Discouragement

Work on the bridge has slowed to a crawl. The NGO that had been contributing the wages to pay the labor force has been kicked out of Sudan by the President of Sudan. In response, the World Food Programme jumped on board and offered food-for-work, but the deal has not been well received. We had four men sign up for work last week (when we need about 25), and then nobody renewed work for this week.
This is something that has been hard for us to understand. The amount of food being offered by the WFP is actually more valuable (by 20 percent!) than the wages that were offered in the past. The laborers could actually sell the food for profit if they chose. The local governor was shocked that nobody signed up to work.
This puts us in a weird spot, but one that is also very interesting. One option is to sit back and wait until the community decides that they need the bridge enough to provide the labor force. There are communities in Ethiopia (which is about 20 km away) that have assembled volunteer work crews to build bridges like ours, so the idea that Yabus could pull itself together and see this project through is a reasonable one. The second option is to write home about the need and raise the $2200 (that's right, two thousand, two hunred dollars) in order to pay the wages of the laborers and get this bridge built before the rains start. In a certain sense this is a debate between doing development work and doing aid work, between doing something sustainable and something not-so-sustainable, between teaching a man to fish and giving a man a fish. Option 2 is best for the community for its immediate needs and Option 1 is best for the community in the long run.
I'm a supporter of good development theory and practice, but we've come all the way to Yabus to help this community build a bridge. Our presence here represents a significant investment on our part and on the part of our families, church and supporters. If we don't get started on the work right away, our trip here will have been a waste. And yet, this work and this project and our lives are not all about us and our investments and agendas.
Yesterday morning we talked and prayed about this situation as a challenge to our tendency as Americans to be independent of God, doing things on our own strength. We have encountered an obstacle – do we pray and wait on God for a solution or do we rely on our own strength, ability, ingenuity, and push obstinately forward? This is a tough one for us – please pray with us for wisdom.
In the meantime, we have offered the student work force (which works on various construction or maintenance projects around Yabus in order to pay tuition) the opportunity to contribute to the bridge project. They have class all morning but are available to work from 3 to 6 in the afternoons. Yesterday we had five students show up to help, and we worked on collecting sand and gravel from the river. With five men, we can work at a snail's pace until next week, when work will come to a stop. The cables are very heavy, and without a crew of at least 25 men, we can't move them. In addition, our departure date is about five weeks away (see previous post) and we are especially conscious of that deadline.