Back in America

I left the land of a thousand hills, rich tea and coffee and beautiful people I dearly love.

I am back in the land between the atlantic and pacific, of juicy cheeseburgers and beautiful people who I dearly love.

Thanks for following 8 months of my writing. I will continue to blog, but on a different site: round thoughts.tumblr.com.

If you are tired of hurting your eyes by reading online, or if you want to exercise your ears a bit more, I would be happy to meet with you.

Email me at dcsmiller@gmail.com.

Northern Rwanda

To inform my cross cultural work and for fun, I have been reading a book about mission established church’s unhealthy dependency on Western resources, called When Charity Destroys Dignity.

The author, Glenn Shwartz uses a piercing quote from an article in a 1995 Time magazine:

“Developing Countries which develop spoil the mission of the self-appointed First World shepherds who look upon the Third World as their flock. For them to play savior there must be someone to be saved.”

Those are harsh words. Could they be true?

D for D: The River Crossing

Poking its head out of the deep water, the island was home to the most precious and lightest metal in all of the land of Umha, called Selfelp.

If only not for the river. At this time, none in the village knew how to swim nor dared to face the river, which the locals of Umha called Pabertee.

That was until the day a man from the land of Deefordee, Mykal Felps, came to share his wisdom of swimming. He started a business that gave two choices; customers could pay him 15 Lucras to learn how to swim across the river, or 30 Lucras to be carried across on his back. The villagers were glad for his coming and rejoiced that the foreigner did not know the worth of Selfelp. They immediately took advantage of it.

His first customer, Nev Ercan, exclaimed “I will be rich! I will be so rich I will even pay the 30 Lucras for Mykal Felps to do my swimming for me.” So Nev Ercan payed the money to the swimmer in full. At first, Nev was amazed at how easy it was to get to the island, but that soon changed. After collecting the nearly weightless Selfelp, Mykal Felps told Nev that he had become too weak to carry anyone but himself back across the river. Nev was stranded.

The next day, a new client, Jess Ikan, came to the swimming master from Deefordee. Much like Nev, Jess Ikan was ecstatic about going to the island in search of Selfelp, but she chose the less expensive option of being taught how to swim. As Felps taught her, she struggled and struggled, and it took many tedious days and a few more fees, but it gave her the ability to cross the river herself.

To her great joy, she was able swim back and forth from the island several times a day. After multiple trips back and forth from the island, she started a business selling the Selfelp, and Jess Ikan became the richest woman in all of Umha.

After recovering from teaching Jess, Mykal Felps was finally able to help Nev back to the mainland. However, Nev continued to depend on Felps to take him across the river, and while Jess made several trips a day, Nev often sat waiting idly for Felps to recover and carry him back. His business struggled greatly, and Nev Ercan was never able to compete with the work of Jess Ikan.

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The story above is a Discipling for Development skit put into my own words with slight modifications. Discipling for Development, or D for D, is the program used by our mission in several different communities in Rwanda and which greatly shapes our missions philosophy.

Through the power of God, the program seeks to transform the whole life of both a community and a development practitioner, teaching the community to be good stewards of everything God has given them and to be good problem solvers who rely on God rather than outside funding or decision making. Doing this is no easier for the practitioner than it is for the community. As demonstrated in the story above, it tries to feed a man for a lifetime by teaching him to fish, not giving him fish and feeding him for a day.

If you want to learn more about D for D check their website athttp://www.navigators.org/us/ministries/movingmountains/tools/articles/Discipling%20For%20Development%AE1 .

Here is the link to a blog by one of Evangelical Friends Mission's couples using D for D: bradchelseacarpenter.blogspot.com

If you are really thirsty for more, you might want to check out the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. One of the D for D founders said that if D for D wrote a book, that would be it.

Westernization or Globalization?

Despite their exclusively affluent theme, airports are still telling of a country’s size and wealth. This was apparent to me flying from Kigali, Rwanda through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and finally to London--must I say the country?

Rwanda’s small international flight stop claims but a few security checks, and one gate. Midday on a Tuesday, there was no wait going through security and only a few people in line for check in, which happened to be after security. But don’t expect an airbridge to connect passengers right up to the plane. This is old fashioned, walk out to the runway and climb up stairs to the entrance of the aluminum bird.

The next stop was in Addis Ababa, whose country has nearly 60 million more people than Rwanda, and provided 12 gates for travelers. This bigger but still small airport not only spoke to the size difference between the two countries but to Ethiopia’s religious standing. Along with signs that direct travelers to the loo, there are also those which point to Muslim prayer rooms, and it is not uncommon to see Muslim garb walking by.

This is not the case at Heathrow in London, but neither is finding any similarity when it comes to size. Their unique signs instruct travelers to leave 20 minutes to walk to certain gates. London’s international monster has 5 terminals, and the place of my departure, Terminal 3, had 42 gates alone. A sixth terminal could be on the way.

Preceding security, I asked an airport employee “Are there restaurants after security? If your mom ever told you there wasn’t anything as a dumb question, she didn’t know about that one. The stores around the waiting area of Terminal 3 made it just as much a mall as an airport, bursting with 10 restaurants and bars and 37 stores. An advertisement boasted rightly in saying they have whatever food needs you have--fast food, sit down, relaxing restaurants and formal dining.

In journeying through these airports of drastically different cultures and places, there was a common thread throughout them; the influence of the West, and especially America on the rest of the world. It was a perfect example of the tragedy and joy of globalization. Though it brings people together and enables better communication, it tends to bring more joy to the west, making travel much easier, and more tragedy to the rest of the world bringing a loss of culture and influence.

Because the West is the most materially, technologically and militarily advanced, the international standard seems to have become more western than international.

The language of airport signs? English with the local language. But what if I only spoke Swahili or Kinyarwanda or German? Even western countries are disadvantaged in language compared to those hailing from America or the U.K. There is no way I could navigate a foreign airport. International dress? A suit and tie. Although hard to believe with their popularity amongst Africans, suits are not the indigenous attire. And while there may be a huge difference in quantity, there certainly are stores and restaurants in airports round the world, even if a bag of m and m’s do end up costing nearly twenty dollars--globalization touches food, too.

Here’s to the day when globalization is influenced by the globe, not just the rich and powerful parts.

16th Genocide Memorial Week in Rwanda