How to help people in Mwanza...??

How to appropriately help people is a problem that is grappled with by missionaries, aid agencies and governments for many years, and I'm not going to provide the definitive answer here!  We've com to Mwanza to make a difference in providing access to pain free emergency dental care for those who currently have no access in rural Tanzania.  We've also come to be Jesus hands and feet where we are, to bring in God's kingdom to situations we encounter, but it's not as easy as you might think.

Though by western standards as volunteer health workers / missionaries we are not particularly wealthy, here in Tanzania we are among the better off in society.  That makes us a target for people coming regularly to ask for food, money, jobs, visas to the UK etc etc.  It would be great to be able to help everyone, but decades of failed aid has shown that giving handouts simply puts people in bondage - a kind of 'Aid slavery'.  Rather than developing their own skills, their own economy, their own prospects, in most cases giving hand outs just promotes dependency.

What about church development?  It's easy for us to come here and attach ourselves to a small local church, start preaching, invest in the church, do our best to help teach people about God and his kingdom.  But does that actually help in the long term?  In Mwanza where the Christian message has been preached for many years and there are an abundance of good African led churches, a white missionary can actually do a lot of harm coming in and taking over.  Not understanding the language and culture well, plus the perception that being and the 'white man's' church can help an individual's financial prospects makes it difficult to get involved in an appropriate way.

I'm at a risk of sounding cynical here.
I'm not cynical.
But I am careful.

We want to build something that is lasting and sustainable.  That takes time, relationships, understanding culture and language, but most of all it's the relationships and trust that is built over time that carries the most weight.

We are not the ones to solve the dental problems of Africa.  Africans need to do that themselves.  We can just be agents to help train and equip this transformation.  We are not the ones to evangelise Tanzania - there are many great evangelists here already.  but we can have a significant impact by empowering others who are working faithfully for God.

Take Peter, one of our night guards, for example (in the picture at the top reading a book with Hannah).  In addition to working for us he is also a church pastor for a church he began four years ago.  He studies hard, loves people, gives of himself to build God's kingdom through this local church.  He's doing something that we can't do so well because of the cultural and language barriers, but we can support him in his work.
Another of our colleagues, Mr Simba is part of a small group that feeds more than 50 homeless people every sunday night and run a street church service for them.  They've been doing this for many years, loving and appropriately helping the poorest of Mwanza's residents, loving and providing where there is need.  Our white skin and preconceptions are barriers to us helping these people, but we can and do support Simba as he works faithfully.

If I've learned one thing over the last year it is to be one who is quick to listen and learn, but slow to speak and act to solve others problems.  It's a great challenge and sometimes feels as if we are moving so, so slowly.  But it's the way we need to go if we are really going to help and make a difference here.

Paul