Kingdom Living: When Life Gets In the Way

Last June, as I bore the brunt of my “mid-service crisis,” I found solace in the lyrics of Sugarland, my country music obsession at the time. For those of you who haven’t listened closely to the wisdom of the song It Happens, let me fill you in:

Ain’t no rhyme or reason

No complicated meaning

Ain’t no need to overthink it

Let go laughing

Life don’t go quite as you planned it

We try so hard to understand it

The irrefutable, indisputable fact is

Sh** happens

I quickly adopted this as my personal Peace Corps anthem. It spoke to my failure to accomplish even the simplest of tasks as planned. The phrase “going off without a hitch” does not apply in Swaziland. Mop floor and chickens come in and poop on it: fail. Attempt to run 10 miles, reach turn around point, proceed to poop myself: fail (sh** literally happened). Non-poop related examples: plan meeting, no one shows up: fail. Train counterpart on female empowerment and husband refuses to let her attend camp in May: fail. I could go on, but I’ll spare you. I think you get the point: things rarely go as planned over here. In fact, if you look at the majority of my work here from a monitoring and evaluation point of view, you could pretty much mark a big, red “F” on my entire service. I’ve spent plenty of time sulking over the failures and frustrations, but I’m coming to accept them as part of the process. Sure, some projects don’t work out because they were poorly designed or implemented. But more often than not, life simply gets in the way.

Since last August, I’ve been trying to get the Red Rhino handicraft market up and running with a group of women. God bless my family and fellow volunteers for sitting through hours of my rants about this disaster of a project. I could fill a novel with the complications we’ve faced in getting this project off the ground, but for now here are some examples of excuses I’ve received for why they couldn’t meet or work on a particular day:

Government-issued mandate that they drop everything to assist in the construction of a fence along the paved road to prevent cows from interfering with traffic (not sure if this is intended to protect the cows, cars, or human lives that have been victim to traffic accidents)
Traditional dance practice for the King’s visit
Government-sponsored field trip to “marula festival” – aka raging kegger with water tanks full of booze made from the seasonal marula fruit

Sure, some of these excuses seem a bit absurd, albeit legitimate. These are the more outlandish “one-time” excuses that seem to occur semi-regular basis. More powerful, though, are the near-daily excuses. On any given day, its safe to say that at least two of the women will be sick or caring for a sick relative, one will be on husband-imposed house arrest to attend basic “womanly” housekeeping duties, one will be at the clinic to take her ARVs and test her CD4 count, and one will either be preparing for or recovering from a funeral. That’s what I mean by life getting in the way. Being raised in Western society where work often takes precedence over other obligations, including self-care, I was initially overwhelmed and exhausted by the constant stream of excuses. Selfishly, I viewed them as an inconvenience and obstacles in my quest to feel successful. In knew that true success lay in the relationships, but my hard-wired need to feel productive often interfered with my empathy towards these realities as acceptable excuses. I struggle to know when to push these women to put forth more effort and when to simply take a step back and acknowledge their troubles. I am blessed that my greatest hardship today was the loss of my fan’s functionality. As I sit here at 4:30 am on a Sunday morning, I hear singing from yet another funeral night vigil in the distance. Yesterday, I comforted a close friend who was receiving anonymous SMS death threats in response to rumors circling about her daughters’ alleged abortion. A few weeks ago, I spent the morning at the local police station, bidding farewell to one of my closest friends and counterpart whose failed marriage with a Swazi had resulted in family drama, which ultimately led to his deportation back to his home country of Nigeria. So yes, as Sugarland so clearly articulates, the irrefutable, indisputable fact is, sh** happens. Although too often sh** is synonymous with life over here.

This isn’t in any way to suggest that life isn’t complicated Stateside, because it most certainly is. Sure, the nature of life’s complications differ between the two countries, but perhaps the more marked difference is in our response to life’s roadblocks. In America, we often immerse ourselves in work to mask our personal or family troubles. It serves as a welcome distraction and an outlet for our need to feel useful and successful. We often work through the sickness and the heartbreak and we are quick to sacrifice sleep, self-care, and sometimes relationships in order to fulfill our obligations to our jobs or our schoolwork. In our eyes, not playing through the pain is often equated to lack of work ethic or dedication. It’s hard to shake that mentality, especially when my work is so intertwined with the lives of those whose lives are far more complicated than mine. If a counterpart takes off to assist distant relatives in funeral preparations for a week, our plans get cancelled and I am left facing a weeklong One Tree Hill Marathon. The cumulative effect of these setbacks gets discouraging, but after 18 months of selfishly allowing the constant stream of excuses and interferences to eat at me, I’m coming to view it in a different light. Yes, when life gets in the way, it impedes progress. Progress in the traditional sense, that it. But on the contrary, I think us Westerners have a lot to learn from Swazis. Family comes first for them, and if a family member suffers, they are quick to drop everything to ensure that they don’t suffer alone. They truly live out God’s call for us to exist in community and while this community is certainly not devoid of finger pointing, shame, and pettiness, their reliance on each other is indeed beautiful. I’m gradually coming to realize that sometimes its okay to let life get in the way. I’m finding that my role is to walk with my Swazi friends as they navigate these setbacks. This has proven to be significantly more fruitful and fulfilling than nagging to continue our work. That is why I am here. That’s why we’re all here. I’m not saying quit your jobs and make it your personal mission to accompany all your friends to their annual mammograms, but I am saying that sometimes we need to take a step back and reevaluate our priorities and learn when it’s okay to let life get in the way. Maybe that means making yourself available to a friend in need or maybe it means opening yourself up to be loved on. If that fails, turn on some Sugarland.

I'll leave you with a glimpse of my life lately: