Americans finding purpose in hopes for Africa's future

from USA Today

This article examines the many ways that US missions help to fulfill people. People are finding that fulfillment in Africa. - Kale

By Rick Hampson,

KIGALI, Rwanda — On the last day of spring, Tom Wheeler left home in Southern California with his wife, his two kids and two audacious dreams.

As a civil engineer, he hopes to bring standard, nicely paved sidewalks to a city with almost none.

As a follower of Rick Warren, the evangelist who wrote the bestseller The Purpose Driven Life, Wheeler dreams of making Rwanda the world's first "purpose-driven nation." That means spreading the Gospel and helping this tiny African country, which 14 years ago endured the worst genocide since the Holocaust, continue its unlikely journey toward peace and prosperity.

"Rick challenged us all to go out," Wheeler says. He and his wife, Lori, "wanted to serve God, and we wanted to be part of something big."

The Wheelers are part of a generation of Americans for whom Africa has become the place to try to make a difference. Their dreams vary: to end poverty, to stop AIDS, to make a fortune. Whatever the motive, Africa has united celebrities, missionaries and politicians like few other causes.

"Never has the U.S. been so engaged with Africa," says Peter Pham, director of James Madison University's Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

The effort extends across the nation, from the high school students in Downingtown, Pa., who raised $47,000 for homeless kids in Uganda, to the average Nigerian immigrant in Illinois who sends 10% of his pay back home, to President Bush, who has probably done more for Africa than any U.S. president.

The continent's infamous problems — genocide in Darfur, anarchy in Somalia, tyranny in Zimbabwe — provide an opportunity for Americans to do good when U.S. popularity is sagging just about everywhere else. "People feel there are obvious solutions" to what ails Africa, says Eric Hartman, who runs a program to introduce students to Africa. "It holds that attraction."

Sen. John McCain's wife, Cindy, is here this week on a bipartisan trip with Republican and Democratic leaders. Former president Bill Clinton is due in a few weeks.

Outsiders professing good intentions are regarded with some suspicion on a continent that has seen its share of failed Western interventions: colonialism in the 19th century, exploitation of natural resources and Cold War meddling in the 20th. But many American programs are paying off with declines in AIDS deaths and poverty rates. African governments also are doing more to encourage peace and economic development.

Nowhere has the transformation been as dramatic as Rwanda, where in 1994 as many as 1 million people were killed in a horrific 100-day spree of ethnic violence.

The economy is still recovering — the average wage is less than $1 a day — but visitors to the capital, Kigali, are often shocked by the strides Rwanda has made. The airport is orderly and clean; the streets are safe to walk; and a tourism boom has led to several restaurants opening.

Warren told USA TODAY he believes that, the way things are going, within a few decades, Rwanda could be an oasis of prosperity — "the next Singapore," he says.

That vision helped lead Tom Wheeler, 42, to quit his job as public works director of Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., to spend a year working for the city of Kigali. The move has been a shock for his kids, Hannah, 12, and Zack, 10. But the work is heady stuff for a guy who says his biggest accomplishments in Rancho Santa Margarita were building a skate park and synchronizing parkway stoplights.

"Sidewalks all around a city where 90% of the people have to walk — that would be huge!" Wheeler says. "I'm really getting in on the ground floor. … This is like a brand-new country. You can actually make a difference here."

Slow start to 'hyperdrive'

Since Warren launched the program in 2005, more than 1,100 volunteers from his Saddleback Church have come to Rwanda. Though some are professionals like Wheeler, others come with good intentions and limited technical skills.

Working in small groups, they spend about 10 days per trip at a church, listening, praying, teaching subjects such as English or basic hygiene and, as any Saddlebacker will tell you, hugging.

They have given Rwandans livestock, rabbits, corrugated metal roofs, soccer balls and Bibles. They have helped them set up a grist mill bakery. They have steered local parishioners into hospitals, where they give meals to AIDS patients and make sure they take their medicine on time.

Bob Bradberry, who supervises Saddleback's training here, says the point isn't to give the Rwandans things. It's to train them to do things for themselves. That starts with "purpose-driven training," in which parts of Warren's book (such as Chapter 20 on reconciliation) are applied to problems (such as the bitterness that lingers from the genocide).

About 100,000 copies of The Purpose Driven Life in the Rwandan dialect have been handed out. Bradberry says that if Rwandans really hear the Gospel, they'll have no choice but to forgive each other.

Results were discussed at a meeting of ministers last week. Churches reported increased baptisms, marriages and church attendance, according to Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini, who is the Anglican primate of Rwanda. In an eastern province, a woman who had been hired by a witch doctor to poison someone had a change of heart during a small group meeting, Kolini said.

Can that spiritual growth translate into material progress? In an interview last week, Warren said that although his program in Rwanda "was quite slow for the first few years" after its launch, it's gone into "hyperdrive" with projects such as an AIDS treatment program in the western part of the country.

"There's been a flat-out climate change in the country," Warren said, adding that he has been approached by other nations such as Kenya and the Philippines who want him to start similar programs there. "The dominoes are starting to fall."

Some Rwandans agree. The Rev. Emmanuel Mugiraneza of St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral in Bhyumba says the program's small groups promote reconciliation in a nation where people talk about the future but think about the past.

"We have been in a bad situation since 1994," he says. "These people are helping us to learn to forgive each other."

Concerns about movement

Some worry that programs such as Warren's prevent African leaders from solving problems on their own. Americans "seem to be on a crusade to 'save Africa,' " says New York University economist William Easterly. He says Africans don't want to be regarded as charity cases.

The alliance between Warren and Rwandan President Paul Kagame — sealed at a rally in 2005 at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., when the two stood side-by-side and Warren urged 30,000 of his followers to "change the world" — has also generated some concern.

It was Kagame who invited Warren to Rwanda after reading his book. He sent him a letter telling him "I am a purpose driven man" and asking him "to help rebuild our country."

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have criticized Kagame's human rights record. Paul Rusesabagina, the former Kigali hotel manager whose attempt to save lives during the genocide in 1994 became the basis for the film Hotel Rwanda — says Warren has become too "friendly" with Kagame's government.

Warren rigorously defends his alliance with Kagame. "He is going to be more important to Africa than (Nelson) Mandela," Warren says. "He's the George Washington of Africa. I don't state that lightly."

The relative prosperity that foreigners have helped bring to Rwanda also poses new problems. Dave Holden, a member of Saddleback's team, recently looked out from the open patio at Bourbon, a hip chain of coffee houses. The next hill had one-room concrete block houses at the bottom, and big new $400,000 ones at the top.

The disparity led Holden to remember something a local priest told him: If there's a next time, the priest said, the killing won't be about ethnicity. It could be about the rich and poor.

Favorable views

On balance, though, Americans' affection for Africa seems to be reciprocated. According to a Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of world opinion, nine of the 10 nations most favorable toward America are in Africa (the other is Israel). Residents of Kenya, Ghana and the Ivory Coast regard Americans more favorably than Americans do.

The Bush administration has more than doubled aid to Africa — the largest expansion of foreign development assistance since the Marshall Plan. Bush's PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) is the largest health initiative in history to fight foreign disease.

Thanks to the United States, more than 1.3 million Africans get anti-AIDS drugs. That compares with 50,000 before PEPFAR. And last week, despite the nation's fiscal woes, the Senate voted to triple spending over the next five years to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

More African kids are living to see their fifth birthdays, more girls are going to school, and more farmers have a road to market. The number of poor has leveled off — debt relief by the world's richest nations has helped lift millions out of poverty — and the poverty rate across Africa has dipped 6 percentage points since 2000.

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