It Really is Time…

So we are back in Liberia and it is so much of what we remembered: it’s ridiculously hot and humid, the sky is hazing from the Sahara dust and the local city smog is ever so present. For the last month everyone has been saying the same word. The “T” word: transition. This seems to be a regular thing within missions, especially in an organization like Mercy Ships where our location and crew continually change.

The time in Tenerife was to allow dry dock work to happen on the ship but also to give the crew a break between outreaches. But, for better or worse, my job did not allow any sort or break. It actually got harder and more intense because I was preparing for new crew to arrive. So while the majority of the crew traveled around the island, Morocco, Europe or home on holiday I worked overtime (most nights and many weekends). To say that I am exhausted is an understatement but my work helped ensure that over 80 new crew members will come this month as the new outreach begins. Yet this is very hard to be happy about especially in key moments, like community meetings, when everyone is talking about being rested to start over and preparing for transition.

I have really felt myself dragging this last week as we sailed back to Liberia and even now when we are back in our host country. I look forward to most of the physical transition and doing things like returning to Fatima Orphanage and visiting the markets and beach. But I am struggling to mentally transition because there is so much to prepare for and parts of me really do not want to accept the need for transition and are simply burnt out. I will try to give you some idea of why this move is such a big transition:

The United Nations Development Programme releases an annual report called the Human Development Report. A major part of this report is the Human Development Index that ranks countries based on life expectancy, literacy, education, standard of living and GDP per capita. It is most often used to measure quality of life and determine if a country is developed, developing or underdeveloped. It is considered a limited way to measure, even by its founder who called it a “vulgar measure”, but gives a good idea of how countries compare to one another. The island of Tenerife, Spain where we have just spent the last month is ranked number 13 currently. We were scheduled to go to Sierra Leone this year, but our schedule was changed in November. It is ranked number 177 which is the last place in country rankings this year. Liberia is not listed in the 2007 HDI because it was unable to give the information needed to measure; which gives everyone a very clear reason why we needed to return for a second year in a row to Liberia. So we have gone from a country in the top 20 to a country that is not even ranked in 5 short days of sailing. It is time for transition.

* see Wikipedia's Human Development Index for more information, maps, and the 2007 list of countries and their rankings.