The Aid Worker’s Prayer

The Aid Worker’s Prayer

After twelve years of field work I have learned to pray efficiently,
I’ve learned to drop the items I can’t solve sufficiently
from the list and focus on the ones where the variable
of my specific work is actually valuable.

The aid worker’s prayer at twelve years is a shorter document,
the aid worker’s prayer has been through the procurement
and revision process of twelve years of answered and not,
and what remains is what I learned is possible and got.

Give me the access, that one I’ll always ask,
give me the trucks on time, give me the task
of the specific and the achievable and the now,
give me the one thing I can do and show me how.

The community asks me to stay when I leave,
which is the specific thing that I receive
instead of gratitude, which I don’t want,
the ask to stay is more than what I haunt.

I don’t stay because the work requires the rotation,
because the aid worker who stays too long at the station
starts to see the community through the lens of the helping
and stops seeing the community,
which is the self-defeating yelping
of the savior model that the field has learned to distrust,
which is the rotation’s wisdom even when the leaving is a bust.

So I pray for the work and I pray for the after,
and I leave with the specific laughter
of someone who’s been useful and has also been a problem
and knows both, which is the prayer solved at the bottom.