Peacebuilder Fall 2008 - Alumni Magazine of EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY

Fall/Winter 2008

CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND PEACEBUILDING

Our Man in Sierra LeonePlus: Kenya at Crossroads

Alumni in Kenya Provide InspirationLast June I had the opportunity to visit Kenya – the subject of pages 12 through 21 – to meet with alumni of the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) and with partner organizations. I also participated in program review and in discussions of additional initiatives on behalf of building a just and sustain-able peace in Kenya, Sudan and Somaliland.

It was inspiring to listen to the stories of the work being done by our alumni and by the organizations in which they often play leadership roles. Their expressions of appreciation for EMU and for the programs they attended here reinforced my own commitment to continue the tradition of excellence estab-lished by CJP. Many voiced a desire to replicate our programs on their own soil, an aspiration that CJP supports.

Our alumni would like to see CJP provide more training in organizational leadership for those who now occupy leadership positions where they must juggle personnel, budgeting, strate-gic planning, and outreach responsibilities for their organiza-tions. They must also find ways of handling conflict within their own settings and of working productively with other groups.

Last, but not least, our alumni value the help CJP gave them in recognizing that self-care is vital, that allowing oneself to “burn-out” helps nobody in the end. CJP has designated “worker care and resilience” as one of its three strategic priorities, in addition to capacity-building, as can be seen in Sierra Leone (pages 8-11), and continuing the CJP leadership role in the peacebuilding field, as seen in Coming to the Table (pages 2-4).

We welcome 2009 and hope you feel the same. We hope that you are inspired by the CJP people represented in this Peace-builder. We are grateful for your support and partnership.

Lynn RothExecutive Director

Lynn Roth

peacebuilder ■ 1emu.edu/cjp

PEACEBUILDER is published by the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) at Eastern Mennonite University, with the collaboration of the Development Office: Kirk L. Shisler, vice president for advancement; Phil Helmuth, executive director of development; Phoebe Kilby, CJP associate director of development.

Loren E. SwartzendruberPresident

Lee F. SnyderInterim Provost

Lynn RothCJP Executive Director

Jacqueline J. BeuthinDavid R. BrubakerJanice M. JennerNancy Good SiderSue Williams CJP Leadership Team Members

Bonnie Price LoftonEditor/Writer

Jon StyerDesigner/Photographer

For more informationor address changes, contact:Center for Justice and PeacebuildingEastern Mennonite University1200 Park RoadHarrisonburg, VA 22802

[email protected](540) 432-4000www.emu.edu/cjp

Contents ©2008 Eastern Mennonite University. Requests for permission to reprint are welcomed and may be addressed to Bonnie Price Lofton at [email protected].

Cover photo Robert Roche. Story on page 11. Photo by Jon Styer.

Printed on recycled paper.The Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) is rooted in the Mennonite peace tradition of Christianity. CJP prepares and supports individuals and institutions of diverse religious and philosophical backgrounds in the creation of a just and peaceful world. CJP is based at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and offers a masters-level degree and certificate, as well as non-degree training through its Summer Peacebuilding Institute and its Practice and Training Institute. The latter also offers expert consultancy. Donations to CJP are tax-deductible and support the program, the university that houses it, scholarships for peace and justice students, and other essentials. Visit www.emu.edu/cjp for more information.

EASTERN MENNONITE UNIVERSITY

Fall/Winter 2008

CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND PEACEBUILDING

‘No’ to Cycle of Vengeance

Despite Murder of Daughters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

New Leadership at Helm of SPI

Sue Williams Brings Vast Experience. . . . . . . . . 5

Path to Healing In War-Torn Sierra Leone

Robert Roche Suited to Fambul Tok . . . . . . . . . 8

Kenyan Peacebuilders Show Way Out of Election Violence

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

CJP People Took Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Towards Understanding the Violence . . . . . . 17

What Future for Kenya? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Students Note Role of Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

EMU-Linked Folks in Kenya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Barry Hart

As a Local and Global Leader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2

5

8

14

12

XX-COC-XXXX

2 ■ peacebuilder fall/winter 2008

‘No’ to Cycleof VengeanceDespite Murder of Daughters

By Thomas Norman DeWolf

I was awed and humbled by my 2008 Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) session at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) where I met, studied, and reflected with students from 46 countries. I spent most of my week with a group of people who share a unique connection to historic slavery in the United States. Almost all of us are descended from the enslaved, the enslavers, and the slave traders; all are committed to confronting, and helping, people – ourselves and others – heal from the legacy of slavery.

