Uphill Battle.

I’ve not wanted to write for a few days. Personally if I could have hid under my bedroom rug and cried for a week straight, I would have done it.

Why so emotional? You ask.
Simple. I feel like a total failure.

I’m still struggling with the language after being here a year and a half. That’s the longest it’s taken me to learn a language while living in country, and I have to ask myself why.

I’m still confused by the social interactions, especially with my prenatal girls. How do I make connections with them? How do I build relationships with them? How?

Plus I’m seeing strange fruit... superficial fruit, and I don’t like it. Many of the women I witness to say they are believers but then cannot tell me who Jesus is. They believe because they heard about Him once or they were baptized as a child. Is that spiritually satisfying?

But if I’m honest with myself, this week’s emotional roller coaster has more to do with my selfish desire for ‘results’ than anything else.
... that and well, I’m feeling used.

It is just starting to dawn on me that all my efforts and all my struggling to keep these women alive and healthy is for naught.

I see a minimum of 500 women a month for prenatals. I wear myself out treating them for STDs, teaching them comfort measures, and evaluating their gestation.
--Some of them are grateful and take responsibility for their well-being. But more often then not, all they want to know is their gestation.

Here’s the rub.

When I inform them that they need to deliver at the clinic because of X, Y, or Z, they nod politely then don’t come.

Afterward they bring their baby in sick, or more often still are carried in on stretchers with outrageous perineal problems, insisting I do something about it.

Why? Why do they ignore my pleas for them to deliver at the clinic, only to bring me their (TBA or Family caused) problems?

These problems could have been easily avoided had they just come to deliver at the clinic.

Sigh.

This week one of my prenatal ladies came to tell me her baby died during her home delivery. She expressed regret for not coming for my help. She now understood why it was important, but it was too late for this child.

This week another woman came --not in our program-- needing a blood transfusion. As I watched her protractedly heave and vomit even the tiniest fluids we gave her while burning with fever, I knew that her severe anemia was a result of untreated malaria and postpartum hemorrhage. Her one month baby lacked the rolls of fat common to healthy neonates. Instead I was greeted by protruding eyes and a starved look of pain too severe for one so young.

This week one of my prenatal girls chose to deliver at home, even though she repeatedly assured me she’d come. She lives less than 10 minutes away by foot and was expecting her 4th child. But during her delivery, her TBA/Family decided to make her push and push and push... until her perineum swelled to twice the normal size. Only when they saw the damage they caused her did they come for help, demanding I do something. 

I told them how to fix it and gave some analgesics. But the time of ‘doing’ had passed. I could have done a lot (to avoid this!) had she just delivered with us.

Had she just come...

So much of my work is preventative. I’m trained to see warning signs and treat them quickly. I’m trained to strategically run ahead of a problem so that the mother and child won’t get ‘harmed’.

But if they won’t come...

Sigh.

They have to come to prenatals...
They have to take the advice I give...
They have to deliver with us...
... only then can I really help.

Like I said, 500 women stream through our gates monthly for prenatals. That means 500 should be delivering here, but only 20 actually do.

This uphill battle of begging them to come and scaring them with maternal mortality statistics has to stop. It’s not working.

Nothing is working.

How do I get through to this community? How do I convince them to come to the clinic to save their own lives? Honestly, how?

Pray for me. I love what I do, but I feel like a failure.

One year anniversary.

Culture is a hard thing to get away from. A person’s culture is so ingrained in them that to extract it morsel by tiny morsel is impractical --if not outright impossible.

If one cultural fiber is shed, it tears at the others leaving ragged holes and insecurities.

I’m not suggesting that a person cannot change and adopt new ways of doing things or seeing the world; that would be foolishness. But I am saying that a person’s foundational culture --the stuff that motivates us and moves us in ways we don’t fully understand-- is tenacious and unbending.

But shouldn’t it be? I mean, come on. If it isn’t, won’t it all fall like a house of cards?

Sorry. I digress.

My point is: I am American.

I have had the privilege of living in a number of wonderful countries over the years. Each of those countries and cultures has changed me in countless ways. But at the base --at my very core-- I am American.

Why is this important? Well, lately I have been praying and thinking about life and the work I’m doing here, and I have been asking myself a lot of questions. But strangely, each time the answer to those questions is the same.

Culture.

Why have I felt so frustrated? Culture. What is shaking me to the core? Culture. What is at the source of this disconnect? Culture. 

My point is: As an American, I am faced with a new culture clash. This culture clash has been the hardest one of my life. To call it culture-shock is just not strong enough because the idea of a shock is fleeting. It assumes that eventually it will pass.

My culture-shock here in Sudan is not passing. It’s constant and unrelenting.

Part of my recent struggles is due to personal sickness and fatigue. But another part is due to this deep gulf of disconnect between my American culture and my adoptive Sudanese one.

I have been here a year and I’m still trying to build bridges of understanding. Will I ever make it?  I honestly don’t know.

My American enthusiasm has been stripped naked. Clinging to a limp and nearly dead ideal of optimism, I wonder if it has not all been in vain. Can I survive if it has? 

Let’s face it, Americans look for results. They like facts and figures. They want statistical and incremental proof that what they are doing is helping. Or else, they scrap the project and move on. Americans are a ‘bottom line’ people.

I am a ‘bottom line’ American. Hence, the disappointment.

It doesn’t help, either, that I am a product of my culture’s ‘microwave generation’. I expect results in minutes not years. I have been trained to believe that every story should be tied in a tight 20-minute knot which includes two commercial breaks and a preview of next week’s show.

Yes. I know. It’s stupid. Sigh. Nevertheless it’s true.

I am American.

I’m an American struggling to slow down and trust in a culture that has no sense of hurry. I am an American trained to insist, strive, work hard, and expect results in a culture that wants to talk and not do.

Yes. I am an American in Sudan. Sigh.

So recently when I looked at my calender and saw that I had been here a year, I stopped to take account. Has my coming made one iota of difference?

I’m not sure.

Yes. In this year, God has done some amazing things in this ministry. He has brought several to salvation, countless lives have been touched at the clinic, and the church is growing. God is obviously moving. And I’m honestly glad to be a part of it.

So why the struggle?

Again. It’s my American-ness. My cultural core is begging for a stay of execution. Will I be forced to throw out time expectations and perceived usefulness? Perhaps. Am I ready to do that? I’m not sure. What will have to change for me to make it through another year?

Culture. Specifically my culture.

Am I being too dark again? Can’t I just pretend all is well and bright and shiny? I could. But it wouldn’t be honest. This is me being honest. This is my struggle this month. This is what living in the mission field looks like for me. These are the questions I face.

Am I strong enough to make the necessary changes?

I hope so.

Please pray for me. Pray that I would not hold fast to culture but to God. Pray that I can gain new perspective for this work and live well among these people, showing them the love of Christ in culturally appropriate ways for them. Thank you.