The importance of being resourceful

Recently I've realized the importance of being resourceful. Of course, not everyone is planning on spending their future as a bush doctor in Timbuktu, but I think that resourcefulness is a great thing that can be cultivated and can make life a lot better. The reason I've been thinking about it is because of how often I have to be resourceful here in Antigua.
Somehow I imagined living in a tropical paradise, and in some ways it is a tropical paradise here. In other ways it is a very different world from the first-world country I grew up in. Take food, for example. I don't have a lot of money and the university is in the middle of absolutely nowhere on the island, so I have been endeavouring to cook my own food.
Nothing too difficult about that, of course, except for the fact that my ingredients are extremely limited, as are my cooking utilities. I have a microwave, a rice cooker, and a few plastic dishes. But man oh man, I have become a believer in rice cookers. Here is a list of the things that I've managed to cook in my rice cooker in the last week: rice (of course!), spaghetti with red sauce, spaghetti alfredo, scrambled eggs, french toast, lemon pudding, the list goes on. And I managed to make greek salad too, with yellow tomatoes.
As for other things, I finally got a light in my bathroom the other day. Until then I'd been using a flashlight and washing my dishes in the teeny weeny sink. The toilet and shower both leak all over the place, but I realized it wasn't a big deal. I didn't have a desk until I found stacks of old books in the defunct library here and used them to prop up my bedside table to a good height. Because it's always raining outside I can't hang my laundry out, so I strung a clothesline across my room and hang my washing there.
As for my dissection lab, I found an old pair of scrub pants to wear so I don't have to dissect in my swimsuit.
Did I mention anything about the flora and fauna here? Apparently there is an ancient bat cave about 100 meters from my house, it was used as a hideout for slaves centuries ago. They dug a 30 mile tunnel underwater and escaped from the island to freedom. Now it is inhabited by bats. I am working on bribing some of the guys to go there with me. The rats seem to be only interested in the cadavers, not my room, which is great. And the tarantula-sized spiders that have infested the whole island- well, we were assured that they are not tarantulas, even though they look exactly like them, and that they are more afraid of us than we are of them. (For some of us that may not be quite true). I am beginning to realize that the tree frog (actually not a parrot) outside my window is not going away, and for the first time last night I slept without my earplugs in.
You know, it's not perfect here. But it isn't perfect anywhere. We visited the local hospital the other day and went through ward upon filthy ward of suffering people. In the neonatal ward I saw a 1 lb baby who was very close to dying. Somehow I think we are so blessed in Canada to have such a great medical system, to have so much infrastructure, to have everything we need at our fingertips. It's not something to be taken lightly. Doing without some of the comforts of life for a while helps to put everything in perspective. We have so much. And most importantly, we have everything we need. Everything we need to do God's will.