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Worldwide Peacebuilders Mennonites
Vol. 30, No. 1 IntroductionFor this issue we bring you stories of the work and struggles of fourteen people committed to building peace in various parts of the world. These artisans of reconciliation were selected by Mennonite Central Committee programs in their home countries to participate in the 1999 annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. As you read their stories, it will be obvious why MCC sponsored them for this experience. All of them have a compelling desire to share stories and practices from their own countries as well as to learn new ideas, both from professors and from other participants. It was my pleasure to interview them last June while they were in residence in Harrisonburg. (My bosses wouldn't spring for a trip to visit all of them in their countries!) I hope you will see these stories as a reminder that peace happens on a local level as well as in international conflicts, and that we in the West have much to learn from the peacebuilding practices of people all over the world who successfully address situations of painful conflict and injustice. —Editor
Building Peace in Northern Uganda Mending an Indonesian Church Split Editing and Training for Gender Equity in Sudan Cultivating Afghan Peacemakers Peace Missionaries in East Congo Popcorn Peacemaking in South Russia Making peace in the Indigenous way in the Philippines Balancing Zambian traditional and legal systems Healing bodies and churches in Sudan Teaching math and peace in Serbia
Building Peace in Northern UgandaCosmas Oryen Lam The Idi Amin regime in Uganda in the 1980s oversaw the killing of millions of Ugandans and the destruction of many local institutions. Following the departure of Amin and national elections, Uganda had begun rebuilding its institutions and recovering from the trauma of the massacres. But in the last decade, rebel forces supported by Sudan have arisen to oppose the elected government in Uganda. Cosmas Oryem Lam, a Summer Peacebuilding Institute student, describes the civil war: "Over the last nine to ten years, the war was characterized by abduction, forced abduction, and conscription of many young people into the rebel ranks. These are the people who have come back to fight—they come and destroy the process and fight the government of Uganda. In the process our people find themselves victims." Lam's home town is Atiak, in northern Uganda, around 50 kilometers from the southern tip of Sudan. On April 20, 1995, the civil war came to Atiak with devastating consequences. Lam continues, "On that day over 250 people were massacred in my own village. For me it was so traumatic it gave me a lot of trauma, that incident; I broke down. I was in Kampala when I heard the news. I had to go to Gulu [about 80 kilometers from Atiak], but I couldn't go home to the village." Lam went on to explain that some of the people massacred included young boys who were trying to defend their village. "The rebels attack us because our people are not supporting them. So these are the dynamics of this war." Lam indicates that the rebels are from the Acholi tribe, the majority group of that area of Uganda. Why are they attacking their own people? "The rebels come to fight with the government of Uganda. They know that the government is supposed to protect the people. So by hurting the civilians, they know that they are embarrassing the government. "Second, Sudan helps these rebels come and embarrass the government. The victims, or course, are the innocent people. And then the third aspect, which is very serious, is that most of these fighters in these rebel ranks are children—children who have been abducted from the community." Lam went back to Atiak in July 1995, three months after the massacre. "The people were so much affected. I happened to be chairman of our local community development association, and people had sort of given up. People didn't even want to be. "So I went home with a message. The message was, 'Let us get up, let's move through this that has been painful to us. Let us wipe off the dust from our knees. Let us wipe off our tears and let us move ahead.' So for me, it was trying to console our people and seeing if we could move forward." One of the ways Lam assisted Atiak in moving forward was to memorialize those who perished. "We said we would build a memorial monument, a monument that will remind us of what has happened and say that it should not happen again. We should work to stop it." In 1996 the civil war was still quite dangerous, with land mines and snipers posing a danger to road traffic. But the villagers persisted, and the memorial was finally built in 1999. "So this year on the 20th of April, the monument was put in place as a memory and we started a secondary school. The secondary school is a sign that education is looking into the future. It is our symbol for peace." In the years following the massacre the village leaders were divided as to how to achieve stability and peace. In June 1998 there was a meeting under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program. Ugandans in the diaspora were consulted and invited to support local initiatives. More meetings were held and community religious leaders were encouraged to lead the way toward a more peaceful future. Out of these meetings came a proposal for the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative to be involved in peace education, with Cosmas Lam serving as technical staff. "Here is a people who are saying we should find a way. And they know that peace is a process. So MCC supported us to carry out a simple survey to find out from the people when they want us to start and what they want to be done." The survey documented strong affirmation of a peacebuilding program with the goal of developing a culture of peace. The program began with a conference of religious leaders in February 1999 to sensitize them to the need and the goals of the program. Since then Lam has been involved in training peace animators who will work in each subcounty in northern Uganda. "We are trying to help others know that it is a continuous, long-term