"This thing Jesus called the kingdom of God is emerging across the globe in the most unexpected places, a gentle whisper amid the chaos. Little people with big dreams are re-imagining the world. Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love."  (Shane Claiborne, Irresistible Revolution)

some days are harder than others

 As I stood in a bucket the other day, trying to collect the flow of dirty water from my shower to later use for flushing the toilets, I thought to myself, "Some days are harder than others."

A few days earlier, prior to this shower incident, we had been pretty lucky. We had running water almost every day for about 3 weeks, and even started to take it for granted. For those of you who have never lived in a place where running water is unreliable, you can't possibly know the feeling of anticipation every time you turn a faucet to check for water. Unfortunately, these days we've been in a dry spell of sorts - it's been excessively hot with no rain in sight, and it's affected our water situation a great deal. Sometimes, we can go a few days without water. Luckily, we have a small tank outside of our house that has been filled up in anticipation for times like this, but with 4 girls living in a house, water can become scarce quickly, despite the reserve.

When I lived in Uganda, I had wrote a post questioning our idea of luxury. In this post, I made a list of things that we so often take for granted in North America. It's funny how quickly we can adjust to our surroundings. At the time of that post, we had not had water for 9 days. Here, 3 days without water results in a slight panic attack, and leaves me wondering how our house in Uganda managed without water for the time that it did.
                               
So, like I said earlier, some days are harder than others. Some days you come home to find strange men on your compound, building bricks, without your knowledge or approval. Some days you want to lash out at everyone in sight because you are tired of the incessant stares and mutterings about the "muzungu" (Swahili for a white person, foreigner, etc.).  Some days you want to cry because you have had a child throw a rock at you. Some days you just want to go home because you don't feel like you belong.

As painful and frustrating as some of these experiences living here have been, there are some days that are easier than others too. Every day I am taken aback by the beauty of nature around me; the hills, the trees, the sky. Other days, I am greeted, "Good Morning!" (without malice) by a group or children, or some man helps me flag down a moto. Or, more recently, I am gifted cassava by my guard that he's grown from his land. These are the good days. These are the days that cancel out those other, not so welcoming, not so enjoyable, days. These are the days that make living here worthwhile.


I know my dreams of "fitting in" and being welcomed into a completely different culture are lofty, but I feel strongly that a place does exist where I would be accepted, despite the color of my skin or my ethnicity. In America, the struggle for equality was a long and drawn out one, but as much progress as we have made as a country, I wonder if we are just better at hiding our thoughts and opinions about "the other," whoever they may be.

There are too many barriers that keep people from accepting each other, whether it be race, gender, or status. We can fool ourselves and say that those things don't exist, that those things don't matter to us, but unfortunately, for many, they do. We've lived so long under these perceptions and stereotypes of people that we haven't even met, or haven't tried to know, that we don't know what to do when we encounter these situations. As cliche as it sounds, I want to see these barriers broken. I want to see people working together, hand in hand, despite their differences, for a common goal, for a common purpose, for the common good. Perhaps then, and only then, will we be able to see change happen the way that we've always envisioned it.  

Homecoming Thoughts from Afar

Photography by Mehves Konuk

I received a confirmation for my flight back home to America yesterday.

December still feels a long way away, but I am excited to return home (if only for a while) to reconnect with friends, family, and to simply enjoy the things I've missed while being overseas.

This morning I got a link for a blog post about the unavoidable question from friends and family of, "So, what did you accomplish, really?" upon arriving home from working overseas. The title of the post intrigued me, especially as I have already begun mentally preparing for my transition out of East Africa. Reading the post got me thinking about the first time I travled abroad for work, back in 2008, when my journey of international development really began. I remember going with such lofty expectations of the things I would be able to accomplish there, the lives that I could change, the impact I could make. Well, when the end of the year came, I was disheartened by the fact that I had not really met any of my goals - at least to the extent that I had hoped for. So what did I do? I decided to stay another year, hoping that an additional 12 months of overseas work would create some of the "success stories" that I so longed to bring home.

Needless to say, at the end of yet another year, there were no huge success stories, no life-changing events, no big accomplishments, that I was able to claim responsibility for. Did this mean that no good came out of my time spent abroad? No. Did this mean that lives were not impacted and changed from the interactions that we had? No. Did this mean I had wasted two years of my life? No.

