Waiting

Since arriving in Malawi, I have had many opportunities to improve (or exacerbate) my patience. Fortunately, for the most part, all of the waiting has made me more laid-back rather than more uptight. It would not take long for an impatient person to perish here simply from the anxiety caused by waiting, because it seems that one is nearly always waiting for something or someone. I thought that today I would share some recent examples.

There are the general everyday things, like waiting for the power to come back on. Waiting two hours after dinner to take my malarial medication, and then waiting another 30 minutes before it is safe to lay down and sleep. There is waiting in the office for 10-20 minutes for a 1.9 Mb report to download. And lately, another daily waiting activity has been the suspense of waiting to see if the Malawian telephone networks will allow international calls - my parents, despite numerous attempts, have only managed to connect through 2 or 3 times since May 26th.

Then of course, there is waiting for people. Yesterday I held a training session for the health promoters that will be carrying out the I-LIFE survey I designed (it starts today actually!). We waited for an hour for everyone to show up. This was actually not too bad considering the promoters came by bicycle, and one ever 3.5 hours by foot. I have heard horror stories from co-workers about waiting for a bus that showed up 8 hours late. Today there was a management meeting, and Helen said that nobody showed up at all. Things like that aren't all that uncommon here.

My most pronounced waiting experience, however, was photocopying the surveys this past Saturday. I started on Friday afternoon at 3 pm. I was delighted to learn that the photocopier in our office did double-sided printing. Except for the requirement to let the photocopier rest for 10 minutes between runs, things were going pretty smoothly. I had almost finished 120 copies by 5:30, when the photocopier ran out of toner. Of course, after inquiring with the other office, I found out that, of course, we had been waiting a while for a new order of toner. Since the toner cartridge from the other photocopying didn't fit in the first photocopier, I trekked up to the other office (called the "upper office" since it is just up the hill from my office, the "lower office"). The photocopier in the upper office not only did not do double-sided photocopying, but as I quickly learned, needed longer breaks between runs, and was extremely susceptible to frequent paper jams.

I started photocopying at 9 am on Saturday morning, figuring I'd be out by lunch. After all, I only had 320 copies left - a job that would only take 30 minutes on the Health Canada photocopiers I had used as a summer student in Ottawa. Surely this job wouldn't take any longer than 3 hours.

At 4 pm (7 hours later), I walked out of the office, tired but happy. They were done. That is all that mattered.

So, in short (or in long), it took 9.5 hours to make 440 copies of a 3-page, double-sided survey. And I am thankful to God it only took that - imagine had the toner run out in the second photocopier!

So be careful if you ever pray for patience. God might send you to Africa!