a couple 10,000 liter water tanks) because someone else thought I was incompetent. Gratitude that soon, I would be able to go to work, have more to do than I can accomplish, and go home knowing there is more to do tomorrow. Gratitude that I could soon lay in bed and be satisfied. Gratitude because of the endlessly open arms of my Malamulo family.

Would you like to know what the rest of the captain's announcement was? "We are having a problem with a valve in engine number one. Our flight engineer is going to get out and start it by hand." As I nervously looked out the window at engine number one, all that came to mind were the smiling faces waiting for me in Blantyre, Malawi, less than an hour flight away.

Now, as I blaze through a day with no end to work in sight, there are more words that I don't want to hear. "Can you fix my printer and connect me to the internet?" "You're an engineer! Here, do this!" "We need more money for this project. Is there more funding available?" "Today, we are saying farewell to (insert missionary's name)." But the words I fear most? "It's time to go back to Rwanda." Have I become too complacent and content here in Malamulo, the Loma Linda of Central Africa? Aren't we supposed to always be pushing ourselves? Am I fulfilling the command to "Go into all the world"?