The Loneliest Job in the World

*Written on Wednesday and published on Sunday due to illness yet lingering*

For three or four or seven days I woke up lonely. That aching loneliness that really can kill you. For three or four or seven evenings I went to bed with that crushing loneliness, too. At the day’s beginning and the day’s end it clung to me.

Bedtime meant escape through sleep. Morning meant relief through prayer. What got me off the bed, out of the net, remembering with heaviness Beverly’s absence; what got me up were the children’s faces. Their pudgy hands, their quizzical expressions, their accents when reading, their squeezes and snuggles. Those sweet minions gave me courage to put feet on the floor.

And time with God, singing, reading, praising, and supplicating on the roof, that was the perspective realignment needed to shake off the deadly loneliness and press on. Not just press on, endure, or survive, but run forward with eagerness: THRIVE.

It’s still lonely. Being the only foreigner in the house, school, church, on the streets; being the odd one out in culture, language, appearance, experience—it’s lonely. My Creole is quite capable, good perhaps, but I am easily left behind when there’s slang or native rapidity. Whoosh. I’m in the dust straining after that train of dialogue.

Culture is also pretty familiar, having lived for this length of time with American-influenced Haitians. But occasionally it smacks me upside the head and steamrolls my heart. The treatment of children, the class system, trash disposal (or lack there-of?), the lack of medical care and basic necessities, the fascination with illness, death, and everyone else’s business—not sure I ever want to get used to these cultural phenomena.

Appearance. I can go nowhere unnoticed, or uncommented. There is always at least one kind soul reminding me of my color with a call of “blan!” I felt good sitting through three hours of church last week with only some curious stares. Putting up my chair in the fourth hour a little fellow chased me shouting “Blan!” excitedly. Worse than his call was that no one intervened. No one corrected him. *Sigh*

Just when you start to feel you truly belong, that you’re truly at home, someone calls you Blan. The bank teller, the cashier, the machan vender can’t get past your accent, or the sheer incongruity of your color and speech, so your comrade must translate your Creole into Creole (that to you sounds precisely the same.) Your elementary students laugh and correct your pronunciation. (Now that’s humbling.)

You are at once expected to provide medical care and criticized for assuming knowledge only a true doctor would know. You are expected to live sparingly by Americans but are thought to live in luxury by the locals. (And really, to many, you do.)

You shake your head because your public education and childhood taught you to wash with soap and water, to put antibiotic under the bandaid, to brush and floss at least twice a day, to drink water and eat your greens, to sleep eight hours a night. You know to shut the door, flush the toilet, turn off the faucet, knock, use your napkin, wait your turn. You don’t listen at top volume, listen to others speak, learn from your classmates’ answers, take care of your things, turn pages without crumpling them, sound out words phonetically.

You know you always have ten fingers and toes, which direction is right, can distinguish before and after, identify numbers and letters out of sequence. You walk in line, ask for what you need with please and thank you, say excuse me. You don’t stare or yell “Foreigner!” at strangers.

Many of these things you don’t even remember learning. Most of these I teach every day, to children, youth, and adults, who by this age “ought to know.”

But their experience is not yours. It’s not mine.

You and I from 24-hour electricity, customer service, 911-Emergency, stable government, Walmart and grocery stores. Us from standardized public education built on comprehension and critical thinking…

Our experience, my first-world friend, is so unknowable here.

That can be so very isolating. So very lonesome. Unable to explain deep feelings, concepts, to translate thoughts, share what you’re yearning to say. It’s lonely not to have friends with whom you take walks, shop, sip lattes in cafes, see a movie, banter with waiters at a restaurant, cook dinner, attend church in your native tongue….
It’s lonely to be so isolated, literally walled in for your color marks you.

This world can often feel lonely.

And being a missionary in the third world away from family and familiar, sometimes it’s the loneliest job in the world.

So, you ask, is it worth it?

Oh, yes.

How many children did you snuggle today? How many co-workers hugged you and told you they loved you? How many three-year olds clung to you? How many four-year olds jumped up and down at your appearance? How many kindergarteners put their arms around your neck so you could sweep them off their feet? How many first graders said, “Jesus loves you!” in two languages? How many second graders read to you in learner’s English and called out for you to see their block-buildings (a first-time experience for all)? How many third graders came to you and said, “I want a hug,” refusing to work until their request was fulfilled?

Did you eat any mangoes fresh off the tree? Did you watch the sun rise and set beside the ocean?  Laugh so hard you doubled up? Serve as nurse to thirty children? Feel your heart break in love? Preach a lesson in a foreign language in front of a hundred eyes? Drink fresh cherry and lime juice? Help a nine-year old with his English homework? Feel utterly grateful for every breeze, sip of water, a toilet and paper, soap, rice and beans, bug spray?

I did all of this today. And the day is not yet finished. Next to do is work out under the stars in 85% or 110% humidity. How much did you sweat today?

 How full are you?

My cup runneth over, and I’ve got the loneliest job in the world.