The Voice of a Community

Muraho, my friends!

Over thirty white plastic chairs lined the yellowed-walls of the rather small room (it was probably no bigger than 15 x 30 ft.). Near the door which led to the outside there was a small, roughly constructed, wooden table on which there was a random assortment of desk paraphernalia. Seated in the chairs were my team and twenty-five other men and women all staring at me. I had been in Rwanda for a little less than week, and, there I was, about to start a presentation and forum that my team and I had just created the night before.

Welcome to Rwanda!

Now to give some context, at this meeting, I and my team were representing a Rwandan organization called Solace Ministries. This Christian organization was founded soon after the genocide to provide counseling, community, and services to widows and orphans, who bore the brunt of the aftermath of the genocide. However, within the past couple years, Solace Ministries had built a clinic in a rural area right outside of Kigali. They were then given the mandate by the government to provide health care for the entire sector (similar to a county), which included 33,000 people. They did their best to address the overwhelming health needs of the community and as we were to find out in our research, the clinic did remarkably well. However, they realized that they kept dealing with the same type of debilitating diseases that were easily preventable. Rather than merely treating the symptoms, Solace Ministries decided to attempt a holistic approach in addressing the issues of the community so as to deal with the root causes of the lack of health. This is where our team came in. Our role was to conduct field research in the community and help Solace transition to holistic community development model.

Now, before coming to Rwanda, I had merely planned to be an observer of this project. I had decided that it would be helpful for my community development research and observation if I also observed the team that worked with Solace Ministries. However, as I soon learned many times, nothing is ever secure or unchangeable in Rwanda. Plans, ideas, and expectations constantly change. In fact, within a mere 48 hours of my being in Rwanda, I was helping lead this six-member team.

Due to a lack of good communication previous to our arrival in Rwanda and some language and cultural barriers, it was very difficult for our team to get a handle on what exactly we were doing. Each avenue we took seemed to lead to a dead end. While we were able to gather some information, nothing ever truly solidified. We stopped by the Ministry of Agriculture, World Vision, the sector’s social minister’s office, and several other locations, but we were never able to find the quantitative data that we needed on the sector.

It was Thursday night, day three in Rwanda, and we were all completely exhausted. All that we had arranged at that point was do a visit at the Solace clinic and lead a community forum the next day. However, we did not know how the forum was going to be run or the goals and purpose of forum. At first, we had wanted to conduct a quantitative survey. But that idea soon fizzled as the logistical and language barriers became seemingly insurmountable. We were all exhausted and were, in some ways, at our wit’s end. So we took a little break and I decided to share with my team my experience in the Mosovu village earlier that afternoon (refer to my previous blog post, “The Road to Mosovu”). I shared with them the visual demonstration that I saw the missionaries use to illustrate a community with strengths and challenges that needed to be addressed. I explained how amazing it was to see the community take steps to move forward by problem solving on their own. As I finished sharing this, one of my teammates nearly yelled, “That’s it! That’s what we are going to do!” At first I was skeptical, but then I realized that we had finally developed a possible plan. Therefore, we adjourned our meeting, our having decided upon a strategy for the next day’s forum.

…

And there I was, standing in the midst of twenty-five community leaders. In this diverse group, there sat the appointed executive of the sector, four executive secretaries of the “cells” (There were eight cells in this sector), five pastors, two social workers, two “opinion leaders” (I am not entirely sure who these people were, I am thinking there were types of community activists), an agriculturalist, a social economic development officer, and several other leaders.

After a long round of introductions during which each person was given due attention, I stood before them and expressed our deep gratitude that they would all come together for us. I told them that we had come not to tell them what to do, but rather to learn from them about their community since they knew more than anyone else the depths and resources of their own community.

I then proceeded to share the story about the “see-saw” community, pausing every sentence to allow time for my interpreter, Agnes, to communicate what I had said into Kinyarwandan. Unfortunately I had forgotten to gather any sort of materials for my object lesson, so I instead used the random items that were scattered on the desk behind me. I built my make shift see-saw using a white-out bottle and a metal rod, and then used various other items to represent the strengths and challenges in the “see-saw” community.

What was amazing to me is how well it worked. While I am unable to actually get into my listeners’ minds and discern their thoughts, the people’s rapt attention, expressions, and reactions all indicated that I was succeeding in my communication of the analogy.

If I had tried to do something similar in a classroom or for a community in the United States, I would have most likely gotten bored looks or remarks regarding my “offending their intelligence.” However, in a culture that is orally communicated and driven by images and stories, my manner of starting the forum was entirely appropriate and even perhaps laudable.

After I finished my analogy, I then asked everyone to think of three strengths and three challenges in their community. My teammates passed out two sheets of paper to each person so that they could write their ideas down. After around twenty minutes, we had people share what they had written.

“Every child is given a chance to be in school, but there are conflicts about land ownership.” “We have good security.” “I love working.” “The community is poor.” “The soil is fertile, but the people lack agricultural skills.” “There is unity among the members in my church, but my people struggle with a lack of confidence.” “There is a lack of clean water.” “We have a very good country that gives us support.”

These are just a few of the things that I heard and eventually read from what the leaders had written. It was incredible to hear the insight and perception the people had of their community, its strengths, and its needs. What was even greater was to see everyone sharing with each other. In fact, one of the best things we did while in Rwanda was to get the community leaders together to talk about their community.

Once again, instead of telling leaders what was wrong with their community or explaining how to best run their development, we had empowered a discussion on the strengths and the challenges in the community. We did not supply the content, we just provided the space.

It was truly a beautiful thing to witness.

After at least an hour and half, the white plastic chairs that lined the walls began to empty. We said our farewells and thanked them graciously for hosting us in their community. It was truly one of the most inspiring parts of the trip for me.

Murakoze!


Eric