"Beyond Mountains, There Will Be Mountains"

There mountains beyond mountains. This saying is taken to be encouraging and discouraging. My take on this is not encouraging. This Haitian saying means that after you conquer one challenge there will always be another. That just seems overwhelming to me. Why would I want to know that  if I conquer what I’m going through now, then there will be a bigger problem to conquer?

I read about this in a book called Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, adapted for young people by Michael French. I would have read the unabridged version, except that I found it in a library with a sign saying “I’m a true story.” I thought it looked interesting so I read it. It was, until the end. The book was about this doctor name Paul Farmer who gave up all his power and fame to conquer tuberculous in the central plateau of Port-Au-Prince, in Haiti. Port-Au-Prince is the capital of Haiti and the central plateau is an area of farmers. Before the hydroelectric dam was built, the Artibonite River’s banks was farmed by Haitians. When the dam was built, the fertile farm land was flooded leaving the farmers nowhere but the steep, rocky banks to farm. You can read more about that at http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/11/21/a_dam_for_the_people_and_a_people_damned.html
Because the people were now living so close together, tuberculous and other diseases were a major problem. Paul worked for a few years raising money and buying medications and finally treating this problem. There were five types of medications. People in the area started having a problem MDR-TB which is a disease that the patient is resistant to four out of the five medications for TB. According to WHO (World Health Organization) MDR-TB was not treatable in third-world countries. But Paul refused to give up, he treated that and then took his accomplishments to a world-wide scale. Farmer obviously found this statement encouraging.
     This statement is the one reason I hate science. I mean I love science except for this one aspect. Sometimes science can feel like I'm not really moving forward. I'm not making process. Because answers lead to more question, I feel overwhelmed is a good way to put it. But I want to be a scientist when I grow up and go to college and have to work. I know that it is very difficult to make money in a non-science related occupation. And most of the time, I love finding the answers even if it does make me wonder. I love how science shows us how the search is of more worth than the answer. I love that science makes so much sense. 
     Now that you've read this, you can decide for yourself whether you'll be encouraged or discouraged by this proverb.