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From a Rwandan: We are Wealthy

Friday, July 1st, 2011

By Enric Sifa

On TV, in newspapers, on the radio, even from missionaries: when it comes to Africa, we hear negative things from all sorts of media. We hear about the wars, hate, malnutrition, disasters, and poverty of Africa. But are those really the only things Africa has? I remember, in Africa, when I was growing up, I never even thought about the things mentioned above. I thought Africa was the only place people should live. I loved the animals, the sun, the butterflies, the hills, and the valleys. I remember how beautiful the lakes and the rivers were. I remember how delicious the meat was, I remember the smiles of people, the parties every Friday, all the colors, and the rest of the beautiful things that Africa has. That’s what I remember of Africa.

African people are the happiest people you can ever find. One man may not even have salt in his food, but before he eats it, he says a prayer of praise to God for providing that food. He eats with a smile on his face and after he is done, he sleeps on a matt on the floor- with happiness. If a person gets a stomachache, he goes into the wild and chews a special kind of leaf that makes the stomachache go away. Another person doesn’t have any shoes, but you will still see him dancing on the hard dusty floor. He doesn’t care about shoes because he lives in paradise. He loves his life. You will see him playing soccer for ninety minutes straight with no shoes. He feels no pain. After soccer, he goes to take a bath. When he takes his bath, he may only have a bucket to use, but he is happy. That’s what I remember of Africa.

I loved to play with flowers in the streets. I loved the smell of the tall grasses beside the small roads. I loved the river that was only a mile away from my house. I loved the hills on the other side. I loved the party people who came to my house every friday. Life in Africa is so beautiful. People work hard, but they don’t let work and money determine who they are as people. The community is awesome, and you won’t find a single person who lacks friends. People are friendly and they like to include everyone: strangers, tall, short, fat, white, black…everyone. The music is amazing. Everyone, even a disabled person, has a beat. Everyone shakes the booty, man or a woman. If you can walk, you can dance; and if you can talk, you can sing. That’s what every African thinks, and it works well.

rwanda-kids

It’s frustrating that people don’t spend time talking about the beauty of Africa. It seems like they only focus on the negative. There is suffering everywhere. It’s good to help, but if we only talk about what Africa doesn’t have, Africa will always feel inferior. They won’t have the courage to achieve bigger dreams. I love Africa. I know the struggle. But I never knew the struggle until I left Africa. The thing is, we try to compare our lives with other people’s lives and then we come to the conclusion that if a person doesn’t have what we have, he must be suffering. Money and wealth do not make us people. We are people because we have life, and life comes freely to everyone. The president lives because of the free gift of life, just as the homeless person lives because of the free gift of life-neither live because of MONEY. Life is beautiful. Therefore, let us recognize the beauty in it and appreciate the ART of God.

Enric Sifa was born in and grew up in Rwanda. He is a singer/songwriter currently attending Warner Pacific College in Portland, Oregon. To learn more about Enric and his music, visit www.enricsifa.com

Tags: Enric Sifa, Rwanda
Posted in Perspectives on Humanitarian Work, Uncategorized | Comments »

Power Pressure

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

missionaries-building-a-house

Americans exert power, whether we realize it or not. Church members go on mission trips to visit the poor, with a wide open heart to help and give. I believe that in the process of trying to help, we unknowingly pressure the people of other cultures with our power. Jesus was most critical of the powerful, and most merciful to the weak. Let us examine our approach to helping the poor, and learn to love without applying power pressure.

We have difficulty sensing our power pressure, because we have never lived in a community of severe insecurity. We have options. We have money to complete a project, or we can figure out where to get it. We can get a job and rent an apartment. We feel confident to speak openly. We criticize with impunity. We believe in the American dream, where any idea is free to grow.

Our natural self confidence causes us to advocate ideas, to ask direct questions, to take action to provide a solution, such as donating money to complete a critical project. All of these behaviors feel intuitive to us, and don’t feel the least bit inappropriate.

