Humble background of a Finnish Sudan expert

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By Jaana Laitinen
     
      If Leo Siliämaa, 59, the head of Finnchurchaid, the foreign aid organisation of the Finnish Lutheran Church, had been born into a well-off family in Helsinki, his life might have been quite different.
      However, he grew up in a family with 12 children in the village of Pudasjärvi. Nourishment was scarce on the northerly farm.
      "As a child I watched life on the farm and realised that scraping my income from the land would be a gruelling task. I wanted to do something else.”
      “I thought that I needed an education.”
      Losing his right hand in an accident at age 12 helped the decision. It had to be amputated below the elbow.
     
Manual labour is not an option with only one hand. Hence, his parents encouraged him to go to trade school. After that Siliämaa moved forward on his own, step by step.
      He became an agricultural technician and spent a year training at an American farm. Part of the exchange programme included university courses. Later Siliämaa also got a degree in tropical agriculture.
      That is how his career in development cooperation and with aid organisations began. He started in Tanzania in the 1970s in a development cooperation unit. From there the agriculture expert was transferred to Sudan to help rebuild the war-ravaged country in 1979-80 and 1981-84.
     
Five years were spent in Geneva at the headquarters of the Lutheran World Federation, where Siliämaa was in charge of Africa’s drought relief. His next five-year post was in Zimbabwe as head of the Lutheran World Federation’s development program.
      “This has been a rich life. I have been able to see much. It gives one perspective to look at the world.”
      He believes that his own background partially helps him understand what poverty means in developing countries.
      “I saw how they started to develop my home village one small step at a time. Working as a community was important. We had a bull co-operative, a thresher co-operative, and offered agricultural counselling.”
     
“It also works as an example in development cooperation. With joined forces we can build dams, wells and schools. They combine their skills, we give them our support.”
      Sudan has been an important place for Siliämaa. He visited the country again last week, this time in the Darfur crisis area. Siliämaa was part of an analysis team of church aid organisations that became familiar with the work in the crisis area.
      After returning home he has spoken in the media about the region. He does not get excited or emotional - he simply reports what he saw: a million people live in huts made of sticks in arid conditions without protection from the elements. There are about 130 refugee camps, of which some have been inaccessible to the aid organisations.
     
Hordes of robbers make things difficult for the refugees and aid workers. Women are safe only inside the camps. The hygiene situation is difficult: infants die of diarrhoea and other illnesses. Things will only get worse when the rainy season begins in the largest country in Africa.
     
Although Siliämaa has seen the horrors of the world, he has remained an optimist. He often repeats that wherever there is peace, there is also a chance for development. It is a part of human nature.
      “I have seen that when people are given the opportunity, they want to develop. It has become clear that we cannot impose development on anyone from above. We can only support and offer our help.”
      His American wife Luanne and the family’s two sons were with their father in Zimbabwe in the 1990s. Now the boys are in their adolescence, and the family cannot move away from home as easily as before.
      “Zimbabwe was an extremely positive experience for our family. However, we agree that we came back at the right time.”
     
The family watched the hostilities resulting from the failure of the land reform on television. The benefits of living in Zimbabwe include the English language, which the boys got used to using there. The language is also kept up by their English-speaking mother.
      “At first they used Finnish. Now they speak English even with each other. We will see if it is still going to change.”
      “When people are given a chance, they are willing to develop,” says Leo Siliämaa of Finnchurchaid.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.9.2004  


Links:
  Finnchurchaid web site

Helsingin Sanomat