by Ray Norman
But the most pervasive and well-founded fear of those we served in the communities, and which we had to face, was the question of whether World Vision would be obliged to withdraw its assistance, given this latest event that had involved the national director and his daughter. Within hours of being back in the office, I had found myself fielding questions from field staff brought to them by anxious community members as to our long-term intentions. These were hard questions for our staff, who themselves were wrestling with the same insecurities. So they simply passed the questions up the line to my office. It was at their pleading that I addressed this general anxiety by setting up visits among our partner communities. I began in the first weeks with our periurban programs in the shantytowns around Nouakchott and later traveled up-country to visit those in the interior, where Stan and Beth Doerr were stationed and ran World Vision’s rather remote Assaba People’s Program.
In the years before coming to Mauritania, my time among poor communities in developing areas of the world had taught me the importance and value of being an intentional listener. My work had often involved applied research in water and agriculture and initiatives in poverty reduction. Over the years I had been privileged to spend countless hours interviewing or engaged in discussions with local people, usually farmers, in their homes or at their farms. I started out as a typical researcher, eager to keep to my busy schedule, and at each encounter I tried desperately to forgo the expected formalities of a lengthy greeting and of accepting the bowl of sour camel’s milk before engaging in any discussion. Oblivious to the farmers’ priorities, values, and time constraints, I usually focused on plunging into my set of prepared questions and moving on to the next “sample” in the survey.
We so easily forget that even the poor have sophisticated value systems, although they may be different from our own. Moreover, most carry heavy responsibilities and schedules, especially subsistence-level farmers who must often invest twelve hours a day, six or seven days a week, to keep their families fed. As well-educated and comparatively wealthy foreigners, we easily succumb to the notion that we are somehow higher in the pecking order, that our important objectives and busy schedules should take precedence because “we know best.” And too often our image among the poor is tainted, and our actions reflect a sense of entitlement and thinly veiled arrogance (in spite of our good intentions).
Many farmers graciously overlooked my rudeness, writing me off as just another ill-mannered foreigner preoccupied with self-interest. Others would insist that I slow down and go through the necessary rituals before I would get an ounce of information out of them. What I perceived as stubbornness offended me at first, but these were the only individuals courageous enough to try to teach me some much-needed lessons on local etiquette and a value system different (and generally healthier) than my own. In much of the world outside of Europe and North America, people are less achievement-oriented and place a significantly higher value on relationships. On days after an unexpectedly long exchange with farmers, I might glance at my watch and mumble something to the effect that there was still much I had not accomplished that day. I would often hear words such as, “Yes, but those things can always get done tomorrow. At least today we have done the important thing and gotten to know each other better.”
I was also more interested in doling out professional advice than understanding and learning from their wealth of experience. Only blatant ignorance, mixed with a little arrogance, would cause an outsider to presume he knew more (or better) than indigenous farmers who employed generations of accumulated knowledge to coax a living out of a patch of dry, sandy land in one of the harshest environments in the world. Soon I began to realize that my PhD served as little more than a crash course on principles of science and objective inquiry and that no academic degree could equip me to do what they did.
What gradually happened through all of this was that I learned to listen. Preoccupied with my questions and the opportunities to insert my own professional advice, I always pushed for short, succinct, and uncomplicated answers. But I was missing the larger, more important picture, the larger context into which the answers to my shortsighted questions fit. I sought individual points of insight, but I was missing the story. Slowly, and with the help of countless patient men and women in the poor communities where I worked, I learned the invaluable lesson of listening. I learned that hearing these stories is how we come to value individuals, not just the information they provide. And when we take the time to truly listen, not just hear, we are all the richer for having done so.
I also learned that engaging people in this way sends the message that they have value. They are worth listening to. Their stories are important. This reflects a core message of the gospel, a message of hope that the poor are desperate to hear: that each created individual is of unique value to God; that regardless of their occupation or station in life, they are of intrinsic worth and they are loved by their Creator. Learning this important lesson gave birth, in the years that followed, to some of the most personally rewarding experiences of my career—the long days spent under a shade tree with farmers, listening to their stories, hearing their hopes and fears, and learning to see the world through their eyes.
So, shortly after my return to Mauritania, I found myself plunged into a succession of meetings—mostly town-hall-type events in poor, rural communities, usually under a large traditional tent or a shade tree—listening and giving them the opportunity to express their views and concerns, trying to provide reassurances of our hope of maintaining our programs, as well as answering myriad penetrating questions about our own personal feelings related to recent events.