process. One metaphor that is very local is that in the dry season in November and December up to February, it is very hot. If you are very thirsty and then you get cold water, you cannot just pick it up and drink it—it can kill you. So you have to take it in small amounts. This is the kind of thing we do in the animation." Leaders of all groups are cooperating with the effort. "Already the religious leaders, the Anglicans, Catholics, and Muslims, have been praying together—prayers for peace." In July 1999 Cosmas Oryem Lam began working full-time for MCC Uganda. His assignment includes continuing his technical work with the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative as well as taking responsibility for MCC peace work throughout Uganda. When asked about how traditional Ugandan peace concepts fit with the program, Lam said, "What we have in the Acholi language is called mato afot. Mato afot is our word for reconciliation. Mato afot is literally 'drinking afot.' What is afot? Afot is a tree. This tree has got a bitter heart and when there are two parties that have quarreled or who have had conflict, then mato afot is the climax ceremony that is between me and you. The root of the afot is smashed and put in a vessel. It is very bitter. You drink from it and I drink from it. "What does it mean? It is very bitter. We swallow the bitterness. We swallow it because we want to restore the relationship. "One of our bishops lost his wife in a land mine explosion. He is saying, 'Let it end with my wife. We don't want to see other wives also being blown up.' "Mato afot is really the end of the process. But now we have to prepare the ground. Building trust is really part of it, so that we are sure of starting to walk again." Top
Mending an Indonesian Church SplitHendro Soeradi and Pudjo Kartiko Hendro Soeradi and Pudjo Kartiko are pastors in the Javanese Mennonite Church (GITJ), one of three Mennonite synods in Indonesia. Both pastor churches located in the Pati area, on the island of Java. But the two are members of rival leadership groups that have been feuding for several years. Each group claims that it is the legitimate leadership for the whole synod that comprises some eighty congregations and another eighty or so branch congregations. Pudjo chairs the group with its office on Kartini Street in Pati, while Hendro is vice chair of the group that has an office on Rogowongso Street in the same city. Hendro says, "In 1996 we separated because each group was having its own general assembly and raising its own support. The problem is that one is recognized by the government and the other is not. And the group that was not recognized by the government has more churches—about sixty. The recognized one has only twenty-four." The background of the schism is that the synod leadership in the early 1990s did not organize regular synod meetings as called for by the constitution and then failed to organize the general assembly scheduled for 1994. A group of concerned pastors and other leaders—the Kartini Street group—eventually organized their own general assembly, and the synod leadership—on Rogowongso Street—also organized a general assembly, inviting only the congregations loyal to them. Each assembly claimed to be the legitimate general assembly of the Javanese Mennonite Church and elected a new general board. Each board asked the government, neighboring churches, and partner agencies to recognize it as the legitimate leadership of the Javanese Mennonite Church. When the government department of religion recognized the Rogowongso general board, the Kartini group filed a complaint that led to a government suit against its own department of religion for improper state interference in church affairs. Leaders in the neighboring Muria Mennonite Synod, the Indonesian Fellowship of Churches, partner agencies in Netherlands, the United States, and Canada made efforts to bring the rival leaders together, but with little success. In 1998 MCC Indonesia asked former MCC Indonesia personnel Lawrence and Shirlee Yoder to spend June and July in Indonesia rejuvenating relationships that they had developed with these churches during their decade of ministry there in the 1970s and during a sabbatical project in Indonesia in 1997. Lawrence is currently professor of mission studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary, and Shirlee is a pastor at Park View Mennonite Church and teacher at Eastern Mennonite High School. The Mennonite Conference in the Netherlands (ADS) also supported this initiative. The Yoders organized a retreat on leadership in the Javanese Mennonite Church that was held in Bandungan June 30 and July 1, 1998. They invited a pastor and a lay leader from each of the congregations of both groups. The retreat focused on leadership issues rather than on the conflict. Lawrence made a presentation based on his research into the history of the church in its first hundred years (1853—1953), which helped to reinforce a sense that "we really do belong to each other." Shirlee made a presentation on leadership spirituality. At this retreat there was a groundswell of voices from the churches calling for synod leadership to reconcile. Encouraged by this, the Yoders invited all general board members from the rival groups to a July 25 retreat at a neutral location, the conference center of the Muria Mennonite Synod (GKMI) in Semarang. Most of the leaders attended. The participants made two fundamental decisions: first, to reconcile and reunite; and second, to form a reconciliation team of four members from each of the boards to work out the process. "After that, all of us agreed to be one, to be united," says Hendro. "But now the problem is technical—how to accomplish it. Before we did not have any kind of meeting, and then we agreed to join the committee of reconciliation. And now we are working hard at it." Lawrence made another trip to Indonesia in January 1999 to help the groups maintain their commitment to the process. The reconciliation team is working on plans for a reconciling general assembly to elect a single new board. Both Pudjo and Hendro are members of the reconciliation committee. Part of the plan was for them both to attend the Summer Peacebuilding Institute for exposure to a variety of ways of addressing conflict situations. They also used the opportunity to further the dialogue that was begun in Indonesia. "During the Summer Peacebuilding Institute we can talk and talk," says Hendro. "Lots of time we talk and talk." Besides his pastoral responsibilities and his work as chair of the Kartini Street group, Pudjo is a teacher of Christian religion in a local high school. "I am very happy that we have a committee for reconciliation," he says. "We are trying to unite the groups." Top