In this special SPI session, called Coming to the Table, I joined 15 others to consider and mourn the lingering damage we have inherited – collectively and individually – as a result of slavery. We also explored potential paths toward healing. It wasn’t my first Coming to the Table experience. My first was in January 2006, where I first met white and black descendants of Thomas Jef-ferson and other families connected to historic slavery. One of the Jefferson descendants was David Works, whose love and transpar-ency was evident even then.

It was more palpable this time, because David had recently experienced severe trauma and was clearly on a healing journey. On December 9, 2007 – just six months before coming to SPI – David’s family was leaving their New Life Church in Colorado Springs when a 24-year-old man went on a rampage and began shooting people in the church parking lot. David and his wife Marie lost two beloved daughters – 18-year-old Stephanie and 16-year-old Rachel – in this attack. David was also shot twice by the gunman.

David shared with us that he didn’t know that Stephanie had been shot and died until he was in the recovery room after his own surgery. Later that night while in the ICU he learned that Rachel had succumbed to her wounds. “As a father and as a Christian, I was trying to sort this through in my mind and my heart,” David said. “I remembered the snail image of the victim-oppressor cycle (a trauma-healing graphic that was introduced at our 2006 Coming to the Table session), and I told myself: ‘I can choose to lose my mind and go down the path of anger and retribution, or I can use the tools I’ve been given and my theology to find something good in this, to break the cycle. I can use this to teach the rest of my family.’ It will not honor Stephanie and Rachel to be angry and bitter about this.” *

David said the grief his family members are experiencing is messy, unpredictable, and may never go away. It is unique to each individual. Yet David, Marie, and their two remaining daughters

– 19-year-old Laurie (Stephanie’s twin) and 12-year-old Grace – chose not to go to a place of vengefulness.

Less than a month after the shooting, David and Marie agreed

PHOTO By Jon Styer

David Works and two of his daughters were shot last year while leaving church.


to meet with the Murrays, the parents of the young man, Matthew Murray, who killed their daughters and injured David. In a pastor’s office at the New Life Church where the shootings occurred, the four parents hugged and cried together. Earlier the Murrays had met with the families of two other victims of Mat-thew’s shootings at another church site. Afterward the Murrays is-sued a statement: “Thanks to God, these remarkable families and their pastors and churches, healing and reconciliation have begun.”

As David showed us by his example, a key component to heal-ing is understanding trauma and its potentially infinite, destruc-tive cycles. Natural responses to trauma include reacting with aggression and/or feeling like a victim. The “survivor/victim” response can result in a cycle of physiological changes. Instinc-tual reactions include fight, flight or freeze. We feel shock, injury, denial, anxiety, and fear.

The “aggressor/enemy” response can result from seeing one’s self as victimized. We may feel shame and humiliation. We can develop a good-versus-evil narrative and dehumanize and demon-ize the enemy. If I eliminate the human qualities of those who harmed me, revenge is easier.

We may justify using violence and see it as redemptive. We may decide to pursue our own needs, even at the expense of others. There may be social and cultural pressures to do so. We act in self-defense and believe we are restoring honor and justice.

Vengeance creates more victims. People move easily between the “survivor/victim” and “aggressor/enemy” cycles, creating one giant, vicious, circle-eight cycle – the sign for infinity.

Healing and reconciliation require us to break out of these cycles and pursue a different path. The path to reconciliation – ei-ther individually or as a community – includes truth-telling (fac-ing all the facts within their historical context and considering the impact on, and feelings of, both victims and victimizers), justice (acknowledging the harm and taking action – agreed upon by the victims and the victimizers – to repair it), compassion (accepting one’s self, having empathy for “the other,” and forgiveness), and peace (relationship-building, communication, understanding).

As if hearing David Works’ story were not enough, I heard a second story at EMU last summer that provided another living example of the ability of people to experience ultimate harm and grief and to choose grace and forgiveness on their path to survival and healing.

PHOTO courtesy of David and Marie Works

The Works family in January 2006: (from left) Rachel, 14; Grace, 9; Laurie, 16; parents David and Marie; Stephanie, 16. “We think of

ourselves as a missionary family,” says David. “We thought we would be together doing missionary work for the rest of our lives, but that wasn’t God’s path. I’ve come to appreciate the mystery of

God, and part of that mystery is this thing called suffering.”