We have never endured great loss from speaking openly. We’ve never lost a loved one for not complying. We’ve never coped with a total lack of options. We are not self-aware, that we naturally speak and act from a position of personal security and power, and that much of the rest of the world does not. Other cultures that have suffered under ruthless political regimes, war and extreme poverty, relate from histories of insecurity, and that’s an entirely different paradigm.

After ten years of engaging in African-Western relationships, I am starting to feel great respect for my African brothers and sisters who have learned deeper personal skills of flexibility than me. They know how to patiently endure power, how to humbly and respectfully go with the flow. They know how to give up for the sake of peace, or win by waiting. They cope with a lack of options and money. I have no idea how to do that.

I speak my mind, and make my case to defend my plans, because I can. My peers respect me for it. American culture is a mutual power exerting culture, whereas many other cultures are mutual submissive cultures; a patient wait and see approach. It’s critical for us to realize that our natural first response is to step forward, whereas in many other cultures, a first natural response is to yield and step back. We need to realize this difference, so that we don’t incorrectly assume that people agree with us when in fact they don’t.

When I first travelled to Rwanda, all sorts of creative, helpful ideas bubbled up within me. My solutions to extreme poverty ranged from very grandiose, like building a world class high school, to very small, such as donating chickens to our orphanage home. My ideas met with enthusiastic affirmation, and I started to believe that I possessed exceptional creativity and even entrepreneurial genius. Rwanda felt like a magical land where every idea has merit. But as my projects unfolded, I started to see glimpses that some of my ideas were not that culturally appropriate or actually wanted. The chicken coop only got half built, and the money invested was lost. Other projects led to even greater painful results.

My helpful ideas met with initial agreement but not actual consensus. My friends yielded to me out of respect for my position as a visitor and person of wealth. There is a huge difference between consensus and yielding that is lost on most Westerners. Lack of consensus will require a great cost to be paid on the back end of a project, and of a relationship.

give-way

Jesus’ love is radical. Jesus’ love does not seek its own way. How can I release my power pressure, and live in mutual submission with those of other cultures? How do I truly gain consensus? To start, I will be willing to spend time, without seeking to bring an idea. I will also let ideas take a very long time to percolate, and gain consensus before moving forward. I may wait to be asked to help, instead of asking if I can help. And I will look for opportunities to respectfully go with the flow.

Serena Morones

Posted in Perspectives on Humanitarian Work | 3 Comments »

The Myth of Blank Canvas

Monday, February 14th, 2011

Africa inspires me to feel unlimited hope for life change. When I first met Rwandan orphans who had bright eyes, wide smiles showing perfect white teeth, and surprising plans for the future, I was jolted into a swirling dance of ideas, hope and action. I’ve lived this energizing journey for more than ten years now. It’s a thrilling but difficult place. Along my journey, I’ve come to discover an odd behavior in myself, and others like me. I call it the myth of the blank canvas.

Paint on Blank Canvas

We look at the African orphan (or widow, or poor person) as a blank canvas, ready for us to splash brilliantly colored paint that will fill out the emptiness of their life. By blank canvas, I mean we forget to imagine what or who came before us. We don’t realize the values, priorities and relationships that constitute the deeply ingrained identity of the person we want to help.

In 2007, I had the good luck of meeting a group of business entrepreneurs at Bourbon Coffee in Kigali. A friend connected me because he thought I would benefit from collaborating with ambitious American businessmen working in Rwanda. I sat within the circle of dreamers and thinkers, all of whom had become successful and wealthy in America. They talked of founding a high quality university in Kigali, with just the right educational programs that would fill the deficit of skills in Rwanda, as well as starting business enterprises to employ the students. The plan was enormous, and sounded perfect in every way. They expected their plan to be one of the most pivotal events in Rwanda’s development. Then, in the midst of the euphoria, one of the guys said, “It’s so exciting to be here in this moment today. I feel like I am eavesdropping, as the founding fathers discuss the plans that will establish the country.”

