In March 2015, I was in Port Vila while it was smashed by a massive category 5 cyclone named Pam. Winds reached over 300km/h, and homes were literally ripped apart.
(By some kind of miracle, the house I was in was totally undamaged).
In the days following, I was privileged to be a very small part of bringing relief to some of the people impacted by this catastrophic weather event. Outside of the city, where buildings were less sturdy, the damage was astonishing. Entire villages were flattened, sand covered coastal roads, gardens were totally destroyed and livelihoods lost.
Hundreds of aid workers flew into the nation on military and civilian aircraft. Thousands of tonnes of supplies arrived. Many, many planning meetings were held.
While government and NGO workers planned, communities worked on restoring life to some kind of function. Friends of mine spent their whole day, each day for two weeks, cleaning out their homes. That was possible because we had them staying at our place, where we took care of meals and water while they did what had to be done.
Not everyone was that lucky.
Many people couldn’t begin to rebuild. It was all they could do to simply find food and clean water each day. Much less the money and energy to repair seriously damaged homes, schools and churches.

That’s what I want to talk about.

It is a common western question to walk into a situation, see a family lounging under a mango tree and ask “why should I help? Why would I make an effort when they clearly are not?”
This is a valid question. But it neglects an important factor. The inertia of discouragement.

A couple of weeks into cyclone recovery, a number of people had come to help my friend rebuilding His missions compound. This was the same place where they’d had to clean the flooding out of their home before they could move back in. After years of blood, sweat and tears to build the place from the ground up, that act of cleaning out cyclone damage for just a week had brought the family to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion. Some of his staff had checked out days earlier, unable to deal with ripping the place to bits: the emotional toll was too great.
One afternoon I stopped by to check on progress: the place was buzzing with activity. Damaged frames of buildings were being torn down, roof structures were being repaired, new walls were being built. My friend was visibly tired, but he commented to me that having all of that extra help was an encouragement to keep moving forward: things would get better in time.
Inertia was building.

That got me thinking about those who didn’t have the help my friend did, the ones who are still rebuilding their homes 9 months down the line. Inertia is detrimental in these cases. When the discouragement of seeing your family home ripped to shreds, when the funds you made at your job were only just enough to pay for food and school fees, where is there hope? Where is there motivation?
A westerner might consider themselves justified in declaring “I won’t help someone who is not helping themselves.” But what if the catalyst to begin the task is someone coming to lend a hand? Could it be that the inertia of discouragement is unravelled simply by a friend stepping in with a hammer, lending their energy to the situation?
That seemed to work for my friend. 9 months down the track, the work teams haven’t been around for months, but his base is almost totally built (better than before), and he is busy helping others around the nation mitigate the effects of the newest problem: a major drought. Help given to him and his family has been help which, by extension, is impacting the whole country.

So the question:

When I come across someone stuck in the inertia rut, whether in a development context, or a life choice, what will I do?
Am I the encourager or the critic?
Will I choose to help someone up and walk with them as they climb out of a rut, or will I deride them for bowing under the weight of discouragement, without lifting a finger to help them?

I’d like to think I’m learning to be the encourager, the helper.
How about you?