Distractions!

Continued….

Culturally, we don’t make appointments to visit relatives and friends, we just show up. If I was going to visit my uncle in the village, it will be absolutely normal to take my children, wife and even the househelp and just walk in in my uncle’s home. They will receive us with great joy and make the best meals for us and even persuade us to spend the night. Our visit would not be considered an interruption but rather a blessing. This scenario is replicated in many other settings.

As a leader in Africa, I have to deal with all kinds of distractions - from power(electricity) interruptions to technological and social media distractions. But I want to focus on the difficult balance between paper work and people work. As a leader, I have responsibility for both paper work and people work. There are times when paper work seemed to be of more value than people work, and times when I considered people as a distraction to work. But I have come to the conclusion that whereas both paper work and people work are important, and there should be a balance between the two, if we are to consider these in order of priority, people work comes before paper work and God comes first.