Founding fathers? Who do we think we are? At least one of these men saw Rwanda as a blank canvas, ready for their big splashes of paint that would make everything beautiful. I have come to see this is really how many of us westerners think. Why do we disregard what is already? When we want to help someone, why do we not honor and learn about the other relationships in that person’s life? Is it because we see the past as being too broken to be significant?

I’ve helped many Rwandans over the years, and looking back I can see that in early days, I did not adequately regard the identities of those I helped. I viewed the youth of Rwanda as enormous opportunities for growth and life change, and thought they would be open to any idea I had for helping. In fact, I believed so strongly in the wisdom of my own ideas, I declined to follow advice from older Rwandans. Of course, pain resulted.

As time passed, I realized that my simplistic view was a myth, especially when I saw other Americans behaving as if nothing and no one had come before them.

My husband and I brought a group of Rwandan singers on music tours for three years in row. As we toured around the West Coast, we noticed that host families seemed very intent on imparting their knowledge and interests onto the guys. They treated the guys like molds ready to be imprinted. One person gave a violin and insisted that the Rwandan youth learn it. People gave them books, CDs, art, gadgets and hobby tools, and insisted that they adopt it all. The guys would hear all sorts of strong advice that was wholly impractical for their situations. This pattern was ridiculously common to the extent that my husband and I joked about it. But the jokes pricked me into awareness of my own self-absorbed perspective.

One of the most emotional moments of realizing the myth came a few years back when I asked my friend Angie if she would open her home to host Eric, one of the young musicians I had helped for many years, to be able to attend school in America. Angie had been to Rwanda and had started to think about adoption, so her heart was ready and open to welcome a Rwandan youth into her home. Several months after Eric joined her family, Angie wrote a wonderful, heartfelt blog about her adoption of Eric, and what it meant to her to have Eric like a son in her family. Angie is a great friend (and gave me permission to tell this story), but her blog struck me oddly and made me feel empty. The blog made me feel as if Angie wasn’t considering the long journey Eric had travelled to get to her home, or the other families, including my own, who had sacrificed to bring him that far.

When we don’t know what is already there, or who has come before, we are not learning the identity of the person we are trying to love. We are loving our ideas of how to change a person, more than loving the person.

There was certainly nothing negative about Angie’s high commitment to parent Eric, just as there is nothing negative about our desires to help the poor, orphaned and widowed. Angie and her family remain one of the most important, life giving relationships to Eric. But this kind of parenting is very different, because while Eric is an orphan, he came to her home with a huge world of relationships, experiences and identity; a beautiful and complex picture. The best outcome for Angie, me and others like us will come after a long time of patient listening and learning how to best fit into a complex story.

Many short-term mission and humanitarian projects fail. I believe failure is partly due to the speed at which the idea came together. We don’t take time to listen and learn how to best fit into what is already there. Jean Hatzfield, author of the “The Antelope Strategy,” translated the word Muzungu as “usurper.” I felt shocked to read such strongly negative translation of the word for white person. But as I reflect, I realize that it’s true that our ambitious world changing plans often usurp what was already in process, either in one person’s life or in a community. Wouldn’t it be better to weave our efforts to help into what already is in process, than to launch a whole new initiative?

Why do we try to make people into copies of ourselves, instead of first understanding the person we are trying to help? I don’t think it’s because we are bad people. I believe it’s because we all deeply yearn for significance. We want to imprint our identity on needy people, because we want to feel valuable, smart and capable of changing the world. But our desire for significance cannot be gratified by helping others. Our need for significance will only be filled when we live in eternity in the presence of God.

A major thesis of the book, When Helping Hurts by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, is that poverty alleviation projects should build upon the existing assets in a community. Start with the strengths of a community and slowly build from there. Bringing in outside technology and resources doesn’t have long term impact.

Posted in Perspectives on Humanitarian Work | 2 Comments »

About Speak Rwanda

Tony & Serena Morones are founders of Speak Rwanda and are actively involved in the lives of many Rwandans through ministry and business. They live and work in Portland, Oregon.