Editing and Training for Gender Equity in SudanFlora Gune Kasmiro Flora Gune Kasmiro edits a magazine that covers issues of women and the church at the University for Women in Khartoum, Sudan. She graduated from the University in 1993. But it was not easy to enter academics as a woman in Sudan. She says, "It was not only in the north that women were not encouraged to go to school but even in the south, there were limited resources for women to be given the chance to further their studies. Now I think people have come to recognize that women can come to be even more accepted than men at times." In addition to her duties as magazine editor, Kasmiro is involved in the Peace Center at the University for Women. She and several colleagues have offered training in gender and development and conflict resolution. The peace center provides training to students with the goal of spreading peace and justice information throughout Sudan as the students graduate and return to their home areas. How do Sudanese traditionally make peace in village disputes? "If the dispute is between two clans, both clans come and sit facing one another under a very big tree," says Kasmiro. "The chief of each clan is at the front, facing the other chief and clan. "Of course, the women are not involved in this. They are just busy there cooking and working behind the scenes. "The chiefs will decide. Of course, there will be some talk like 'I will do this, and some of your people will do that, and some of my people will do this.' "When the solution is reached and agreed on, drinks and a meal are shared. A drink together is a sign that things are being settled now and we have to take some water at least to dissolve whatever it is that stands between us. And then something is supposed to be slaughtered. If it is a very big issue, of course, at least a bull. If it is something minor it will be a sheep or a goat." What about the role of women in such a dispute? "In some cases the women see something going wrong and tell the chief, or the men do nothing to solve a problem and the women will pressure them. And there are some women who are very strong in the community—they can go to the chief or elder of the community and say, 'I have seen something going wrong in the community.'" Is the role of women changing over time? Will a woman some day take the chief's role? "If the community is open to this society having contact with people in the cities, eventually it will take place one day. Women will start realizing that their role is not only cooking and talking behind the scenes. There are women who have got very strong qualities of leadership. If they have that chance of also helping some other women to be strong and speak to the chiefs, they can do something. The change will take place—not, of course, in the very near future but over time." Top
Cultivating Afghan PeacemakersAbdul Ghani Taj Abdul Ghani Taj is a gentle, soft-spoken man with a ready smile. He has taught at Islamic University in Peshawar, Pakistan, since 1989. The University was established by exiles from Afghanistan who wanted to provide educational opportunities for Afghani refugees in Peshawar, a city not far from Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. For the first years of his tenure at Islamic University, Prof. Taj taught agriculture and was dean of the Faculty of Agriculture. Then in 1996 his program was closed for lack of funding, and the university chancellor, Dr. Faizullah Kakar, asked Prof. Taj to shift his focus to teaching peacemaking. By that time Prof. Taj had seen too much of war. He tells of an experience Dr. Kakar had with a wounded soldier in Afghanistan. "Dr. Kakar met a refugee commander who had been wounded there in the front, and then they brought him here for treatment. He asked the officer, 'When you recover, when you get healthy, what are you planning to do?' The refugee commander replied, 'I am willing to go back to the front and take a gun and start fighting again.'" "We think about the fact that now it is twenty years of war in Afghanistan, and those who were born at the beginning of the war are now grown. They are young men and women—maybe they are our students. Most of our students are twenty or twenty-two, and most of them are products of the war." "They are specialists in war and destruction and different types of weapons. When they visit their friends, they talk only of war: How many got killed? Who did the killing? Who was the best fighter? When they come to class, they talk of war; when they go to the bazaar, they talk of war. Let's give them some information about conflict resolution instead." In the summers of 1997 and 1999 Prof. Taj took courses at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. He brought with him a wealth of knowledge about Afghani peacemaking practices. He says, "In our area, they use the elder concept. When there is a problem or a conflict between two tribes or two families, a counselor or elder comes and helps sort out the problem. The elder brings the two sides together, asks questions, and takes all the information. Then the elder decides, and the two sides must accept the decision. "Sometimes if there is some big issue, the elder will take some money or weapons from both sides and put them in a safe place. He says, 'If you do not accept what I have decided, then you will lose the money or weapons.'" Prof. Taj spoke of a crisis when an MCC volunteer teaching at Islamic University came under criticism from some of the students. "In 1998 we faced a big problem in the University. There was some rumor—I don't know if it was a rumor