The candlelight of peace
David Zarembka describes the work being done to bring sides together
I was raised in St Louis, Missouri, and my parents would take us on one-day trips to the large limestone caves in the Ozark Mountains, Meramec Caverns and Onondaga Cave. We would take a guided tour and, once we reached a large cavern inside, the guide would switch off the electric lights. It would be so dark that I couldn’t even see my hand an inch away from my eyeball. Then the guide would strike a match and light a candle. The whole cavern would light up. I was amazed at how much light one small candle could give out.
This is the witness of Quakers during the darkness, the fog of war and violence. Our candlelight, which says there is a better way, that ‘war is not the answer’ (the slogan of the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington DC), that peacemaking is preferable, that the death and destruction of war is not the beloved community of God, must illuminate the world during times of darkness.
An inspiration
Do you know who Richard Gush is? If you attend Central and Southern Africa Yearly Meeting you will hear the Richard Gush Memorial Lecture. In 1820 he migrated from England to South Africa and on his way picked up some Quaker tracts at London Yearly Meeting. In due time he decided that he was a Quaker, learning from the tracts but living as a ‘lone Quaker’. He has a footnote in history when, during the Sixth Frontier War (1834-5), he walked unarmed between the village of Salem and the assembled Xhosa warriors and persuaded them not to attack. We have no idea how many lives he saved by this action. This story has always been an inspiration to me on what one committed Quaker can do.
Peacemaking
Those experts who count the wars tell us that the number of wars and the number of people killed in wars is declining. I hope they are right but, living in the middle of the region of the world with the most wars and conflicts, East and Central Africa, it is sometimes hard for me to see the progress. As the coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams, I am committed to grassroots peacebuilding at the local level – an approach that is given much positive lip service, but in fact has few practitioners.
I also reason that peacemaking is not an individual effort, but a community and world community effort. Therefore, I see my task as coordinating the people, ideas, funding, organisation, publicity and evaluation to see that peacebuilding work occurs. Our most important result to date has been the development of the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) programme, which brings together neighbours, an equal number from both sides, who have survived deadly conflict. The Rwandan and Burundian Quakers, modelling the programme on the Alternative to Violence Project (AVP), which AGLI had introduced in the region, developed the HROC program to meet the needs of the traumatised people of their countries.
While many peacemakers are searching for the ‘magic bullet’ that will end a violent conflict, I see success at the micro-level. When we do a HROC workshop and a man decides to stop beating his wife and children, or two deadly enemies reconcile, or healing between individuals and war-torn societies occur, I figure that we are accomplishing what we, as children of God, are called to do. Presently HROC programmes are in Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo (North Kivu) and Kenya. We are hoping that it will expand to other countries: Uganda, Nigeria, the United States, Northern Ireland and even England. In June 2012 there will be an international training seminar in New York and, in August, another one in Rwanda.
Preventing violence
One great shortcoming concerning the Peace Testimony is our failure to act until violence and war have already ignited. We need to be more proactive so that we prevent violence rather than react to it. As an example, AGLI and the Friends Church Peace Teams (Kenya) are working in Kenya with young people in Turbo Division, which was hard hit by the 2008 post-election violence. To prevent further violence during the 2012 election, we have already held about sixty AVP workshops with more than 1,500 youths, some of whom admit they participated in the previous violence. We will train some of them to be election observers and citizen reporters for a text message call-in centre we will develop. We aim to have a violence-free election in Turbo Division.
A last commitment I have is to continue with the same people as they develop and change. Peacework is a long-term endeavour, taking generations. The common practice of a one– to three-year project that will then become ‘self-supporting’ is, in the end, counterproductive. A Kirundi (the language of Burundi) proverb says: ‘A real friend comes in the time of need.’ AGLI is now in its twelfth year working with Quakers in the region and we intend to continue working with them.
Dedication
The work I do is very gratifying. The Africans I work with, mostly young people, are an inspiration because of their dedication to making their society peaceful. Our work with not only the victims of violence but also with the perpetrators of violence – and I have learned that these two categories are mostly labels as everyone is usually a victim – is important. I am blessed to be a part of these efforts.
David is coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams. He is the author of A Peace of Africa: Reflections on Life in the Great Lakes Region (see www.davidzarembka.com).
For further information on international training contact: dave@aglifpt.org}
For more information on HROC see: www.aglifpt.org/Program/hroc.htm
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