What it did mean, however, and what it exposed, is that so often we get caught up in the big accomplishments that we fail to see the little accomplishments that actually do occur. The small, seemingly incidental, yet influential moments that are just the beginnings, or middles, of what is yet to come. If we - religious or not - live life believing that everything has a purpose, that everything that happens is meant to happen, then we cannot reject the "small" impacts that eventually culminate into the final product. If everything is connected, and every experience helps shape someone - or something - then everything we do indeed has meaning and contributes to ultimate change.

I have been working in East Africa for the past 15 months. As my time draws nearer to its end, I find myself involuntarily reflecting on all of the people and "things" that I have been a part of. The part of me that seeks achievement and longs for recognition searches high and low for anything that I can bring back home to talk about. After all, no one really wants to hear about the struggles and hardships of the year. Few people want to hear about the trial and error (especially the error) of activities and projects conducted. Yet, these are the very things from which change occurs. These are the very things from which we learn, and grow - the process - that ultimately helps reach the goals that we have set for others and ourselves. So why is it that we don't work harder to bring to light these parts of our work experience, regardless of where we work and what we do? Why is it that no one ever asks about the process, yet are so interested in knowing the outcome?

I cannot answer these questions in full. So, in the meantime, I can work to change my personal expectations and perspective about the work I do overseas. After my initial "unsuccessful" years abroad, I realized, and really learned to understand (perhaps even a little too late) that change is indeed a process. And, if we are unwilling to focus on and invest in the process, then we really shouldn't expect to get the results that we are looking for. Homecoming may always continue to be associated with an overwhelming number of questions about our activities and accomplishments, but we will always have the choice to fight the need for recognition, and to shed light on the journey and process, even if the results don't scream success.

"The Clarity Paradox"

We've all heard of the saying that "less is more." Personally, I've never really bought into the idea or experienced the "more" part of this saying (after all, "less" is generally, well, just..."less"), until today, after stumbling on an article called The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In this article, the author, McKeown, talks about the idea of success, and the reasons why some find success while others simply don't. He attributes success (or lack of success) to something he calls "The Clarity Paradox," which, in a nutshell, claims that "success is a catalyst for failure." McKeown explains the paradox like this:

1. When we really have clarity of purpose, it leads to success.
2. When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities.
3. When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts.
4. Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.

After reading this, I have to admit that I see his logic. So many people (and organizations) reach a certain level of success, and find themselves with opportunities and options that they never had before; kind of like a kid in a candy store with too much money to spend. Unfortunately, what happens every now and then is that we spread themselves too thin (and sometimes make bad investments) in attempts to run after new opportunities.This, of course, is not to say that opportunities are a bad thing - we just need to make our decisions wisely and carefully to mitigate any negative outcomes. 

At this point, you may be asking yourself how one can maintain success without falling into the "Clarity Paradox." Luckily, McKeown gives three suggestions for his audience: 

1. Use more extreme criteria.
2. Ask: "What is essential?" and eliminate the rest.
3. Beware of the endowment effect.

If you want in-depth explanations of those suggestions, I encourage you to read McKeown's article, after all, they are his ideas, and they are conveyed much more clearly in his own words. In the end, if you remember nothing else, remember this: we need to stive to adopt a "disciplined pursuit of less" by "purposefully, deliberately, and strategically eliminating the nonessentials." I know this may seem like common knowledge to many of you, but the way I see it, this is pretty good advice not only for success in our careers, but for success in all aspects of our lives as well. 

Akagera

Kigali's Abandoned Amusement Park

The best thing about traveling to a new place is finding the city's best hidden secrets. These hidden secrets can take on many forms; a hole in the wall restaurant, an awesome market or shopping area, a breathtaking view. However, in all my years of traveling, the one thing that I never expected was to find an abandoned amusement park. I wish I could say that I had indeed "stumbled upon" this phenomena by accident, but in reality, I only found this place because of my determination to find out if the surrounding rumors had any truth to them.

So, early Saturday morning, after having enjoyed a lovely breakfast, Deke and I set out to solve this mystery for ourselves, once and for all. It took a while of searching and a few wrong turns, but finally, we found ourselves standing in front of about a dozen red bumper cars, overgrown with weeds, dust and cobwebs - the usual result of neglect. We turned the corner and found even more abandoned parts; unicorns (for a carousel perhaps?), dolphins that twirled, water boats for the nearby lake, and even an indecently exposed mermaid. Needless to say, this expedition was pretty creepy but pretty awesome all at the same time, and made for a pretty exciting Saturday morning!