exactly, but it was covered in the newspaper. Some students were accusing the MCC volunteer of teaching Christian religion instead of peacemaking. "When the students read this article and had the backing of some religious person, they said, 'Look here, we also have a Christian teacher. He is coming every day! What is this?' Then some students were very emotional, and they said, 'We won't go to class.' And they locked their classroom. "When we came and the classroom was locked, I said, 'What is happening?' Six students were there and they said the others don't want to continue with the MCCer. I said, 'Did you see or hear or read about Christianity in our program, our books, our literature?' "Then I said, 'What is the problem? You are grown people, you are students, you are in higher education.' But the students said, 'We want to continue, but there are other students who don't want to.'" Prof. Taj worked patiently with the students. A key to resolving the issue was to have two religious scholars review course materials and confirm that they were about peacemaking and not about the Christian faith. "But the suspicion is still there between people because other people don't know about it. When they hear something, they just accept it." I could see that the quiet, patient approach Abdul Ghani Taj used as a professor of agriculture continues to be useful as he now cultivates people committed to peace in Afghanistan. Top
Blessing all people in EgyptRev. Basheer Anwar Nody When I met Rev. Basheer Anwar Nody, he immediately laid out fifteen or twenty photos on the table and began to explain the significance of each occasion represented and to recount the names of the religious leaders who were present. Having spent five years in the Middle East, I recognized in Rev. Nody the readiness to welcome a new friend and the importance of relationships in the community that are common traits in the Arab people I knew. Rev. Nody is pastor of a Coptic Evangelical Orthodox congregation in Cairo. He also works with the Public Relations Department of Coptic Evangelical Orthodox Social Services. His work gives him many opportunities to work with people of both Christian and Muslim faiths. Forgiveness is an important concept for Rev. Nody. "The meaning of forgiveness is that I accept the people and as Jesus lives in me, I love everyone in the world. When I pray for the people as a pastor, I pray for everyone. The pastor's job means he is at the center of the community—if I can help any person, I help him." How does he work in situations of religious conflict? "I think if we use their religion, their religion can teach about how we can use reconciliation and how we can start to talk together. The gap between people is broken. Pray with the people, talk with them, and usually the people like the fact that we talk together. How can we transform that conflict into a solution and a process for the future?" Rev. Nody has a ministry to the whole community when he goes on hospital visits. "When I visit a family that are Christian in the hospital, usually I visit the Muslim families as well. God created everyone and I can help everyone. When I visit in the hospitals, usually I go with somebody that is in the church. I go to the sick person and encourage him: 'God bless you, God bless your house.' They are waiting, they have children. During a bad situation it is good to go to them and encourage them." "I usually go with elders, as leaders in my church because it is very important to do this as a community. Not that the pastor does a good thing, but that the leaders in my congregation do it because in community we can go together. This is very important to me as a pastor. These are the leaders of the future, because if I move to another church or work, the relationships will continue." Thinking about the welcoming spirit displayed in the pictures, I asked Rev. Nody about the meaning of breaking bread together in Egypt. "In Egypt, bread is called 'aysh. And the word 'aysh means 'loving.'" "So when you break bread together it means you are in a good relationship?" "Yes, usually that is a very good meaning between the people. If we eat together, that is an agreement—we are friends and we will meet again. And usually it is when friends want to talk to another friend that we eat together, and we eat 'aysh." Top
Peace Missionaries in East CongoKrista Rigalo and Fidele Lumeya Fidele Lumeya was the first Congolese person to be appointed as a Mennonite Central Committee volunteer. He and Krista Rigalo, his U.S.-born wife, were sent to Bukavu, eastern Congo in 1996 as part of an international team to respond to the refugee crisis resulting from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Krista says, "The Congolese Mennonite church commissioned us to go out and pave the way for the Congolese missionaries who would come later on. So we actually did start a church." Fidele continues: "We had tasks—peace education and reforestation. These two terms were complementary because the forests in eastern Congo were almost destroyed by the presence of the refugees." Krista: "In 1994 MCC helped set up four refugee camps. As time went on in dialogue with the four communities that welcomed the refugees, they identified deforestation as being a problem. The refugees were cutting down seventy tons of firewood a day—that's like five tractor-trailers of firewood each day! It was a big problem. "So the Evangelical Church of the Congo asked MCC to help with a reforestation project. The idea was it was compensation for the local communities that had welcomed the refugees. The communities benefitted from the reforestation, and we also hired people from those communities to work in the nurseries. We produced about a million trees." The project propagated and planted eucalyptus trees, since that was the variety that was cut down for firewood. In the early months of their assignment in 1996, after they had established several eucalyptus nurseries, they were forced to leave Bukavu temporarily by renewed hostilities. When they returned several months later, they were delighted to find that the local workers had continued to water the young plants, keeping the nursery going until the seedlings could be transplanted. Fidele Lumeya grew up as the son of a Mennonite Brethren pastor in Kafumba, the site of a large mission station and hospital. The buildings there were destroyed during the civil war following Congo's independence in 1960. "When I was fifteen I went back because my father wanted us to go back to see where we came from. I was touched by the destruction. I think for me it was something that changed my world view. If there is nothing that we can do to protect what we had as a legacy, everything could be destroyed." The futility of war was crystallized in Lumeya's mind when he observed the destruction and looting that happened in a subsequent civil war in 1991. "We saw that all the town was destroyed and the people lost their jobs. And this began to give me the idea to look for something that I can do to be useful to the people. "When we heard about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, I was an MCC volunteer. The MCC country reps asked us if we could go to Bukavu to work there with a church but also to see how we can be a Mennonite presence there. So it was like my dream became true. This was the beginning of my deep involvement with peace. During that first year there, we tried to understand the genocide and the reasons behind the conflict in this region." MCC had already been working with refugees in the Bukavu region before Rigalo and Lumeya arrived in 1996. "The Mennonites came in and worked with the local church," says Krista. "MCC affirmed them and gave them a chance to articulate their vision. MCC worked alongside them. When local people saw that, there were some people who were really, really excited about the thought that the Mennonites would come back and start a church. So when we came in early 1996, there was a core group of about twenty people already waiting." Fidele adds, "So this is how we started the church—peace was our focal point. Many people were attracted to come to hear the way we were articulating the Bible with peace as a central focus of the message." Church members started other groups in nearby villages, and before long there were five satellite congregations in addition to the mother church in Bukavu city. The church adopted a consensus model of decision-making, and Fidele and Krista offered seminars on peacebuilding each Sunday after worship. Krista Rigalo and Fidele Lumeya are currently studying conflict transformation for a year at Eastern Mennonite University in preparation for another term with MCC as peace missionaries. Top
Popcorn Peacemaking in South RussiaAndrei and Lyudmila Zolotarev Editor's note: Vladikavkaz, North Osetia, is north of the Caucasus Mountains, which separate the district from Georgia and Azerbaijan. About 100 kilometers northeast of Vladikavkaz is Grozny, Chechnya. Vladikavkaz may be called Ordzhonikidze on some maps. When Andrei and Lyudmila Zolotarev arrived in Vladikavkaz, North Osetia, two years ago, they were responding to needs related to ethnic strife in this district of south Russia. There were many tensions between the Osetian and Ingushian ethnic groups. They knew there was a need to build peace in the province. Though they are both from the Ukraine, they speak Russian fluently, and that helped them communicate with both ethnic groups. But they lacked a way to get to know people, to get into their homes and visit naturally with them. MCC Ukraine co-representative Cheryl Shirk had an idea. She wrote to her relatives in Iowa and had them send boxes of popcorn to the Zolotarevs. "We divided these into small boxes and put in the instructions and gave them to some people we knew," says Andrei. "These people sent them to other people. People like to plant and grow popcorn, and some of them have very good harvests. "We learned that some shared their popcorn seeds with people from other ethnic groups. We think that it is like small seeds that help us to make many other connections. "It has helped us to meet other people and families, and they share many stories of what has happened to them. They were very pleased that someone will listen and hear their story." After learning more specifics about the needs of the people in North Osetia, Lyudmila and Andrei attended a workshop in stress management and trauma healing in Moscow. On their return to North Osetia, they met with several school directors and arranged to meet with school children. "We went there to work with the children, to help them to express themselves," says Andrei. "We gave them stress management techniques that helped them to know they have options: They can fight, they can be angry, they can yell, they can ask someone to forgive, they can talk with an adult." The Zolotarevs said it was important that they worked equally with the two Osetian and one Ingushian school in Vladikavkaz. Hatred is so great between the two groups that neither group will attend the school belonging to the other group. Because of the ethnic tensions and fighting in nearby Chechnya, foreigners are suspect, and several have been kidnapped. But the Zolotarevs have not felt personally threatened. "We look like local people," says Lyudmila. "And foreigners do not speak clear Russian like we do." Andrei adds, "We felt very comfortable there." One factor that helps the Zolotarevs feel comfortable in North Osetia is that there are a number of Christians there. They are members of a Baptist church in their native Ukraine, and they are able to worship at a Baptist church in Vladikavkaz, but they keep all the Christians in the district informed of their work. Top
