My personal intent on this trip was to use my skills and experience as an engineer to help better a society. On the plane to Rwanda, I quickly realized I was not alone, as the large 747 airplane was populated with well-meaning Norwegians, British, Americans and Danes serving for a plethora of NGO’s too numerous to count. Kigali is unequivocally a city fueled by Not-for-Profits, with office after office named some variation of “European coalition for sustainable development” or “USAid” or “World Vision” or “SwedeSurvey”. With a Western presence comes all the trappings required to keep organizations afloat: advertising, hotels, 4-star restaurants and coffee shops with WI-FI (I admit, guilty as charged). I was merely a drop in the sea of Muzungos or white people in Kinyarwandan, eager to offer my Western tangible solutions to problems that a Country in the heart of Africa that had suffered Genocide surely must have.
As the field work for Water for People moved me outside of the NFP bubble of Kigali, a creeping realization began to come over me. This is not the Country I expected. Its people are not down-trodden, needy or out of their element heavy with emotional scars. Was there visible evidence of the Genocide? Yes. It is fairly common to see people over the age of 20 with limbs missing and scars and burn marks varying in severity. However, getting past physical ailments, I realized this is a people intact. They are not disjointed, unorganized or destitute. Instead, what I found is a quiet national unity that has moved past the designation of Tutsi or Hutu. I was moved more times than I can count from scenes of endearing human interaction such as a sister taking care of her younger sibling, or friends holding hands and sharing a laugh or a sincere gesture of welcome that I both witnessed and experienced. This is a people who exhibit the wholeness and warmth that emanates from deconstructing a painful past and rebuilding with lessons learned. Suddenly my western tangible solutions were taking a backseat to a wider philosophical question: what is the role of the west in the future of Rwanda? Might it be that our good intentions may be doing more harm than good?
Kathy Wilson, author, life coach and my spiritual advisor recently discussed the difference between empowerment and enabling in an ezine article. She defined empowerment as helping an individual realize that no matter the given situation, there are always many choices of action from which they can choose. “Simply being at choice” or taking control of your destiny is empowering. Conversely, enabling behavior takes the options of choice away from the person going through the hardship. “During an act of enablement, the enabler is choosing what they believe is best for another person. Depriving another person of their right to have their own power of choice not only is disempowering, it instantly transforms that person into a victim.” Extrapolating from helping a person to helping a country, I think it is important to ask: are we empowering, or are we enabling? Sending unsolicited incubators to health clinics to help with premature births is noble in theory, but when that incubator is used without electricity it becomes a literal “hotbed” for infection. Installing wells with pumps that are not locally manufactured, may be good for awhile but when the project is complete and the NGO is no longer around, what recourse does a community have when parts or replacements are needed? In this respect, I believe Water for People has gotten it right by teaming with government officials and donating only consultancy services and money. The actual approach taken and infrastructure installed will be the Community’s decision. Not all NGO’s operate like Water for People.
Another volunteer and I had a rather lengthy debate about pride, his point being that the communities that received a disproportionate amount of aid exhibited lower amounts of pride as evidenced by the children running around in tattered and dirty “mission clothing”. It did seem that the communities that rebuilt from the inside-out, without hand-outs from the West had more pride in their land, in their houses and in themselves. It’s a point to ponder. Enabling behavior not only diminishes pride, it sends a message that what they have is somehow not enough. It runs the risk of leading them to believe that to be seen as “developed” they must be like us and therefore should not develop as they see fit on their own. I have to wonder if sometimes the guilt of the inaction of West during the Genocide of 1994 is not fueling the pouring in of unasked for goods and services. It’s not that Rwanda is not thankful for the help; I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise. It just that I am wondering if it would not be more empowering for the West to be more respectful in allowing Rwanda to provide for itself? Wouldn’t it be better if the West acted as support for change instead of being the impetus of change? To answer my own question about the role of the West in Rwanda’s future, I guess I am rather laboriously coming to the conclusion that the West’s role must come from a place of empowerment in order to do no harm.
I’ve always felt that volunteering is a gift that you give yourself because what you get out of the experience is always more than you give. In this case, what I got out of it was less of a “feel-good” factor from the work I put in and more of an education on the resiliency of the human race. Anyone who has suffered a personal tragedy, be it a death of a loved one, a painful divorce or a serious depression would do well to take lessons from this Country’s people. I am sure that after 1994 they mourned for the dead, their Country and themselves and at sometime in the past, felt helpless and hopeless. But they have worked through their pain and recreated their lives and their Country with heads help up high, looking expectantly at a future that is bright and full of promise. They have embraced a painful past but do not reside there, instead choosing to take lessons learned with them as they create a new reality that is Rwanda. If you are looking for faith in humanity, you will find it here.