Angelina Atyam from Uganda spoke at a luncheon about the kidnapping of her 14-year-old daughter, Charlotte, by the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel guerrilla army fighting against Uganda’s government. During her nearly eight years in captivity, the daughter gave birth to two children fathered by her cap-tor. During this period, Angelina visited the mother of the rebel commander holding her daughter, came to understand that this mother had lost many members of her family too, and extended her hand in friendship and forgiveness. Now that Charlotte is free, Angelina is focusing on caring for her grandchildren and helping her daughter to resume her education.

At Coming to the Table, we recognized the challenge of com-prehending collective trauma (such as the holocaust of WWII or the transatlantic slave trade) because the magnitude is on such a large scale. Getting a handle on healing from such large-scale trauma can feel overwhelming and unlikely. Yet we participants in Coming to the Table were committed to using the model of facili-tated dialogue, study, and reflective encounter to bring together people who are normally isolated from each other. Coming to the

“I can choose to lose my mind and go down the path of anger

and retribution, or I can use the tools I’ve been given and my

theology to find something good in this, to break the cycle.”


PHOTO By Howard Zehr

David Works and Shay Banks-Young are descendants of Thomas Jefferson who have participated in two Coming to the Table events. For more information about

Coming to the Table, visit www.emu.edu/cjp/comingtothetable, or contact program director Amy Potter at [email protected] or (540) 432-4687.

Table is an effort to identify the harms of slavery and its aftermath and work toward healing.

As for other summer classes taking place at the same time as Coming to the Table, I had heard that EMU has international ap-peal, but I figured that meant a small percentage of students come from outside the United States. One morning at a “gathering cel-ebration” where all 105 of us students joined together for breakfast and announcements before beginning our various classes, each of us stood and shared our name and where we are from. I wrote down as many countries as I could. I didn’t catch them all. If you can resist the inclination to skip through the list in the next paragraph and actually read the names of each country you’ll get a sense of just what an international gathering this truly was.

In addition to people from 14 states in the United States, my fellow students were here in Virginia from their homes in Jordan, Iraq, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Italy, Ukraine, Iran, Scotland, Belgium, Palestine, Indonesia, Philippines, Nepal, India, Uganda, Somaliland, Pakistan, Vietnam, Burma/Myanmar, Malaysia, Si-erra Leone, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Canada, Rwanda, Fiji, Zimba-bwe, Ecuador, Chile, England, Ghana, Cambodia, Haiti, Kenya, Zambia, South Korea, Uganda, Congo, Netherlands, Tanzania, Liberia, and Ireland.

At EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute, all are dedicated to serving others with an emphasis on peace and non-violence. Stu-dents come to learn and to share, exchanging wisdom and energy.

I was, and remain, in awe. I am grateful to have been part of this transformative learning experience. ■

Thomas Norman DeWolf is the author of Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History (Beacon Press, 2008), a book about his family’s quest to face the true history of their ancestors and the founding of the United States. DeWolf and several of his cousins now

tour the country speaking about our nation’s desperate need for honest dialogue and healing. For more information visit www.inheritingthetrade.com. DeWolf also participated in the making of the documentary “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” which first aired on PBS in June, 2008. For more information visit www.tracesofthetrade.org.

*David and Marie Works have written a book about their experience – Gone in a Heartbeat: Our Daughters Died…Our Faith Endures – due to be released by Focus on the Family/Tyndale House on January 13, 2009. Watch for times and places for book signings, including at EMU.

David said the grief his family members are experiencing is messy, unpredictable, and may never go away.


New Leadership at Helm of SPIPat Hostetter Martin Retires

A leadership change has occurred at EMU’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI), with long-time director Pat Hostetter Martin retiring. Her replacement, Sue Williams, moved to Harrisonburg in the early fall from her previous base in the United Kingdom.

CJP director Lynn Roth had warm words of praise for Martin’s years of service – not just for her 11 years at EMU but also for her 18 years of service with Mennonite Central Committee, focused upon East Asia. “Pat’s commitment, passion, vision, hope and wisdom have been inspiring to people throughout the world,” said Roth.

PHOTO by Jon Styer

New SPI director Sue Williams with her predecessor Pat Hostetter Martin

In announcing Sue Williams’ appointment, Lynn Roth empha-sized the wealth of experience she brings to EMU. “Sue comes to this position with approximately 25 years of experience in the conflict transformation field. Since 2000 she has been working as an independent consultant, assisting and training in conflict analysis, management, prevention of escalation, program design, strategic reviews and evaluation of projects. She has done this in countries including Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Gua-temala, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Myanmar.”