Making peace in the Indigenous way in the PhilippinesManuel Onalan Manuel "Manny" Onalan has been a volunteer since 1986. He is volunteering his life to work for peace and justice in the Philippines. Onalan's eyes and voice convey the urgency of the task and also an engaging invitation to join him in the cause. Onalan is the executive director and sole staff member of the Upland Development Institute, based in Baguio City on the island of Luzon, several hundred kilometers north of Manila. The Institute has three main emphases. In Onalan's words, "The first is community organization and community education—helping the community to get organized and reinforce cohesion so we can deliver education and other services. Second, we do community-based health care. This is to respond to the poor public health situation in our region. Finally, we advocate with congress members and senators for policy changes and policy enactment on issues of the environment and the right of indigenous peoples to their ancestral domains." Onalan speaks of the marginalization of the indigenous population in the Philippines. "Particularly the indigenous peoples are being pushed toward marginalization. When they are marginalized they return to their remote ancestral lands and they depend on natural resources for their survival. So this is our problem, how to interface that sustainable lifestyle to this incoming market economy system. "Most of the forests in the Philippines are being denuded by excessive harvesting and development. But where the indigenous groups are in control of their resources, there are still virgin forests." Onalan speaks with concern about the fact that the Philippine government, dominated as it has been for the past century by the United States, has largely bought into Western ways of addressing conflict through courts and the legal system, at the expense of effective ways of addressing conflict that are embedded in the cultures of the peoples of the Philippines. "You see most of our tribal youngsters go to school and they learn this lawyering, this Western way of lawyering. They also bring home this kind of thinking. So local ways of resolving conflict are being eroded. It's important to reaffirm the experience of hundreds and hundreds of years of settling our own conflicts rather than importing this lawyering that is so commercialized." In traditional conflict resolution in the Philippines, "we have intermarriage as a last resort. For example, if we had a severe conflict—say, one from my family killed your brother—then your son or one of your brother's sons would have the right to marry a daughter from my family. So this is a way of continuously healing the pain. The victim's family is not only being healed, but the offender must also heal his remorse. So the two families or clans would heal together—especially if the new marriage has children. They will be the healers of the prior rift." Onalan described such a marriage that had happened in his region about two years ago. "They have no children yet, but this marriage actually binds the rift between the clans. The new home that was built by this couple is becoming a melting pot for these two families. It has now become a healing place for what happened in the past." He went on to describe the bodong or "peace pact" system that allows tribes to establish promises of good relations between them. He drew on paper a network showing a number of tribes, each with a peace pact between it and all the other tribes. The result is a web of good relationships that can encompass an entire region. "I am of the Chananaw tribe. My tribe has more or less seventy-eight peace pacts, as there are seventy-eight tribes in the region. And these others also have their peace pacts. When there is a dispute between two tribes in the bodong system, a third nearby tribe will come in immediately and say, 'Stop!' Then they will work with the two other tribes, first the one and then the other, to understand the dispute and work toward a solution." Onalan and the Upland Development Institute are working with the national government of the Philippines to recognize the bodong system of conflict resolution. Meeting Manny Onalan gave me a chance to feel the enthusiasm with which he throws himself into his work. Combining village wisdom with Western training, Onalan continues to find ways to empower and support indigenous people in the mountain regions of the Philippines. Top
Balancing Zambian traditional and legal systemsJeston Katongo Jeston Katongo is on the staff of the Mindola Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, Zambia. "It's an African institution that draws participants from all over Africa and beyond. One of the programs is peacebuilding and conflict resolution information. "We are hoping to start by conducting a three-month program starting in August, 1999. We are geared to start a longer course next year. We hope it will be exciting for many people." Katongo will be one of the instructors in the peacebuilding courses. "As a department we have organized a lot of seminars and workshops for other organizations in Zambia. There are a lot of organizations that are requesting this kind of training for their own staffs, so there have been quite a lot of seminars and workshops that have been run for certain organizations." I was interested in how people settle conflicts in Zambia. "What we see now is that the responsibility of settling conflicts has been shifted to legal practitioners. But in our traditional settings, many of the headmen and many of the elders in the village would organize a conference, where the offender and victims plus their relatives are invited to some kind of meeting. In most cases, if it is not at the headman's residence, then there are shelters at the center of the village where the elders meet. "The major business of conflict resolution in that setting is not normally to see the offender being punished. Where this is still being done, I think we are more concerned about mending the relationship that has been broken. But there are cases where the victim may end up demanding certain kinds of compensation. "It is at that meeting where these kinds of issues are heard. And the emphasis is not to break the community but to try to keep it together. That's why many people in the community are invited to listen. The whole thing becomes a learning process. It is a community event because the viewers see that this sort of offense should not happen. Many people come to listen and to make suggestions as to how this sort of thing should be prevented in the future. Katongo indicated that the elders or headmen would make suggestions for how to resolve the conflict. "But they don't think of themselves as being mediators. In a traditional society there is no training for