The first of these meetings, held in one of the shantytowns, is forever etched in my mind. Upon arrival at the venue—an open area between hovels and the small World Vision field office—I was somewhat surprised at the number of people gathered, since I had been told that I would be meeting with a few of the community leaders. Word had obviously gotten out, and those gathered included many individuals who were simply anxious or curious. As I made my way through the pressing crowd, trying to acknowledge the various greetings and welcomes being offered, it was clear to me that there was a palpable insecurity among many, most of whom seemed to be watching me carefully to see how I would react and respond. My attempts to kindly and graciously acknowledge their genuine yet somewhat tentative greetings were met with even warmer acknowledgments coupled with looks of relief.
I was shown to a worn bench in the front of the assembled group, who were mostly sitting on mats that covered the dirty sand. While our local program director welcomed everyone and tried to quiet the crowd and set the tone for the meeting, I sat quietly gazing at each eager, inquisitive face in the early morning heat. With sweat already running down my sides under my loose shirt, I took an occasional swing at the flies that were an unfailing part of any such gathering and whose number always seemed to be proportional to the temperature level on any given day.
But the ache in my heart for the anxious faces before me gave me the most discomfort. These people (who laughed, wept, married, had children, and sought to love and care for their families—just as I did each day) lived a tenuous existence—lives lived on the very edge. Many of them knew, on any given day, the probability that their daily plight could plunge from bad to worse was far greater than that it might improve. And the question I read on their faces that morning spoke deeply to me of their daily search for hope: Will the news from this gathering today follow the course of our past lives, or will it perhaps bring hope?
After the kind introductions in the Hassaniya dialect by our program director, I stood to my feet while offering a quiet petition to God for words that would not only bring hope but would also be truthful. Hope, in a sense, is a promise; and promises made are only truthful if followed with faithfulness by those who proffer the promise—especially in circumstances as tenuous as these. At that moment I felt neither strong nor certain about present circumstances, much less about my own abi
lity or strength to fulfill promises about World Vision’s future in Mauritania.
But I searched deeper. As I did so, one of World Vision’s principal core values came floating up to my consciousness: “We value people. We regard all people as created and loved by God. We give priority to people before money, structure, systems, and other institutional machinery. We act in ways that respect the dignity, uniqueness, and intrinsic worth of every person.” And so I started with this reminder: that every person in the gathering, regardless of their station in life or present circumstances, regardless of the times or events of recent days, has value of immeasurable worth. I went on to express how profoundly my family and I had been touched in the past few days by the expressions of concern and genuine love that had been conveyed to us from their community and others across Mauritania. I gently wove through the notions of tolerance and reconciliation, principles we always articulated to community partners as being core to World Vision’s mission, yet I did not specify that these principles also quietly flowed from our Christ-centered values. I went on to share that my family, as well as World Vision as an institution, harbored no bitterness for the events of 9/11 or toward Mauritania and its people. I also explained that we felt no anger toward the assailant or any bitterness for the ensuing trauma my daughter and I had experienced. And on behalf of my family, I articulated in simple, open, and honest terms our forgiveness of the individual who had brought such pain into our lives.
I then went on to explain that while I was still in the midst of intense discussions with those I was accountable to, both World Vision leadership and our connections in various key government ministries (Health, Social Affairs, and Poverty Reduction), I had every intention, inshallah (God willing), to do all in my power to ensure that our programs continued. I encouraged them to beseech God, through their own prayers, that he would direct and provide wisdom to each one in this process.
When I had finished, there was a short period of seemingly uncomfortable silence, no one knowing just how to continue the meeting. In those moments I quickly reviewed what had come out of my mouth and assessed its validity in hindsight, desperately hoping it had been, at least in some measure, inspired by the Holy Spirit. I had little doubt that although most of what I said was understood and well received, my articulation of forgiveness for the assailant was entirely unanticipated by those before me and at best was an unfamiliar, if not uncomfortable, notion in this culture. For many it could be seen as a sign of weakness, and it likely flew against most reason and religious instruction in that society. For Muslims, Allah is all powerful and demands obedience. Weakness and vulnerability are not attributes readily associated with Allah or those who seek to follow his ways. To the Muslim, he is a God who only bestows his gifts to men from the invulnerability of sovereign transcendence. In contrast, the power of almighty God in the biblical narrative is revealed most clearly through the humility of the cross, and in the weakness and vulnerability that were displayed there, as well as in the forgiveness that was declared.
My family’s open articulation of forgiveness for the assailant at this gathering and at others that followed was not premeditated. It was a natural outflow of who we are and a matter we never questioned from the day of the assault. While we wrestled with many emotions and feelings (confusion, hurt, sorrow, self-doubt), anger and unforgiveness were never part of the complex, internal equation we found ourselves trying to solve in those days.
What I was certain about was that the people of this community needed to be heard—to be listened to—far more than they needed to hear from me. People at this echelon of society, the world over, are overwhelmingly and exhaustingly the recipients of directives, unreasonable mandates, grandiose discourses, and strings of empty promises. And I had learned that in circumstances such as these, the best I could do was patiently hear their voice and give them the assurance they had been heard and understood.
