Bandiagara Cliffs

Awakened by waves of Harmattan wind
Sweeping new dust through boulders, revealing
Children, full of grace, from Banani who
Cry though smiling with mimicry, while they
Shoulder impassable poverty and
Trade francs for shrieks of Ave Maria.

Ah, with chagrin, palimpsest of pilgrims,
Rewrite, please, this kind guide’s dead sentiments,
Or else foredoomed be the fruit of all wombs.

Birth with these Dōgon, in deep sediment,
An earthed symphony without misery:
Vivid, gemmed, weightless as flying Tellem.

So, children find voice in redemption songs
Ushering a rush of revolution
Inscribing streams, irrigating dry dreams,
Erasing blood and blame for who has sinned,
Ambushing old dust from caves with fresh green
Awakened by waves of Harmattan wind.

Taking Half the Road

One of my favorite cultural customs in Mali is the elegant way departures happen here. There’s nothing hasty or unannounced about them. When visiting a community, we don’t merely get up and leave. We request permission to “take the road.” If one’s host has enjoyed the visit, she or he will say, “You may take half the road, leaving the other half for your return visit.”


Kirk Betts, LWR Board Chair with Aldiouma Guindo,
President of the SEPROBIO Sesame Program.

Upon granting us half the road, Aldiouma Guindo, the president of the SEPROBIO Sesame Program in Koro, Mali said, our work is only possible because of Lutheran World Relief.

“No,” I retorted, “your success is due to your hard work and God’s blessing.”

“I understand that” he replied, “but when you ask for God’s blessing, God sends others like you to help us.”

At that we simply said, “Thanks,” and took half the road.

Free to Go to School

Freed from scraping for scraps to survive, families will send more children to school. That’s a basic premise and promise of Lutheran World Relief’s development work. Rather than children being forced into working the fields, parents can now afford books and clothes and school supplies. In community after community we’ve heard this story. “My children can now go to school.” This really, really matters in countries with the highest fertility rate in the world (averages can be more than 7 per female), and where children 18 and under comprise about half of the population.

Historically, the colonializing French occupiers—who ruled these sections of west Africa from the 1800s until about 50 years—valued how much agriculture could be produced more than how much formal education could be achieved. School-going rates at the time of independence in the early 1960s were grotesquely low, in the single digits.

While LWR does not partner with educational organizations or operate schools, we do deeply value the power of education to change lives, as well as the priority of education, once food and safety are securely available. So, as we engage in monitoring visits like this one, going to school is one of the variables for which we listen.



When we visited with the Fada Dairy Program in Burkina Faso a year ago, Miriam Diallo (pictured with me) reported being a parent of ten children, one of whom was attending school. Because of the partnership with LWR, she is now sending two children to school. One could dismissively say, “Well that’s only two of ten children,” but a one hundred percent improvement in education rates within one year, especially within a formerly desperately poor family, represents a remarkable impact.

A Hero Named Hadizatou

What’s new in Hadizatou Makole’s life? She stands alongside LWR’s Africa Director, Dr. Evariste Karangwa, outside the storage facility and offices of the Hanzari Women’s Group in Dogondoutchi. In the past four years Hadizatou has a newly improved knowledge of peanut oil processing technology. Despite personal circumstances leaving her as the primary provider for eight children, she gleams, telling us how she manages a family budget for food and clothing, paying cash for everything. With proceeds from her peanut processing business she has purchased four ewes and one cow, representing unheard of viability for a woman in this community. Newfound personal leadership potential animates Hadizatou with a playful and savvy confidence as she outlines plans for her future.

Dressed in her hijāb, this lady courageously stands at a historical intersection of gender roles. Lutheran World Relief is navigating this crossroads with her. None of what she has done would have been possible for her unforgotten mother. All of what’s new to her will one day be viewed as normal to her daughters—“each person and every generation,” LWR’s vision statement proclaims. Oppressive cultural traditions are falling away with each harvest. Heroes like Hadizatou gradually and winsomely sow a new way forward. Félicitations à Madame Makole!

Celebrating in Niger

All cultures express hospitality. Perhaps none are as lively as these communities in West Africa. Dancing on the ground’s hot sand, drumming on percussive instruments that seemed to sing, ululating, blessing—yes, loudly voicing their benedictions upon us as we walked by.

At Konni, the community opened itself to include us in their inner circle of leaders; what’s more, seated prominently, we were vested in traditional garb and gave remarks then translated into Hausa. Lutheran World Relief’s board chairman (pictured in the photo) commented to representatives of the 3,300 member wheat grower’s federation, “We look at this project as a model for others around the world.”

At Matankari more than 2000 persons thronged to the town center at the Niger flagpole. Older boys took to the trees for a better vantage of the ceremonies. No energy was spared to speak welcome, in music, meals and detailed presentations of the transformational benefits from our partnership.

I believe this energetic expression of welcome is a testimony to LWR’s expression of development work, the accompaniment model. We relate to grassroots experts, facilitating access to agricultural inputs, access to credit-granting institutions, access to markets, access to a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). Our preposition of choice is with. We don’t impose, presume or tower over others. God is with us and others, so, we are with others. We walk with, work with, wait with and even dance in celebration with—giving thanks and praise for the change that comes when people are with one another.

The Backbone of Black History Month

February is Black History Month in North America. Fittingly, this is my second consecutive February in West Africa. Last year’s visit to LWR projects proved so personally transformational that from Burkina Faso. I text-messaged LWR board chair, Kirk Betts, with an invitation to join me in February 2009. Within two minutes he text-messaged me back, “Count me in.” Now we are here.

My reportage this year will go in two directions. I will attempt as usual to give you a look at the depth of our projects while I also go in search of the breadth of the metaphors that define these diverse communities in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Metaphors “serve as a repository of that culture’s dominant mode of intelligence and tradition,” according to Caribbean scholar, Patricia Ismond. Through our photographs and words, I hope to interweave LWR projects with the images, stories, and mythological truths animating the lives of the amazing people in the rural places where LWR works. My hunch is that this approach will intensify your profound sense of why this ministry matters. From these communities and these cultures you may acquire a deeper sense of the many metaphors that crossed the Atlantic in chains to the New World during the slave trade to become the backbone of Black History Month.

LWR Board Sees the Hands that Help

Oversight and governance constitute key duties for the members of the Lutheran World Relief board. These 13 women and men, 8 from the ELCA and 5 from the LCMS, take seriously their stewarding of the mission, vision and fiscal operations. Three times a year these dedicated generative thinkers come together to meet from California, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oregon, Virginia and Wyoming. Once every three years, however, these volunteer leaders travel to the faraway places LWR works to see for themselves how the things they read and hear in staff reports correspond to the work we do at the last mile.

By co-creating “vibrant, functioning rural economies,”—to employ a favorite phrase of Executive Vice-President Jeff Whisenant— we move, albeit incrementally, toward a world of justice, dignity and peace. I say co-creating because without the Holy Spirit’s help, without the expertise of partners who accompany local communities, without the heroic labors of campesinos (peasant farmers), without the prophetic, loving and wise counsel of the LWR board, making progress would be entirely impossible.

Reading the numbers and narratives on paper at the Baltimore boardroom can’t quite equate with hearing firsthand the impact like what board members heard in Matagalpa, Nicaragua: “We are not poor anymore,” testified one community leader. “Instead of extending our hand to receive help, we extend our hand to help others.”