The Incident

As promised, here is the terrible story of yesterday’s ordeal. So it started out as any ordinary day. We were planning to leave for the north at 10 AM to stay there for 6 days giving surveys. Hannah and I were rushing around in the morning running errands to make sure everything was ready. (We had run out of Nutella and we weren’t about to spend 6 days in our tiny apartment without some form of Chocolate, so we fit in a run to the store.) We had to hurry, but we were packed and ready to go at 10. We then got a text from our translator saying that he would be “delayed” because he had to help Will (our boss) with something in the morning. We weren’t too fazed by this. The three of us had originally planned to meet our first group at 2:30 PM so we still had plenty of time to get there.

            Then an hour and a half went by and we were still waiting. At this point it was getting close to the point when we would miss our meeting. We tried to reach Mawousse, but he wouldn’t pick up. We figured he must not have made the appointment with the group after all and knows that we don’t need to be up there until later. Another hour passes and we get a text from Mawousse saying he will be coming soon and he is sorry, but he had to work for Kwasi (our other boss and pastor of the church we thought we were meeting today) after he finished working for Will. Hannah and I were a bit confused, but still fine because we figured he had our schedule figured out.

            At 2:30 PM, we call and finally get a hold of him and he promises he is on his way now. At 3:00 PM, he rings our doorbell (that’s 5 hours late if you’re keeping up with the math). Mawousse apologizes for “the delay.” (I’m really starting to hate that word. I think we have different definitions of what “delay” really means.) We say it’s ok and we thought we had a meeting at 2:30, but he must not have scheduled it so it’s ok. He then informs us that, no, he had scheduled it, everyone came and waited for us, called him wondering where we were and he said we would instead be there at 5:30. “Deep breaths, Kristin, deep breaths.” That’s what I was telling myself to avoid a culturally inappropriate scene in which I lose my cool. My organized, on-top-of-things, ethical researcher personality is freaking out at the thought of having wasted people’s time. I know it will only be worse if I question him, so I just ask for the facts and say we need to get moving if we’re gonna make it there by 5:30. I knew there was no way we would make it there in three hours, but we had to try. Our reputations as good researchers had already been slashed and trampled on and all we could do now was try to show that we are very respectful of the time they are giving up by trying to be on time.

            We get to the taxi park (also known as my least favorite part of all of Togo. It’s insane. You drive in and 20 men literally swarm your car asking where you want to go and trying to grab your luggage and put it in their cars. I’m really good at not letting them touch any of my stuff though.) and it is 3:45 before we get going because everyone is fighting over us and we literally had to strap a motorcycle into the trunk because Mawousse was bringing it up north for Kwasi. I think this whole taxi park scene was God answering every prayer I’ve ever prayed for more patience . . . The monochronic American in me was not happy. But we got on the road and I asked Mawousse to call the church facilitator and move the meeting back because there was absolutely no way we would make it there by 5:30. He called and said that the church facilitator would try to get people to come, but they were all very disappointed that we missed our first meeting and he did not know if anyone would come. Then, a little piece of me died inside. All Hannah and I are here to do this summer is research. We want to be good researchers with integrity who respect the time and opinions of those we are researching. We aren’t here to give them anything but our listening ears and the results of our research at the end of the summer, and we couldn’t even give these people (who need SO much) that. The church facilitator said he would call back if he got anyone to agree to come. There was nothing I could do at this point but wait and pray, which I did.

            I’m currently reading Radical by David Platt and decided to read chapter three in the taxi ride. (Side note: If you haven’t read Radical, you really should. Every Christian American should read it. It will shake you from the daze you don’t realize you are in, or at least it has for me.) So as I’m reading it, I’m reading how we so often limit the work God is doing to what we as capable (but finite) humans can accomplish. Yes we are great at things, yes we can do a lot, but we can do NOTHING compared to what God in His infinite power can do. Platt challenges his readers to ask God to work in ways that prove His greatness. If we only accomplish what we could have accomplished in our own power anyway, we are tempted to steal all the glory for ourselves. If, instead, we call on God to do His will in such a mighty way that it could only have come from his great power, we readily give the glory to God. It makes so much sense and is so challenging at the same time, especially to someone like me who prides herself on all she accomplishes. It was very humbling and I began to pray that God would reveal his glory, not my own, through my time and work in Togo.

