Being in a flying tin can for 10 hours affords you plenty of time to reflect. I watched a film called The Soloist about a cello player who looses his mind and ends up on the streets. Then a reporter finds him and starts to write about him and his talent, tries to help him by finding him a cello and a safe place to play it. But all on his terms. Then the homeless man shows up outside the reporter’s office expecting that his friend will be glad to see him. But the reporter comes out and says, “You can’t come here. I work here, you can’t visit me here.”
I thought about that and how it applies to me. I go to Malawi on my terms. I help a few people, I even make a few friends. I go to Zimbabwe to run a half marathon and take a few of my Malawian work colleagues with us. I write about my experiences. My flatmate and I lend someone some money to buy some land to grow some maize on. But its all on my terms. Then some of my Malawian friends get bold enough to ask me for help that I have not initiated or offered. It gets my hackles up. It bothers me. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself. I comfort myself that doling out money is not helping anyone and it is perpetuating a problem rather than empowering people. But the fact is it is inconvenient, and I feel possessive of MY money even though I have plenty and in fact take out of the bank in one go more than most people here earn in a month.
There is a verse in the book of Jeremiah that says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, who can understand it?” I certainly can’t begin to understand the motives that have brought me here! But I hope that somewhere in this mess there have been good things and genuine appreciation of the people around me. My hero Bobby D expresses it well:
In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn sea
There's a dyin' voice within me reaching out somewhere,
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair.
Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake,
Like Cain, I now behold this chain of events that I must break.
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.
