good poem

I just read this poem, by Allen Harder, in a book called People in Rural Development by Peter Batchelor. It was originally printed in INTERCOM Vol. 14, no 11 (1974) which is a newsletter put out by the Mennonite Central Committee. It speaks well to the experience of a missionary working in development and it gives me hope:

A boy came to Zaire
brimming with courage.
Change the natives,
build new houses,
give them food.
They're bound to change for a peace-man.

Why, why won't they
build chicken houses
plant corn
breed rabbits?
Why! Why!
And he began to resent
his people,
then to hate them.

But the people still said
"Come, live with us,
learn our ways.
We like who you are."
And he sat with them, in front of the fire
a pot of manioc and a dish of
hot caterpillars between them.

Until
one day
an elder came to him and said,
"My children are weak.
They hunger for chickens corn and rabbits.
Can you help us?"