The Bisoke Road

“You give me my shoes.” A small Rwandan boy ran up beside me, hands outstretched toward the hiking boots dangling from my backpack. I apologetically shook my head and he rejoined the sizable group of children accumulating behind us; we had apparently become the pied pipers of Bisoke village. One by one they took their turn:

“What’s your name? You give me pen.”

“Madame, we need a football.”

“Vous me donnez d’argent.”

The three-kilometer trek to our hostel suddenly seemed a formidable distance as a crisis of conscience descended upon us. These children were poor – the boy who asked for shoes had none; all were dressed in tattered clothing and they likely resided in mud huts and lacked the opportunity to go to school. The ever-popular question of “What Would Jesus Do” seemed to have a murky and ill-defined answer.

For some curious reason, no matter how many times I am confronted with poverty it takes me by surprise: I am always at a loss for how to react. Of course we could not give all of the children shoes or pens or money – and it certainly felt unfair to give these items to just one of the children. However, we claim to emulate a man who went out of his way to heal lepers and who said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these brothers you do unto me.” Yet here we were: four young volunteers on a short weekend holiday with a shoestring budget confronted with our very own Good Samaritan scenario, each urgently grappling with how to best love our neighbor as ourselves.

Muddying the waters even further was the notion of sustainability (teach a man to fish…). If we gave these children pens, they would certainly need more pens in a week, or a month, or a year. Though I am sure some other hiker or gorilla-trekker would continue to supply the children with pens, shoes, and footballs, what about the countless villages without tourists? Moreover, the thought of providing handouts made me feel like the rich, white westerner riding in on my white horse to save the day, which is an image I have actively tried to avoid during my stay in Africa.

I do not think Jesus intended himself to be anybody’s ATM, and he certainly did not present himself as an arrogant prince riding in on a white horse to save the day (quite the contrary: he was a homeless carpenter-turned-rabbi on a donkey who would soon be betrayed and crucified by the people he came to save). Every miracle he performed had a lasting and eternal purpose; through storytelling he encouraged people to invest what they had been given wisely so that it would be multiplied.

And this brings us back to the children along the road, when I began to feel like the offspring of Ebeneezer Scrooge and Cruella DeVille. I have no neat and tidy answer for this post; I honestly still feel a bit stingy. However, I am spurred on to advocate for free, quality education in East Africa so that children can grow up to provide for themselves; I will continue to support the work of those organizations involved in micro-finance and income-generating activities; I will develop partnerships with organizations that provide sustainable living solutions for those impoverished widows and orphans within my sphere of influence.

This “macro systems” focus, as we would say in “social workese,” aims to leave a lasting positive impact through improvement of the system. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: “One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway.” However, I find the “micro systems” still call to me like a siren song. Lasting change comes slowly for those children in Bisoke, who still walk that three-kilometer journey with no shoes…

-Sara

If you are interested to read more on this topic, Tony Campolo provides an interesting analysis on wise and sustainable giving on the God’s Politics Blog: http://blog.sojo.net/2009/03/13/the-perils-of-well-meaning-but-short-sighted-generosity