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By Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photos
by Scot Facer Proctor
Meridian invites you to take an armchair
journey to Ghana through our coverage that can be found here
and continuing in the next few days. For most of us our Church experiences
do not extend to the uttermost parts of the earth. We neither know
our brothers and sisters in other lands, nor comprehend the extent
of their challenges. Meridian’s senior staff has been in Ghana,
covering the church there and, expanding your touch with the world.
click
on photos to enlarge
Africa
is a continent of woes. This is a world where troubles are heavy
and charitable instincts are stirred. Come to Africa and you want
to help, yet as Georges Bonnet, the Church’s Director of Temporal
Affairs for West Africa said, “Giving is easy in Africa. It is
like a shotgun. Aim anywhere and you can hit something.”
He
is also the first to say that you may not hit the mark. One of
Africa’s hard-earned lessons is that well-meaning help may not help
at all. In fact, money thrown at a problem may create dependency,
a welfare mentality, a sense of the “poor, helpless African” who
is waiting for a rescue.
Sustainable Development
Several
years ago Dr. James Mayfield, founder of CHOICE (Center for Humanitarian
Outreach and Intercultural Exchange), did an evaluation of the USAID
projects to see how effective they had been. The results were surprising
and devastating. The great majority of them failed or had limited
success. Typical was the experience of those who had put in a water
pumping system to assure a village would have clean water, only
to find when they returned two years later that the pumps no longer
worked, had not been properly maintained and the people were walking
past them to their old, filthy watering hole.
This
does not mean that the crying needs of Africa should be ignored.
Far from it. This is a forgotten continent where millions die of
AIDS and their children languish as orphans who will grow up and
repeat the cycle. Hygiene is horrible, education is miserably
substandard, many governments are corrupt and unstable. Saddest
of all is the hopelessness that eats like a worm at people who see
no future, no vision of a better tomorrow. They collapse exhausted,
both emotionally and physically, at the side of the roads, looking
only for temporary relief.
Help
is badly needed. Those of us who spend our means and time on the
next bit of entertainment or Saturday’s golf game need to look beyond
gratification to a dying continent. Yet help must be given in a
way that is truly effective and pitfalls abound.
Great Challenges
Some
who try to help finally weary of donor fatigue. Helping in Africa
is like throwing a nickel in Lake Victoria hoping to displace the
water. It is always too little for the yawning gulf of needs.
Even with the utmost sacrifice and effort, can you measure that
anything has been accomplished? Compassion in Africa requires a
patient, long-term vision that is not easily daunted.
Then
there is the trap of cynicism. It is easy to come to Africa and
have your helping instincts dissolve before the difficulties and
the destructive traditions. Washington Post writer, Keith
B. Richburg, lived in Africa on assignment for the newspaper and
instead of pulling the tug of his African roots, came away with
a most politically incorrect shout, “Thank God my nameless ancestor,
brought across the ocean in chains and irons, made it out alive.
Thank God I am an American.” Nothing had prepared himself for the
brutality, dictatorships and warfare that he saw.
Approach of the Church
So
it is refreshing and impressive to see the Church’s method of helping
in Africa. The humanitarian efforts are based upon the values of
the gospel. Key to that is the truth that all people are children
of God with remarkable potential, the seeds of good ideas, and the
capacity to find solutions to their problems. Those who would give
humanitarian help must do it in a way to empower the recipients,
stir their own abilities, and teach them how to grow.
The
idea is a hand-up, not just a hand-out.
Georges
Bonnet said, “We teach people. We are forthright in telling people
the projects won’t work unless they are founded on our values.
We are changing a culture of despair, teaching people everything
from how to completely clean a building to how to treat each other.
We are bold about it. We don’t equivocate. When somebody suggests
that will not work, we say, ‘Don’t underestimate your people. They
have the same potential, the same hope as anybody else.’”
The Jamestown Project
The
Church’s remarkable way of helping is exemplified in the Jamestown
project located in the oldest section of Accra, where buildings
are dilapidated and people spill into the streets because their
dwellings are so crowded. Last year, a businessman born in that
area named Frank Tackie, determined he wanted to do something to
help the people. He said, “It is a slum, but it is a slum of hope.
I could see sparks of hope in the eyes of the youth.”
It
could have been tempting—even easier--at that point to give the
community only a humanitarian gift. They sent Adja Sowah, a social
worker in the community to the Church for help—and Georges Bonnet
gave him what he really needed, which first of all, was know-how
“I taught him how to put a process together to manage such a project—how
to plan it and how to define it. At the second meeting when he
presented the plan, its scope and vision really surprised everybody.
“The
Church can do great good in helping people go from a good idea to
an implementable, simple project that will give them success,” said
Brother Bonnet. “We can show them how to translate a spiritual hope
or an idea that touches their hearts into a project that will help
them become self-reliant so that they believe in themselves and
gain confidence.
The
projects work because the value system behind them works.
