Keeping Things in Perspective

           Remembering that this country is still recovering from a devastating civil war that ended only 10 years ago and that its people are plagued by crime, disease, and economic hardship, is not always easy.  The daily frustrations of working within a system that doesn’t make any sense and having to work collaboratively with people from a completely different world, can sometimes blind us from seeing the reality and the suffering that exists in this place.   

 I am often reminded how fortunate I am and how my “problems” don’t even begin to compare to those of the Angolan people. A co-worker tells me he won’t be in tomorrow because his 9-year-old nephew died of malaria and he needs to attend the funeral. A friend is robbed at gun point and when I console her, she says, “I didn’t even cry. It’s normal here.” A student, who clearly has polio, apologizes for being late because he was at the hospital.  Suddenly, the fact that the Internet at my house has been down, doesn't seem like such a big deal. 

In spite of the tragedies, work still has to get done, and so I must somehow find a balance between being compassionate and being assertive. Just recently, I went to Cazenga to work with a class there. The teacher didn’t show up and attendance was very low. This particular visit was unannounced so I became concerned that this was the norm and that when I tell them I’m coming, the teachers put on a show. Since this program is supported and funded by the US Embassy, I reported the incident and the teacher’s supervisor was notified. I found out a week later that the reason the teacher was absent was because his young niece had died and the body was lost, so the family was scouring the city’s hospitals and morgues looking for her. So now I feel like a big jerk! But of course, how could I have known that?

The truth is that sometimes people don’t show up for work or school for no reason at all, or they don’t perform jobs that were assigned to them and they have no viable excuse. Like my students always blaming their tardiness on traffic. It is true that this city’s traffic is horrible. It can take 1 hour to travel 5 miles. So of course people are late due to traffic, but it’s part of life in Luanda, and it can’t be used as an excuse everytime one does not fulfill an obligation. I have no way of knowing if a student is late or absent because of some extenuating circumstance beyond their control, or because he overslept, so what do I do? The only fair and logical thing to do is to make the rules the same for everyone and to not accept any excuses. It’s harsh, but so is everything else here.