Patience

Patience—it’s a virtue I struggle with. It’s also now my name, or at least for my time in Africa.

I’ve never been able to pronounce my own name correctly. For some reason I tend to emphasize the O-N to have more of an “un” sound. People in the United States even have a hard enough time, so I can definitely see how people around the world might struggle with it a bit. I’ll often try to give my first name, and sometimes will shorten it to my nickname, Payto or even Pay. In Nepal, I put Payto on my name tag once, and in some of the games I just went by Pay; both were attempts to make it easier for my Nepali friends to say my name.

The people in Uganda had the same difficulties with my name. At one school, a little girl named Dorcas quietly asked me, “What is your name?” I answered, “Payton” to which she looked a bit confused and a couple of moments later repeated “Patience.” I went with it and followed her to another room to dance.

After my team completed our program with all the kids, one of the teachers spoke to the whole group about friendship and asked the kids to tell her the names of their new friends—which was us. Dorcas turned to me asking for my name again. I said “Payton” and a few moments later, she told the teacher “Patience.” We started to spell my name with our hips like we had been doing with other teammates’ names. I tried to correct it halfway through the spelling after the teacher only spelled out the P-A-T. She missed the letter Y, I shouted out the O-N, and everyone was just left confused. At that moment, I decided going by Patience might actually work a lot better in this culture. We hugged kids goodbye and waved, and as we left, a small number of us met another man outside the school, and when we were introducing ourselves, I found myself saying, “Hi, I’m Patience,” and so the name stuck in my mind.

It’s ironic. Many of my teammates could attest that I am not the most patient person. My impatience has shown itself time and time again throughout this five month trip. In fact, before the trip even started, I was living in impatience. I anxiously waited to receive news of acceptance to the trip, was eager for our prep class to start, and struggled throughout the whole summer as I counted down the days to August 5th. Not that anticipation is bad, but the point is that it’s hard to be patient!

Now I am on this trip, and in hindsight the waiting period was good. I’ve been on this trip for three and a half months, experiencing so many amazing moments. Sometimes I still struggle to be present in each moment and not get too impatient when looking forward to the next country or now, looking forward to Christmas as we near the end of the trip…but I am learning. Each long flight and bus ride, every hotel lobby, and all the city walking continue to teach me. The trip has taught me more about patience in matters of time and waiting, making it easier to live in each moment. The lessons don’t end there, though.

I’m also learning how to be more patient when it comes to people and matters outside of my control. If something has ever been out of my control, this trip is it. Each day and activity is planned for me, and those things that aren’t planned, have to be planned in agreement with at least one other person. It becomes easy to lose patience in different situations and with many people. 

I start to get annoyed with every set of new shops trying to sell me something as vendors’ voices ring out; I love this team, but we’ve lived together constantly for over 100 days, and sometimes I lose patience with my friends. Then school adds extra stress sometimes, because it’s already hard enough to be patient in normal college classes, but on Around-the-World, it’s hard to sit in a class when I could be out exploring or when I’m still exhausted from the day before. 

Finding the patience to persevere through all the unique struggles that this program presents is not easy. It is, however, necessary, and in a way, also wonderful. Without experiences that test our patience, it is hard to become a more patient person. God knew I could use help working on patience in my life, so He sent a bunch of little Ugandan kids to butcher the pronunciation of my name and give me an entirely new one. Now, even as I continue to struggle and grow, I have this name as a reminder, so go ahead and call me Patience.