Brother
Bonnet warned those working on the Jamestown project that they couldn’t
be in it for money, as is too often the case in community projects
in Africa. The larger culture has developed an outlook that says,
“If I do anything, I expect to be paid.” This outlook can breed
graft and corruption. He taught them, instead, that “people who
benefit from some part of the project have to give something back
to the community.”
This
is an energizing idea that multiplies the number of helpers for
any community project and brings a sense of ownership. It becomes
“our library” or “our technical center”—not just a vague gift from
an anonymous donor.
It
also allows the Church to use their humanitarian efforts to grow
forests instead of a few saplings. The Church’s skill with leveraging
resources teaches the groups with whom it works to do the same.
Things can move only as quickly as the capacity of the people allows—so
the focus is on capacity.
The
Jamestown project has many components: a technical center, a library,
plans for a school where many kinds of employable skills will be
taught a people too long living on the edge.
At
the technical center in Jamestown, several people sat at computers,
fingers slowly feeling their way across unfamiliar keyboards in
their first lessons. The trainer, who was patiently teaching her
students, had learned keyboarding and technical skills through a
center that the Church has established in Accra. Now, she in turn
was training others, many of whom will, in turn, pass on their own
training. Students understand the expectation. They owe something
back for the training they have received. Freely they have been
given, and now freely they must give. Any number of possibilities
are open in Jamestown. They may teach a youngster to read or do
a clean-up project. The options for service are endless in their
community.
The Library
 Up
the stairs on the second floor of a street in Accra teeming with
people, the Gamashie library is another example of the Church’s
partnership with the community. Literacy is a problem here. This
good-size room was their forgotten, nearly empty library, left that
way because they could not afford books. What they could do was
build shelves and fix up the room, and then, in turn, when they
did, the Church gave books to fill the shelves.
Brother
Bonnet said the requirement was that the books had to come with
a plan from the community. How would they care for these books?
How would they ensure that they would not be torn or damaged, stolen
or carted away? How would they manage the library? Who will use
it? Who will run it? In devising and implementing the plan, the
people were enhanced as their books were preserved.
Among
the books donated to the library were multiple copies of For the
Strength of Youth. “We don’t apologize for our values,” said Brother
Bonnet.
In
fact, he never wastes a teaching opportunity. “We are preparing
an agenda for a meeting and I ask questions like, ‘How do you resolve
differences with your wife? Why do you do it this way?’ We use
church material as much as possible—and they like it because they
admire what we do.”
The Borestal Project
Not
far from Jamestown is a grassy campus filled with teenagers who
have gotten in trouble. Borestol is a low security juvenile detention
center whose goal is to give job skills to troubled youth so that
when they are free they will have hope for a better life.
No
matter what the infraction, the term is three years—enough time,
said Ike Ferguson,
Welfare
Director for the West Africa area, to give a teen a young person
a real skill or an opportunity to attend a university.
The
Church is helping here with the same principles. The infirmary
used to be a gutted, dingy room with a pile of rusting beds in the
corner. There was no getting sick here. The Church supplied a
ceiling fan, new mattresses, medical supplies and paint and the
inmates supplied the muscle power. They painted the infirmary,
fixed the beds and hung the lights.
In
nearly every building on the campus, the Church has found the catalyst
to improve the situation. In the mechanics shop, it is two boxes
of tools; in clothing construction it is a line of sewing machines
set neatly in a row. The woodworking shop has been rewired. The
library’s shelves have been stocked by the Church, computers supplied
in another tech center.
“I’ll
never forget a meeting we had with the staff,” said Georges Bonnet.
“’You know how many people offer to help and never come back?’ they
said. ‘You came back’
“That
is the Church’s reputation. We do what we say we’ll do. If we
do something small, we do it well.” The Church’s humanitarian outreach
offers hope; it assumes people have great capacity if given the
chance and the way. It seeks to lift them, not erode their will—and
it works.
“The
Church is the solution to Africa’s woes,” said Brother Bonnet.
Ga Tribal Council
One
morning in Accra, we went with Georges Bonnet and Ike Ferguson to
meet with the Ga Tribal Council who are working in the Jamestown
community. Drums were thumping out a greeting. The Ga Council
were dressed in their colorful robes, draped over their left shoulders.
The spokesman for the chief had his staff. We greeted them traditionally,
politely, moving around the circle from right to left, shaking their
hands with two of ours.
The
group could not say enough about how pleased they were with the
progress of the project. They talked reverentially of their time
in the new temple during the open house. It had not been that long
ago that one of them had an injunction issued and all building of
the temple temporarily ceased.
 But
that was then, and this is now. At this point they may agree that
the Church is the solution to Africa’s woes.
When
we closed the meeting Brother Bonnet asked if he could say a prayer.
It was a loving prayer without hesitations or apologies. He thanked
Heavenly Father for the gifts he has given and the progress the
community has made. The ‘amen’ is truly felt.
Walking
across the yard that day, the tribal spokesman took Georges Bonnet’s
hand and held it a few minutes. This has a special meaning in Africa.
It means, ‘we are one.’
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© 2004 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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