Was out in the field today. Always love visiting the communities we’re working in. It’s the best part of the job for me.
Today I heard a really lovely story, but kinda sad as you realise how hard life is for people here…
We’re doing a school latrine in ten of our communities. We are paying them to dig, but not enough, so we ask the communities to pay the extra as part of their contribution. In one of the communities we’re working in, one man, Agwere, is digging the latrine. This is hard work. Really hard work, and I wish for a JCB so often! Anyway, his wife was critically sick. The nearest hospital is about 1 ½ hours away in Renk. So he took her to hospital. But had no money to pay for the medicine she urgently needed. So, Bol, one of the other members of the same community sold three bags of Sorghum and gave the money to Agwere to pay for the medicine his wife needed. Bol said it was because Agwere was digging the latrine for the community and helping his people.
Hearing this nearly made me cry. I spend so much of my time struggling to get the communities to contribute to the work we do. It’s constant nagging and pushing, which is hard work, stressful and generally delays the programme. But we know it’s for the best as the communities appreciate what we do more and makes the final output more sustainable. Today though, I saw things differently. It was good for me to hear this story. It made me both sad and happy. I saw how communities do pull together, do help each other and do contribute in other ways that I may not see. Yet it also reminded me how fragile life is for these people and how death is second-nature to many of them. Nearly every family I meet would have at least one child who would have died. Life is tough for these people and it’s all too easy for me to loose site of this when all I see is my objectives and outputs that I must produce by a certain time. I pray God forgives me for my selfishness and continues to use me to work with His people, despite me.
Today I heard a really lovely story, but kinda sad as you realise how hard life is for people here…
We’re doing a school latrine in ten of our communities. We are paying them to dig, but not enough, so we ask the communities to pay the extra as part of their contribution. In one of the communities we’re working in, one man, Agwere, is digging the latrine. This is hard work. Really hard work, and I wish for a JCB so often! Anyway, his wife was critically sick. The nearest hospital is about 1 ½ hours away in Renk. So he took her to hospital. But had no money to pay for the medicine she urgently needed. So, Bol, one of the other members of the same community sold three bags of Sorghum and gave the money to Agwere to pay for the medicine his wife needed. Bol said it was because Agwere was digging the latrine for the community and helping his people.
Hearing this nearly made me cry. I spend so much of my time struggling to get the communities to contribute to the work we do. It’s constant nagging and pushing, which is hard work, stressful and generally delays the programme. But we know it’s for the best as the communities appreciate what we do more and makes the final output more sustainable. Today though, I saw things differently. It was good for me to hear this story. It made me both sad and happy. I saw how communities do pull together, do help each other and do contribute in other ways that I may not see. Yet it also reminded me how fragile life is for these people and how death is second-nature to many of them. Nearly every family I meet would have at least one child who would have died. Life is tough for these people and it’s all too easy for me to loose site of this when all I see is my objectives and outputs that I must produce by a certain time. I pray God forgives me for my selfishness and continues to use me to work with His people, despite me.
