The day we left, Andrea and I flew to Nairobi before waiting several hours to begin our final trip home. Ebralie had traveled with us to Nairobi, but she was meeting up with a group from First Presbyterian Church in Nashville, and would be heading out with them. Ebralie had arranged for us to meet up with David, a family friend from Rwanda who now lived in Nairobi. He would be able to drive us around in Nairobi while we waited for our night flight back home. I have to admit I was apprehensive about spending the day with a stranger while awaiting our flight. What would we have to talk about, and why would he want to spend the day with us? Fortunately for us, this day with David turned out to be the final blessing of a trip full of blessings.
David was a fun, energetic man in his mid-twenties. He was born and raised in Rwanda, where his grandfather had been an elder in the Anglican Church and his father still served as an Anglican priest in Rwanda. David’s parents had been great friends with William and Ebralie, and their children had been best friends with David growing up. David’s grandfather was killed in the genocide, as had many church leaders.
We soon found that David was quite a combination of academic, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He had obtained his masters degree from Syracuse University, and made a good living coordinating tourist trips to Kenya and safari trips. With his academic background and his life story of surviving the genocide, he had also become an accomplished speaker where he spoke at various conferences around the world arranged by the U.N. and academic circles. In fact, Andrea and I were intrigued to learn that David had met and become friends with Ishmael Beah, the author of A Long Way Gone, the autobiographical story of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone. Andrea and I had both read the book on the trip, which gave another glimpse into the issues facing Africa.
With this diverse and culturally rich background, spending time with David was a perfect way to end the trip. We talked effortlessly with him, telling David the things we had seen and done. We bombarded him with questions, trying to fill in the blanks of the mosaic we were piecing together of Africa. I found his observations very enlightening.
David was a very optimistic and passionate person who wanted to make a difference in Africa. He said he understood why the West might have donor apathy for Africa. After all, the West had given billions and billions of dollars in aid to the continent, and sadly had relatively little to show for it. David lamented that Africa had some of the poorest people of the world, yet seemed to have the richest political leaders of the world. The injustice of corruption surely would test the resolve of any charity trying to help the continent.
Having said this, David was optimistic that Africa was nearing a tipping point in turning the economic tide. He said that in recent years, thousands of native Africans had obtained needed education from the West, but were returning to Africa for the sole purpose of giving back to their homelands. In his church in Nairobi alone, thousands of young men ages 25-35 had formed a men’s group which collaborated on the need to help the native people. David thought that the endemic state corruption was allowed to exist because most Africans were uneducated, and therefore relied on the government for most of their needs. Without the ability to read and write, the people’s only source of information was filtered through the communication channels of these corrupt governments. However, as more and more educated Africans returned from the West, and as communications such as the internet and mobile phones become available, the government’s ability to control the news was breaking down. David felt like in the next ten years this new middle class with be able to tip the balance of power from the few wealthy corrupt figureheads and the poor masses from which they gain their political strength.
David said that he was thankful for the kindness of Western charities. However, he echoed some of the sentiment of Tharcisse with the CPR when he said that, particularly in Rwanda, some of the early Western attempts at charitable projects did almost more harm than good. David readily acknowledged that Rwanda needed the financial assistance from the West, as well as the education and business acumen. However, he felt now that Rwandans and other native Africans had benefited from the Western education, these new leaders could combine the academic knowledge of the West with the cultural and historical knowledge of a native citizen to truly maximize the benefit and effectiveness of programs to help the native people.
I was perhaps most intrigued by David’s basic premise to best help those in Rwanda. When it came to the best way to help the people of Africa, David made a very powerful and I think very insightful statement. He said that when it comes to helping Africa, charity is not a sustainable model; only capitalism is a sustainable model. If the model is based on charity, the benefit stops when the giving stops. On the other hand, if the benefit is based on a viable economic model, that benefit can be perpetual. I couldn’t help but think back to the sewing and fabric shop that Francois had showed me in Kigali. When I mentioned this illustration to David, he said that was exactly what he was talking about. The economic strategy was not well thought out, and without the proper sustainable profitability of that project for genocide widows, it would not succeed no matter how well-intentioned.
David was a big fan of Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda. He felt like Kagame represented the type of new leader Africa needed – one motivated by the desire to truly help his country rather than to pillage it for personal gain. Kagame had irritated the established leadership on the continent, calling them out at African conferences for their personal corruption and personal wealth, while their people suffered from economic pain. Kagame had also called on Europe to change how it sought to help Rwanda. He told the EU that Rwanda did not want any more of its charity. Kagame asked the EU to help him build a railroad from Nairobi to Kigali. While that was a major project, Kagame promised if they would help him with that goal, he would not need their other financial aid any longer as his country could be self-sufficient. I learned the significance of this request when David told me that Rwanda had no waterway to the ocean, and no railroads. The hilly terrain of the country made making a railroad difficult. More importantly, Rwanda had no natural resources that the West wanted during colonial times. As a result, there had been no economic incentive for Europe to build a railroad to take items out of Rwanda. With no transportation infrastructure, the economic growth of Rwanda is limited without the railroad requested by Kagame.
The time we spent with David put a perfect “bow” around our trip. My head was swimming to absorb all of the things we had seen and done. David’s keen insight helped put together a big picture overlay to the anecdotes we had observed. I was afraid that Andrea would have found these discussions dry and boring, but when we left David she said that she was so happy to have spent that time with him, as he really helped her understand better the issues facing Africa in general, and Rwanda in particular. After a great day with David, including some shopping at the street market with his help in negotiation skills, David brought Andrea and I to the Nairobi airport for our long flight home. The 36 hours of travel back home provided time for processing all that we had been through.
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