handovers

This week marks the official handover of my job as the director of
clinical services at the hospital to one of the other docs who's
planning to stay longer than me. I've been nominally in charge for
about 18 months now (at times it seems like no one's in charge, but I do
my best) but since I'm planning to head back to the US in November we
wanted to try to do the transition a few months early to help work out
the bugs and make sure things go smoothly. So far, it has been less
than smooth, but we've got three more months to work it out.
How to hand things over well must be a recurring issue for missionaries
and aid workers all over the world. I haven't figured it out yet. So
many of us want developing countries to be 'self-sufficient'; this is a
more complicated issue than it seems on the face of it. So much more is
needed to keep a project running here than at home, and it's almost
impossible for the community to support these projects with the limited
resources that they have, even if the community has embraced the idea
and wants to make it work. I see projects that would have died for the
lack of the funds to buy 20 gallons of fuel (currently priced at around
$14/gallon in the town where I live). I see equipment in the hospital
which doesn't work because of lack of batteries, or the simple matter of
a UK-style plug (about $2, plus a 5 hour one-way bus ride to get to the
store that sells them).
But these small expenses, at least to me, loom larger for a community
that is chronically strapped for cash, living on the wages of
subsistence farming (on average $800-1000/family), or who has extended
themselves financially to buy into the 'American' dream of possessions,
comfort, and entertainment. Add to that the need to support large,
extended families -- the money order post at the post office must be the
busiest place in town -- and most of the time even small expenses can be
difficult to meet, and unfair for an institution to expect to be filled
from the pockets of the workers.
So I've been learning to let go, but it's difficult because I know the
road has been made much smoother for me by the gifts and resources that
I have at my disposal as a rich American with good support from home.
The road is more rocky for someone similar trying to do my job without
those resources. True 'self-sufficiency' is still a long way off. In an
ironic way, I'm beginning to see that a good handover actually means
that I continue to be involved, present, and available to help meet
needs even as I'm not the one in charge. Or to put it another way, to
not only hand over responsibility, but also to hand over my resources
and the control of those resources so that the job can continue to move
forward without me.