If you teach a man to fish... it shows you hate helping people

"If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime."

I first heard that saying years ago and I don't think I ever doubted it's worth as a concise saying that illustrates a great principle of how to effectively help others.  However, when teaching a session on "Money Matters" yesterday during the Mara Cluster National Orientation Program, one of the Tanzanian participants said, "If there is a hungry man and you teach him to fish instead of, or even in addition to giving him a fish, you are putting him down and being very rude.  A good Tanzanian would never do that unless they didn't like the person and wanted to make a point of it."

I was quite shocked!  The topic had come up because I had printed some foundational principles of how Africans in general view money as opposed to how westerners in general view money (taken from the excellent book, "African Friends and Money Matters" by David Moranz).  One of the principles in the African category was, "Space and material goods are readily shared, but knowledge and information are held tightly."  The reverse was true for the westerners: "Knowledge and information are readily shared, but space and material goods are held tightly."

I could easily see how westerners act according to the latter, but was a bit confused as to why Africans acted according to the former, so used my question as a discussion launching point.  Here are a few of the answers I got:

• "Few people can afford to get a good education, so if you have acquired some knowledge or skill that will enable you to provide for your family, you want to keep this know-how private, or else you will enable others to compete with you in the same business area."
• "If a friend is in need and comes to you for help, it's not because he doesn't know how to get money, but because he can't for some reason.  So if you start explaining to him ways of earning money, he'll think that you think he's totally stupid!  He knows how to fish, but couldn't fish that day and is hungry and just wants you to give him a fish, not give him a lecture on how to go catch his own."
• "I know a pastor who gave somebody in need some money, and also gave him money to start up a business for himself and explained how he shouldn't ever have to ask for money again if he stuck to these business principles, etc.  You know what, that man left thinking that the pastor was a very mean person who didn't like to help people and was just trying to get rid of the man so he'd never ask him for money again, no matter how much he needed it!"
• "Why wouldn't you just give somebody hungry some food?"

Wow!  This worldview really affects a lot of things - what is perceived as loving, helpful, and godly; what NGOs and missions with training programs are actually communicating to people; what happens when a curious newcomer starts asking a lot of questions about how someone is doing something in order to learn how to do it himself/herself (i.e. stealing that person's valuable knowledge).  It reflects how, in many African cultures, immediate needs are viewed as the most important and planning for the future isn't highly valued (after all, who really knows what the future holds?).  It reminds me of how much I still have to learn about life and worldview here!