            By this time, I was feeling a lot calmer about the whole situation. There was nothing more I could do and God had everything under control anyway (as much as I would have liked to have it under my control as well. . . but we’re working on this so called “need-for-control” problem, aren’t we?) So when we get closer and Mawousse calls the church facilitator again, we learn that no one else would come meet us because they had given up a lot to be there (it was there market day) and they could not afford to come again. C’est la vie. I just prayed that God would redeem the situation despite our irresponsible planning.

            What happened next was enough to crack the fragile shell of my temporary calmness. We arrived at our apartment and decided to have a meeting with Mawousse to go over the survey and schedule the next few days (a.k.a. make sure nothing like this ever, ever happens again). Just as we sat down though, Janine, Kwasi’s wife, calls Mawousse and again asks where we were. She then said the worst thing a young researcher with high hopes and big dreams of being a good researcher can hear. She and all the women were still waiting at the church for us! I have never felt so terrible. They had been waiting since 2:30! It had been FIVE HOURS!!!!! I’m can’t even begin to understand this African culture, the amount of miscommunication and poor planning it took to create this situation, the irresponsibleness of it all, and the damage this would do to our reputation as researchers. Mouths still dropped to the floor in shock, the three of us hopped on motos and raced to the church.

            We pulled up and everyone started clapping and laughing. There were about 12 women—some who had been there since 2:30 and some who had come at 5:30. We apologized profusely. They have this rule in their group that if they are late to a savings meeting, then have to pay a small fine. As a joke, they had the money pot out for us to pay our fine. We were more than happy to oblige this rule and quickly dropped in our coins (I would have dropped in the entire contents of my wallet if I thought that would have helped the situation at all) They all thought it was just the funniest thing though and laughed and laughed with us. They were laughing because it was funny. I was laughing out of hysteria because there was nothing else to do at this point in our unbelievable, ridiculous day.

            It was now 7:30 and most of the women wanted to be interviewed (though some left a little later as soon as we said they were of course free to go). We then let Janine and Mawousse explain the whole mix up and reason that we were late. I then asked to say a few words that they translated for me. I apologized profusely and said we had no idea they were waiting for us all day and we never would have let that happen if we had known. We respect their time very much and we are so sorry that we wasted it, especially on a market day. They all made gestures that sad it was ok and they were not mad. I then told them how much it means to us that they would be willing to wait all day just to meet with us and how touched we are that our sisters in Christ are so selfless. I think that patched things up as best they could be patched and we started the interviews. We were able to call our other translator who came literally on two minutes notice and then double-timed the interviews.

            Here’s where God answered that prayer about using my work to reveal His own glory. Absolutely everything that was in my control that day utterly failed, but He used it anyway. Hannah and I gave a total of 9 interviews (when we had only planned to give 6 that day) and realized that our survey is smoother than we thought and takes less time to give than we planned. What the heck? How is that the ending to this terrible story? Utter failure renders wild success. That’s obviously a God thing. (Man, it was rough getting there though. God is so quick to answer these painful, sanctifying prayers.)

The rest of the women who couldn’t wait then said they could meet us before church the next day because they were so eager to be interviewed (probably just because they had waited so long, not because we’re awesome or anything). So this morning, we went to the church at 7:30 AM and interviewed 7 more women that we weren’t even originally planning to interview on this trip. Talk about Grace. We totally messed everything up, but got great and abundant research out of it anyway. God is good.

Now, Hannah and I really hope this counts as our “failure” for the internship. There’s a running joke that our professors won’t count our internship a true success until we fail at something. . . or everything, we can't be sure. We are definitely to perfectionists and overachievers of our class and they lovingly want us to learn the valuable lesson of failing. LESSON LEARNED!!! I hope. I really hope this counts and we can never have to go through anything like this again. I’ll keep you posted.

Keep praying for us. We’re through day two of interviews and have already done 29! It’s going really well, with the exception of “the incident.” That’s what I’m gonna call it from now on, “the incident.” We hope to get about 50 more before Thursday. Pray for good interviews, honest answers, stamina in the long hours, and for people to feel loved through the time short amount of time we are spending with them. Also, I encourage you all to pray a scary prayer this week. We don’t often enough ask God for the hard things (like patience and for His glory to be so huge, we are lost in the shadow of it). So that’s your challenge. Pray a scary prayer and watch how God answers it. I’d love to hear about them.