Rwanda has moved on from the Genocide of 1994. I think it is time that the West did too.
I would like you to meet the future of Rwanda:
As the field work for Water for People moved me outside of the NFP bubble of Kigali, a creeping realization began to come over me. This is not the Country I expected. Its people are not down-trodden, needy or out of their element heavy with emotional scars. Was there visible evidence of the Genocide? Yes. It is fairly common to see people over the age of 20 with limbs missing and scars and burn marks varying in severity. However, getting past physical ailments, I realized this is a people intact. They are not disjointed, unorganized or destitute. Instead, what I found is a quiet national unity that has moved past the designation of Tutsi or Hutu. I was moved more times than I can count from scenes of endearing human interaction such as a sister taking care of her younger sibling, or friends holding hands and sharing a laugh or a sincere gesture of welcome that I both witnessed and experienced. This is a people who exhibit the wholeness and warmth that emanates from deconstructing a painful past and rebuilding with lessons learned. Suddenly my western tangible solutions were taking a backseat to a wider philosophical question: what is the role of the west in the future of Rwanda? Might it be that our good intentions may be doing more harm than good?
Kathy Wilson, author, life coach and my spiritual advisor recently discussed the difference between empowerment and enabling in an ezine article. She defined empowerment as helping an individual realize that no matter the given situation, there are always many choices of action from which they can choose. “Simply being at choice” or taking control of your destiny is empowering. Conversely, enabling behavior takes the options of choice away from the person going through the hardship. “During an act of enablement, the enabler is choosing what they believe is best for another person. Depriving another person of their right to have their own power of choice not only is disempowering, it instantly transforms that person into a victim.” Extrapolating from helping a person to helping a country, I think it is important to ask: are we empowering, or are we enabling? Sending unsolicited incubators to health clinics to help with premature births is noble in theory, but when that incubator is used without electricity it becomes a literal “hotbed” for infection. Installing wells with pumps that are not locally manufactured, may be good for awhile but when the project is complete and the NGO is no longer around, what recourse does a community have when parts or replacements are needed? In this respect, I believe Water for People has gotten it right by teaming with government officials and donating only consultancy services and money. The actual approach taken and infrastructure installed will be the Community’s decision. Not all NGO’s operate like Water for People.
Another volunteer and I had a rather lengthy debate about pride, his point being that the communities that received a disproportionate amount of aid exhibited lower amounts of pride as evidenced by the children running around in tattered and dirty “mission clothing”. It did seem that the communities that rebuilt from the inside-out, without hand-outs from the West had more pride in their land, in their houses and in themselves. It’s a point to ponder. Enabling behavior not only diminishes pride, it sends a message that what they have is somehow not enough. It runs the risk of leading them to believe that to be seen as “developed” they must be like us and therefore should not develop as they see fit on their own. I have to wonder if sometimes the guilt of the inaction of West during the Genocide of 1994 is not fueling the pouring in of unasked for goods and services. It’s not that Rwanda is not thankful for the help; I have seen nothing to suggest otherwise. It just that I am wondering if it would not be more empowering for the West to be more respectful in allowing Rwanda to provide for itself? Wouldn’t it be better if the West acted as support for change instead of being the impetus of change? To answer my own question about the role of the West in Rwanda’s future, I guess I am rather laboriously coming to the conclusion that the West’s role must come from a place of empowerment in order to do no harm.
I’ve always felt that volunteering is a gift that you give yourself because what you get out of the experience is always more than you give. In this case, what I got out of it was less of a “feel-good” factor from the work I put in and more of an education on the resiliency of the human race. Anyone who has suffered a personal tragedy, be it a death of a loved one, a painful divorce or a serious depression would do well to take lessons from this Country’s people. I am sure that after 1994 they mourned for the dead, their Country and themselves and at sometime in the past, felt helpless and hopeless. But they have worked through their pain and recreated their lives and their Country with heads help up high, looking expectantly at a future that is bright and full of promise. They have embraced a painful past but do not reside there, instead choosing to take lessons learned with them as they create a new reality that is Rwanda. If you are looking for faith in humanity, you will find it here.
Rwanda has moved on from the Genocide of 1994. I think it is time that the West did too.
I would like you to meet the future of Rwanda:
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