Priorities

I am a month behind - that's four posts in blog time!  This was scribbled towards the end of June – before our team retreat in Rwanda and the final collapse of my snowflake laptop.  I probably only had a vague grasp of what I was trying to say then and I certainly don’t remember enough to expound on it now – hopefully it’s mostly English…

Life never goes as planned.  This means arguments in which I try to convince myself that I'm not neurotic (I lose).

One of my coworkers came to work bemoaning the fact that one of his younger siblings had erased all of the pictures – on the field, with his family, everything - on his ipad.  He turned to me sadly, “Even the one of us.  Me with such a grosse personalité.  A Grosse Legume.”

I'd already been inwardly grinning that he'd lost that picture – being about a foot taller and wider than him and having just returned from a very hot walk to the maket that day, I'd looked like his escapee grandmother from a nursing home.  I'd started outwardly grinning at the 'fat personality' bit, but when he referred to me as a Big Vegetable - the name for Mobutu Sese Seko's henchmen who'd helped him divide and rule (and milk) the country - I burst into giggles.

Despite these regular water cooler breaks, we are now extremely busy at the office as we are at the end of our project.  Our coordinator – one of the few Congolese leaders I've heard encourage his team on a job well done – has been trying to promote regular work hours, but also a regular amount of work during those hours.  This was a good idea in theory, but in practice meant eight people simultaneously editing a 19-page document projected on a bumpy wall by a failing machine that rendered the document a garish mix of fuchsia-and-lemon.  When I tried to suggest that we divvy up the pages, I was firmly vetoed.  French grammar is mainly beyond me anyway (though I am just proud enough to think I have a handle on it), and the spacing issues and the lack of the Oxford comma was already gnawing at me; I mainly stayed silent.

I’m also to make a presentation on leadership at our team retreat in Rwanda next week, so I was struggling to keep my head above my commitments.  On the other hand, I did learn how to send money through my cellphone provider to someone in another city!  Butters told me to go to the front desk, but as there was only a makeshift wooden booth outside the building, I ignored him and did it my way; very little of what he tells me has any bearing on reality.

Sometimes my insistence on doing things my way is detrimental.  My mom regularly goes out of her way to talk to people she may have seen once in a dream; I will cross to the other side of the street in order to keep from waving.  I recognise this is a problem, and I'm working on it.   But not fast enough.  One evening this week, a friend who hadn't been at church in a while called my name – I smiled and waved, said it'd been too long, and continued on.  Ten minutes later, literally halfway home, I couldn't take the voices in my head anymore.

How could you not stop to shake his hand and greet him properly?  Remember when he came to a Bible study drunk and called out one of the other members for avoiding him in their quartier?  You always say that people should be treated specially – that you should make time for them, that welcoming them in the family of God is our responsibility as Christians.  What sort of welcome was this?  You didn't even--

So I stopped, pretended to check my Neolithic phone as though it held a GPS for the Chicken-Hearted Soul, turned around and headed back to find this man who'd likely already left or wouldn't care if I danced the jig for him.

It's not about him; it's about you.

I stifled the urge to say that then I should be home eating biscuits and retraced my steps.  Of course, I found him, we chatted, and then I set off for home again.

Happy now?

I was.  Mostly because I was then stopped and greeted by four other friends from church.  This doesn't seem like a big deal - in fact, it is a personal nightmare - but knowing people is important in this culture.  Our local teammates can't go three feet without being stopped by someone from school or church – even in a different city.  This was another reminder to me that my smallest actions matter, that my personality shouldn't stand in the way of my commitment to working for the glory of God – which involves integration into this place. 

I get it.  You win.

The final hiss to get my attention came when I was nearly home.  I looked warily at the guards who faithfully guarded something with a corrugated sheet-metal gate every day and sometimes tried to get my attention.  I've never had a bad experience with anyone in uniform here, but I've heard enough stories to know that I'm lucky – so avoidance seems to be the best approach.

This one started yelling a name, which was a bold move – there were literally millions to choose from.

Ha-HA – joke's on you, Mister Yelly Man.  That is not my name!  It is N2O's name, and using the name of someone I love is a low...

I slowed.  What were the chances that this man was calling out N2O's name while she was sick in the hospital?  So I stopped and chatted again – it turned out he went N2O's church, had seen me at her wedding, knew she was sick, and was going to visit her.  I’m not sure why he felt the need to share this information with me, but we all have our own agendas and priorities.

My teammates, for example, are wildly excited by bacon, ham, and beef jerky.  I am too, in a vague way, because these things mean home.  But I’m also excited about finding mustard seeds and spicy pickle - because they are also home.  So these finds, like my deep love for getting into a hot car, must be hidden away from the world. 

But I’m slowly adopting some foreign-isms.  I used to tread lightly in my own kitchen when Butters would croon something about ‘such a dirty old man.’  Knowing this is a Beatles song helps.  Inspired by this delicate bond and hunted by a cute, persistent suitor, I once asked Butters to remind me that romantic relationships, hypothetically speaking, were stupid.

“No!  They’re wonderful!”

I blame him in advance for everything that may happen.