The Wallflower

The Wallflower:

My wife is painting a picture of a simple orange flower growing bravely out of a crack in a wall. The beauty of the small wallflower stands in stark contrast to the drab hard cement that hosts it. In a whole field of flowers it might not be noticed at all. It might even be plucked as a weed. But placed here, against the inhospitable wall, it gives the feeling of hope, courage, and new life.

The wallflower is a representation of the people of Rwanda. Out of the tough and dark circumstances of hatred, mass murder, and poverty springs new life. The wallflowers of Rwanda are the ordinary people who struggle on in faith that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. They are those who take the painful step of forgiveness and reconciliation because their very survival depends on it. They are the group of casual laborers who pool together a day’s wages in order to help their fellow worker. They are the widows of men killed in the genocide joining together with the wives of those who killed them.

When everything has been taken from you, and you live in a place where poverty can be a death sentence, than even the struggle for the next day and the next breath becomes significant. Out of that struggle for life comes a beauty such as that described in Isaiah 40: 18, 19. “See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”

Is teaching a man to fish really the answer?

One of the most popular development catchphrases is "Give a man a fish feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish feed him for a life time." It's a true phrase but it doesn't go far enough. My colleague Jeffery Komant likes to use the analogy of a village of hungry people located on a river. Obviously if we teach these people how to fish we will do better than doing the fishing for them. But he goes on to ask what happens when a company builds a dam upstream? Or a factory starts pumping toxins in to the water and the fish start dying off? How about if the people thrive and overpopulate so that the number of fish in the river can no longer sustain them?

"If you teach the people how to fish," says Komant, "you haven't actually addressed their real need. Their real need is to understand their world and how it works. And to understand that the river and those fish are just part of the answer to their problem. People need to be empowered with a lot more than just a skill set."

The rote based system of education that has been Rwanda's staple for many years is an example of not taking development far enough. It is a funnel system that focuses on giving students the information necessary to accomplish a certain task. The memorization based approach makes it difficult for more creative learners to succeed. But in order to thrive this tiny country needs thinkers, creators, inventors, and entrepreneurs. More Rwandan teachers are now starting to see the key role they play in making the transition to a system of education that can truly empower the next generation of Rwandan young people to find creative solutions to their own problems. That's something that "teaching a man to fish" just won't do.