After a few moments there was some uneasy stirring among the gathered crowd, and it was clear that everyone hoped someone else would have the pluck to break the uncomfortable silence that followed. I wondered if my words on forgiveness had been taken as a curious and somewhat peculiar (if not ignorant) reaction by a strange foreigner who was obviously trying to cope and get his head around all that had happened to him and his family. What I was sure was milling around in everyone’s minds was the still-unanswered question of World Vision’s continued presence, and disappointment that I had not come with a definitive answer. For those who live on the edge, simply stating that you are doing your best is often not enough to ease the gnawing angst that is their daily fare. I had tried to bring them hope, but I felt sure that while most understood the conundrum we faced, my words had, in the end, disappointed most of them.
In public gatherings such as these, it is often expected that the women will defer to men, especially those who wish to offer a public comment and carry the discourse. But we had found in the poorest communities such as these where the men are so often absent—tending animals, searching for work for days on end, or simply avoiding the stifling and depressing conditions of the neighborhood and leaving the women to tend the usual plethora of young children in the household—the women are almost invariably the glue and driving force that keep these fragile communities together.
Among many households it is the women who deftly and courageously manage the meager resources to keep even a semblance of a safe and healthy home for their children. So it is the women who are also the most aggressive, tireless, and outspoken advocates for the betterment of their neighborhoods. And many of our most reliable volunteers in the community, whom we depended on to implement World Vision’s neighborhood programs, were women. Therefore it was not uncommon in such gatherings for women leaders in the community to step out of their traditional roles, fill the void, and take the stand in public meetings, with or without the voice of the men.
I should not have been surprised when one aging matriarch rather stiffly but intentionally gathered her tattered malafa about her and rose to her feet in the back of the crowd. In an instant the crowd settled and turned its attention to her, obviously relieved that someone was going to make the effort to muster an appropriate response to my words. The tone of her voice and her dignified posture, along with the silence of the crowd, and even the pause among the many fidgeting children, instantly told me that I was in the presence of a respected community leader.
“Monsieur le Directeur,” she began, “we all wish to thank you for taking the time from your busy schedule to come and spend your morning with us here in our community, and we are all so grateful for the work that World Vision has undertaken among us.” But without missing a beat she plunged directly into the thoughts and questions that were obviously on her mind: “As you know, we have worked alongside World Vision and its staff to strengthen our communities and make life better for our children for many years now. And we have known all along that World Vision is a Christian organization, although we don’t really know much about Christians. But now we see your willingness to do all you can to stay with us when not only we are suffering and at risk but you are as well! You talk about forgiveness and pardon for the acts committed against you and your daughter. As Muslims we are taught that no ordinary person, in and of themselves, has the power or ability to truly forgive such an act. Therefore we are not required to try to do so because it is humanly not really possible. You have even said that your ten-year-old daughter holds no bitterness and offers her forgiveness for this man! How can a ten-year-old forgive a man who tried to take her life and the life of her father?” And as if this were not enough, her last question left me stunned. “Please tell us, Monsieur, where does such power to forgive come from?”
I noticed that she did not return to her seat on the mat, as is customary, but she stood there quietly among the seated crowd, waiting as if to assure herself and those around her that she would get an answer to these pressing questions.
Perhaps the tension I felt in the air at that mome
nt was more of my own than what was really there. For most of those gathered it was probably just genuine curiosity that dominated the atmosphere of the meeting. In Mauritanian society, as in most Islamic societies, any activity that has any semblance of proselytizing Muslims is strictly forbidden. But what westerners fail to understand about many Islamic societies is that there is room for respectful dialogue on most any subject. And in Mauritania there is no law against giving an honest, respectful answer to an honest and respectful question.
Once again, as I had done often in recent days, I silently sent a prayer upward, asking God for his presence and wisdom as I tried to provide an appropriate yet truthful answer. I began by making it clear that my family and I were as subject to the foibles and weaknesses of human nature as anyone else. I explained that we had wrestled with our own pain, frustration, and fears. As in any hurtful situation, we were not immune to the temptation to find our consolation in resentment and animosity toward those who are the source of our pain. But I went on to explain that as believing Christians we had long ago encountered the teachings of Isa, and his words and the truth found in them had impacted our lives in a profound way. Our encounter with his love, not only for us, but for all people, is the very reason we made our lives in Mauritania and the reason for World Vision’s work among the poor. Through faith in him we find that we are endowed with Isa’s love for those we walk among, both the good and the bad. And as followers of Isa, and through our experience of his mercy in our own brokenness, we find the power to forgive—born of a love whose source is truly beyond ourselves.