mediators. It is based on your experience as an older person and people think that at your age you should have some wisdom to make a meaningful contribution." I wondered whether this kind of practice is continuing today or diminishing over time. "I would think it is diminishing because the legal system is taking over some of the functions of the traditional elders in the villages. There are certain places where people are still living in that community setup. They are still practicing that type of reconciliation, but it is not as effective as it was before, in my opinion. "When the offender needed to compensate, people use to pay in whatever form they could manage. But now, in most cases, people want money. Therefore, instead of saying, 'You can pay by giving this chicken or goat or something,' they would rather say, 'No, I want to be paid in money.' Therefore they run to the legal system where the judges will say, 'Pay so much money.' So with this kind of dynamic we are seeing the breakup of the traditional family community." How is the agreement formalized? "In most cases there is no written agreement. The witnesses, the family of the victim, and the relatives all come together and drink and eat together. This is to confirm that they have done away with this case. So that if any of the parties goes around and starts the same thing, it also becomes a sort of embarrassment because everyone will say, 'Look, we have come together and everybody forgot about it.' "In most cases, people do not revert back to that kind of behavior anymore. When one commits an offense in the village, it's almost like the entire family or the entire community becomes ashamed of what someone has done. So to make sure they come to the original setting they have to mix and drink together so that the offender is being brought back into the community—being restored by the community." The Foundation is thinking of ways to integrate traditional conflict resolution practices into their courses. "One of the courses that we plan to introduce is restorative justice. Of course, there are a lot of principles that go with that kind of justice in the North American context. We want to draw from the traditional setting. We are trying to say, in fact, that restorative justice is not a new concept, because it is something people have lived with for ages. "I think we should go deeper into the grass routes, to the people in the villages to make them understand that in fact what we are talking about in restorative justice is the same thing that used to go on so they don't think that now it is a new thing that is coming in. And the challenge I think is how to balance the legal system with restorative justice because the legal system which has been controlled by states is so powerful, as again is restorative justice." Katongo also spoke of the challenge of adapting traditional ways of restoring relationship to settings in the city where the social fabric of village community no longer exists. And with seventy-three tribes in Zambia—to say nothing of the variety of other countries and cultures from which their students come—the Mindola Ecumenical Foundation also grapples with teaching practices that will be appropriate in a wide variety of cultural milieus. Top
Healing bodies and churches in SudanDr. Priscilla Kuch Priscilla Kuch is a medical doctor, on the teaching faculty of the University of Khartoum. She is also a peace worker and an active committee member with the Sudan Council of Churches. Between 1987 and 1994 Dr. Kuch was a staff member of the Council of Churches. She worked as a pastor for the displaced and established a housing program for displaced persons. The backdrop for this work is the civil war in the Sudan, which has been devastating the country since 1983. Currently Dr. Kuch is a member of the peace and justice committee of the Sudan Council of Churches and is involved in peace advocacy through that committee. She is also one of twelve women on the executive committee of the Southern Women's Group, another group that is active in mobilizing Sudanese people for peace. One thing Dr. Kuch discovered on reflecting on her experience in Sudan at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute is that "we do not have a peace process in place in Sudan. What we have is only a high level of appreciation plus peacebuilding activities at the grass-roots level, but there is no relationship at all between those activities and academics and leadership. We couldn't identify any connections. "Now I'm going home and I have a different way of thinking. My goal will be to find the critical groups who are interested in peacemaking, and try to find a link between all those groups. "I also learned how to design training and I have a skeleton outline for a training manual. Maybe this happened because I came with an agenda and I said this is what I am going to look for." I asked Dr. Kuch how conflict is dealt with in Sudan. "People live as communities and therefore they exist because they are part of the community and the community exists because they are part of it. In terms of conflicts and disputes the restoration of relationship is what is important. Like if I have a dispute with you, it would not end up with just the two of us. It would involve my relatives, your relatives, and our friends. Someone will have to bring the conflict to an end. People who are older than us would be charged with this responsibility. "They would talk to both sides separately at first so you can express yourself the way you want to and I can do it the way I want. "If we are of the same age and the same gender, we can be brought together to confront each other in front of a few people so that we can say, 'Yes, this was not the story and that was the story.' "But a younger person cannot confront an elder person and a woman cannot confront a man. Therefore if we happen to have different ages, or are of different genders, the discussions will finish separately. They will be talking to you and him and usually it sounds okay—this thing has happened, and there is nobody who is guilty, and everybody has the truth. This is how you feel and now you have to forget about it. People have