By Anthony:
I am leading many Helping Without Hurting in Africa trainings these days. In this post I'd like to share some highlights.
I can still get nervous even after all this time. Partly this is because many of our participants are very busy people with important positions - bishops, heads of organizations, development workers, denominational leaders, etc. Fears still come that people won't appreciate the training or that I am not capable enough. But the reality is that much of the learning comes from the discussions, and our material is excellent at generating important and deep discussions. There are new things I learn from participants every time.
I love seeing the impact made on organizations and churches, that they actually consider real practical changes to their ministry practices to better help materially poor people in Africa. I love inspiring people to have a deeper love for the poor. I love being able to teach the good news of the Gospel at every training, talking about justification by faith, the Kingdom of God, teaching against the prosperity gospel, and much more. I don't love the travel, but I love what God has given me to do right now! I am generally limiting myself to one international training per month, and my schedule is booked up about 9 months out. Below, see my coauthor Jonny teaching:
There was one new simple initiative that came about from another missionary, Debbie Nutzmann. She helped to organize a training for us in Jinja, Uganda. She came up with the idea of locally printing these stickers and giving them out to the participants for them to put on their phones or laptops. I thought it was awesome! So we took up the idea and now we give them out at each of our trainings. It is a great way to freely advertise the material. More importantly, I think it's a great conversation starter. When people ask about a sticker, it gives participants a chance to share what they learned about poverty alleviation.
My coauthor Jonny Kabiswa is the main person I lead trainings along with. But sometimes we divide and teach in different places with other facilitators. We are trying to raise up a team of facilitators and coach them well so that we have people we can recommend to interested organizations. This is a high level training and some of these facilitators have Master's Degrees or PHDs or else extensive experience in community development or church ministry. Here are three facilitators from Ghana and Togo who work for the Chalmers Center, or joined us to lead a training in Accra, Ghana:
David Fugoyo helped us lead a training in Kampala. He is from South Sudan but lives in Uganda. He is one of The Gospel Coalition Africa council members and also a contributor to the Africa Study Bible.
From the previously mentioned Jinja training, here is a photo with some of our co-facilitators and hosts. We actually had 8 other facilitators besides Jonny and me at this training.
Monica, a co-facilitator in Jinja shared an interesting story. She was visiting Germany some years ago. A man asked her what country she was from and she told him she was from Uganda. He said, "Ohhhhhhh, you are from Amin's country!" And without losing a moment, she said back with a smile, "yessss and you are from Hitler's country."
I think this story is really illuminating. Most of us in the West would immediately and instinctively know that it would be seem rude and offensive to even mention Hitler to anyone from Germany, unless in a serious conversation about history. People don't want their country to be associated with that one time in history. Why don't we think the same way when it comes to African countries? Surely Ugandans don't want their country only to to be thought of and associated with one of their very worst times in history. Their country is more than that bad president. They have a beautiful country and are proud of it.This is just a small example of a larger issue of the narrative in the West about Africa being so often just negative: lack of development, famine, bandits, violence. Of course, there are some famines and violence, but the negative narrative needs to be balanced with the true positive stories of Africa - beautiful joyful people, hard-working innovative people, hospitable cultures, thriving developed cities, passionate churches strong in faith, etc.
- An example of unintended hurting while trying to help that a participant shared. The UN or World Bank apparently shares weather predictions and shares about possible rain shortages or flooding. Apparently, farmers will often view those predictions as "what is going to happen" with the result that if they are told there will be floods or famines they won't even bother to plant at all.
- A participant said - "Fathers, give the girl child the gizzard!" Sometimes, mostly in the past, certain meats would not be served to women or girls, but saved for the father or boys.
- There is still belief in charms and witchcraft in many places in Africa. I learned that sometimes a person will pay a witchdoctor and they will scoop up soil underneath where another person has walked. Then they believe the witchdoctor will have power to do rituals against that person using the soil.
- Related to witchcraft, there is a lot of African traditional religion that has been syncretized into Christianity, especially in prosperity gospel churches. A participant's friend paid her pastor to come to her house to cleanse it of spirits. He did so by cutting in half an orange, then putting salt in it and sticking it to the window. Problem solved.
- One participant in Ghana shared his life story about struggling to develop himself. His father was not able to do much for him because he was the last child, child #50. His father has 8 wives and could not take care of all of the children adequately.
- In one lesson, we discuss gleaning laws in the Old Testament concerning not completely harvesting your field, and leaving something for others to come and do the work of harvesting. One participant in Rwanda did gleaning as a child to get money for shoes and school fees. At that time people congratulated him and appreciated him for doing so. Neighbors welcomed him. But things have changed. They tell me no one allows people to do that anymore in Rwanda. People are more individualistic and life is generally more competitive. The same is true in Uganda.
Although people's standard of living is incredibly vastly improved from say the 1950s, the population has grown exponentially, education is prioritized much more and education is expensive. People are better off financially compared to 50 or 70 years ago, but school fees are so expensive that it seems everyone is constantly struggling with debts and poverty. This has resulted in people being more self-focused and sharing less with others.