It’s been over a month since six of us got back from Guinea. We had left on Jan 20th for 9 days on the ground in West Africa, working with our international workers there.
Now everywhere I go I do my level best to try to understand what makes that place what it is – and what makes the people there who they are. Because people are people, no matter where you go or when you go. Geography, economics and even time are mere circumstance. They don’t change WHO you are. But the mindset, the viewpoints– how you choose to look at your world and the world around you - those things that we sum up in the word ‘culture’ – that’s what makes a people unique.
Now 9 days, even with months of preparation and much reading of the history does not make for an exhaustive study of the uniqueness of a people. So all my conclusions with regard to that are inaccurate at best. But my experience of that culture is not inaccurate – my experience is a hard fact. So let me tell you about one such experience.
It was the Saturday. The six of us went to the university in Conakry to spend several hours in the morning and several hours in the afternoon teaching ESL. The students we would be teaching (and this is an important note) were hand picked by one of the IW’s there for this occasion – if that wasn’t done then we would’ve be overrun by the crowd – for many want to learn and practice their English, even if it’s just a smattering.
So we arrived, walked up the stairs to the 3rd floor classroom, unlocked the metal gate in front of the glass door and proceeded to set up the desks into ‘centers’. At each center a group of Guineans would interact with us about a particular subject for ~20-25 min and then we’d stay put and they’d rotate as groups between the centers. Once we were ready, our host allowed the students to enter the classroom, one of our members gave a short instruction and we began.
So you’ve got a group of 4-6 univesity students in front of you and they have 20 minutes to ask questions and interact. What would you say if you were them?
I googled the top universities in Guinea, and I found that this one ranks 8911th among the world’s universities. But as it is the ONLY university in the country, the students are very glad to be there. And they are an elect few really, because tuition there is between one and two and a half thousand dollars. To put THAT into perspective you need to know that a year ago the government announced a 50% increase in public sector salaries, so starting in May of 2010 they would see increases from their average of 67$ a month.
Make no mistake, the people we were speaking to at this ESL class are not just the best educated in the country, they are also among the relatively wealthy. Yet over the day I would not be the only one who was asked point blank (by someone I had just met minutes ago) if I would sponsor them to Canada. In fact, one of our members was proposed to. Twice. When she told them she was married, the one fellow asked if he could marry her daughter(!)
You don’t need to be an university graduate to realize that these people are desperate. Knowing they could do better, they desperately want to do better, and looking at their own country, they realize they’ll only be able to do better outside of their own country. They’d rather leave then try to make a difference at home.
At this point the story crosses geographic lines and becomes a familiar story. Because at this point you have to ask WHY they are so desperate. And you don’t need to spend any time in the country at all to know that people grow desperate when a country’s leader is corrupt, socks away all the wealth for themselves and lets the people suffer and struggle in poverty and hunger, seeing them as only resources for their own gain. That’s a story that could be told of Stalin in Russia, of Mubarak in Egypt, of Pinochet in Chile, of Duvalier in Haiti, of Mao in China, of Kim Jong in North Korea. Not just in Guinea, but all over the world. We’re all too familiar with that story.
If you leave your line of thought there the the story still seems far away. But if you look at the root cause, the story begins to cut very closer to home. It’s selfishness. Selfishness is the root of greed, arguably the root of every form of corruption. And it doesn’t take a university graduate to realize that we too live in a culture of selfishness. Every commercial on television appeals to it. Every page of the paper describes a manifestation of it. Patronage, greed, party politics, family clashes. All selfishness.
The story is told of a wealthy man riding in the back of his limousine when he saw two pathetic-looking men by the side of the road, eating grass. He ordered his driver to stop and got out to investigate. He asked the men, "Why are you eating grass?"
"We don't have no money for food," the first man replied.
"Then you must come with me to my house," insisted the rich man.
"But, sir, I got a wife and three kids here," said the man.
"Bring them along!" he replied.
The second man exclaimed, "I got a wife and six kids!"
"Bring them as well!", the man proclaimed as he headed back to his limo.
They all climbed into the car, and once underway, one of the men expresses, "Sir, you are too kind. Thank you for taking all of us with you."
The rich man replied, "I'm most happy to do it. You'll love my place. The grass is almost a foot tall."
You can only laugh at this till you see the irony. It’s more a commentary on us in the developed world than a joke. The really sad part though, is that while we easily recognize the error of selfishness in others and even can see it in our own culture, we fail to see it in ourselves.
The cure for selfishness is surrender. Mark 8:34-35 records, “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
We love to listen to that preached on. Can we actually live it out?
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