to go on living together and therefore you move out of it. And when it is finished, then they do some rituals to fix it. "For example, if someone has sworn, they are 'eating calabash.' And people can sprinkle water on both of you or pour it on your feet. If it is a serious issue, one of your friends or a family member would have to offer a lamb to be sacrificed. People would say to the lamb, 'You now know that this thing is over, and you tell our God and our ancestors that this dispute is over. You are here to unite us together.' And after that people see that the matter is finished." I asked Dr. Kuch what kinds of disputes are settled in this traditional way in Sudan. She gave the example of a dispute between two Christian tribes that was handled in this way. "They are Christian tribes, but when it comes to social issues, we always fall back on the tradition." She reflected on the ways Sudan has been trying to end the civil war: "Maybe we have not been looking toward ourselves enough. We are looking outward and trying to borrow things from others, and maybe this is part of the reason why we are still fighting. The outside ways do not make sense to us. It's people sitting at a table, it's treaties, it's written documentation. But in our tradition nobody writes anything, you don't sign documents, people like to agree and celebrate and that's it. Maybe we are using the wrong methodology to solve the problem. We should be looking more within." Dr. Kuch gave me another example of her involvement in peacemaking. "There was a split in the church I am part of, the Episcopal Church of Sudan. We ended up having two archbishops because of the conflict in the church. There were a group of us who were saying, 'Okay, it doesn't work that way. We have to find a common ground to do it.' So we had all the women working together and saying, 'Okay, we are not part of the church hierarchy and we don't need the church hierarchy, and we can work together.'" "So you brought women together from both groups?" "Yes, and we worked for two years. Somehow one of the archbishops died, and the whole thing just finished like that." "So the people on the side where the archbishop died, were they willing to reach out to the other group?" "What happened was that after that we made use of the situation and said, 'Okay, God has made his decision. We are not going to create another archbishop, and therefore what we should do is all of us should be willing to come together and have a discussion of how we can help all those pastors and bishops to come together. We talked to them separately until we all came together, but it took a long time. It was the most difficult situation I have ever been in." The initiative to bring the two groups together started with groups of women from both sides. But the story has not been written up in Sudan. Why not? "I think because in our communities it's not part of our culture to talk about the good things you have done." Top
Teaching math and peace in Serbia
Marijana Ajzenkol So Marijana Ajzenkol is in a good position to work with an interreligious nongovernmental organization in Yugoslavia. And that is exactly what she is planning to do. Ajzenkol is a high-school mathematics teacher in Belgrade. But she has devoted many hours of her own time in the last several years to peacebuilding activities. Before coming to the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, Ajzenkol worked for the Center for Strategic International Studies on a project in Belgrade. "It was a conflict resolution training program for religious people, lay people and clergy. I organized meetings and seminars and interfaith dialogues between Muslims and Christians. A couple of days before the NATO bombing, I was also in the process of registering the first interreligious NGO in Yugoslavia." I asked about her ethnic background. "My father is Croat, my mother is Serb." "What is it like for you to be part Croat and part Serb? Has this created difficulties for you as a person?" "No, I am proud of it and when I am asked who I am, I say one-half is Serb and one-half is Croat. Truly I am sorry that I must explain because it was much easier when we were living in Yugoslavia together before the changes. It was easier. All of us were loving each other and nobody cared." I asked how she developed the vision for the interreligious center. "I am not educated for doing this, but I got a blessing from the Serbian archbishop. He gave me the blessing and recommended me to continue to work with him because I said I would like it if faith could re-establish a system of values in a society that I felt was going down somehow. Basically what I did was relationship building. I have been working at this for three years." When asked how the NATO bombing would affect her work, Ajzenkol replied, "I want to have hope and certainly wish that I will be able to continue the work, because I think that it is very important. Just three days before the bombing I received word that I had funds to organize a meeting in the Sandrik region, which is a region between Kosovo and central Serbia that has a Muslim majority. I hope I will be able to do this when I return, but I cannot say that I will be able." What has she learned at the Summer Peacebuilding Institute that might be helpful in her work? "When I was in Yugoslavia I felt a little bit insecure because I was not educated in this. But coming here I have a little bit more education. I have more skills. And I got an answer to the question, How come people always came to my invitation? Why did they somehow listen to me? "I realized that there is just one rule that could help you. There is not a theory about reconciliation, there is just one simple question: Care for people. I really do care for people and I do love the people in Yugoslavia. I don't have any prejudice among people, whether it be religion, gender, education, or whatever. And I think that maybe that is the best skill you can have—to be sensitive enough to feel their needs, to care a little bit more. I know what they like to eat, who has what disease, what they don't like, and what they care about." Top |
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