Like Martin, Williams has spent her entire adult life working in some way to increase peace in the world. Both women worked in tandem with their husbands for much of their professional lives. Williams is no longer able to do so – her husband, Steve, died of a heart attack last December just after returning from a consulta-tion in Cyprus and re-joining his wife at their home in Milton Keynes, England. She had just returned home from a consulta-tion in Rwanda. Sue Williams’ move to SPI is part of her journey toward living and working without her husband to whom she was married for 26 years.


RETIREEPat Hostetter Martin

Work ExperienceAt age 23, Martin joined Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to work in Vietnam. She was assigned to work in Quang Ngai City in central Vietnam where there was heavy U.S. bombing and many refugees. Martin and other volunteers offered medical care, food aid, material assistance and vocational classes to internally displaced people.

In 1968, Pat married Earl Martin, also a Mennonite worker in Vietnam. They finished their three-year term together, returned to the United States for further schooling, and then went back to Quang Ngai province for two years until the end of the war in 1975.

The Martins spent most of the 1980s and early 1990s working for MCC, includ-ing a three-and-a-half-year stint in the Philippines and nine years as co-secretaries for MCC’s East Asia program.

From the late 1990s to the present, Martin has studied and worked at EMU, playing a leadership role in SPI for 11 years.

Outstanding Personal QualitiesOpen-door hospitality and egalitarian-community living, as these examples show:

(1) From 1997 to the present, Pat and Earl have shared their home with close to 100 people from dozens of backgrounds and multiple religions. They have celebrat-ed the marriages of three of these residents, plus the births of four of them. And they have hosted weekly community meals.

(2) Both Martins have been key play-ers in the founding of Crossing Creeks, a therapeutic rural community near EMU where persons with persistent mental illness live, play and work together with staff and volunteers in a mutual search for well-being.

One (of Many) Challenges FacedIn 1975, the Martins were parents of two children, aged 1 and 3. A book by Earl, Reaching the Other Side, graphically describes his decision to stay behind during the chaos of the Communists’ take-over of South Vietnam, while the U.S. and their proxies fled. In an effort to protect their children, Pat took them aboard one

of the last evacuation flights from their province. After almost five months of separation, the Martins re-united in Lagos, Nigeria, where Pat’s parents, B. Charles and Grace Hostetter, were living. (In 1993, Pat and Earl returned to Vietnam, spending six months as MCC’s interim country representatives and living in the northern part for the first time.)

EnjoymentsTime to play with her 3-year-old granddaughter, Sophia. Swimming, hiking and bicycle riding. Reading, almost a book a week. Writing: she and Earl hope to write a book with son Hans.

Church AffiliationShalom Mennonite Congregation in Harrisonburg, Virginia

EducationBA, social work, Goshen College, Indiana.Grad certificate, occupational therapy, San

Jose State University, California. MA in conflict transformation, EMU.

Strengths Given To SPICo-workers Bill Goldberg and Valerie Helbert have written: “Many are the times when we have seen Pat, in the middle of an important project with a deadline, stop what she was doing and devote as much time as was needed to someone who came

into the office to talk. It didn’t matter if the person had an important matter or was discussing the day’s events. Pat gave the person her full attention for as long as was needed to send the person on their way feeling heard and understood and in better spirits. We see this as one of her most important assets, and the one that we will strive to maintain at SPI.”

Memorable Quotes“I believe we are all called to be passionately who we are. I have spent my life trying to share who I am with other people, while trying to understand what they do and how and why they believe as they do. Of course, I have been changed by the people I’ve met, and I suppose some have been changed by meeting me.”

“I have come to believe there are many ways of experiencing God and of seeing God at work in this world, and I have come to respect them all. The most important lesson that Jesus gave us was the primacy of love, and that is how I try to live my faith now – through expressing love and receiving it from others, regardless of their religious or social backgrounds.”

A student asked Martin how healing happens in healthy families. She replied, “I don’t know, but I know it happens around food.”

PHOTOS By Jon Styer

Pat Hostetter Martin, with husband Earl, before the home they have shared with hundreds


NEw DIREcToRSue Williams

Work ExperienceToo vast to list in full here, but highlights include:

■ Special consultant to Folke Berna-dotte Academy in Sweden where she has been a trainer in political mediation and dialogue for the mediation support unit of the United Nations’ Department of Politi-cal Affairs.

■ Director of the policy and evalua-tion unit of INCORE at the University of Ulster and United Nations University in Northern Ireland.

■ Five and a half years in key roles in the organization Responding to Conflict in the United Kingdom.

■ Ten years with Quaker Peace and Service, including two in Uganda during its civil war during the 1980s and a year in regional reconciliation work in Burundi, Kenya and other locations in East Africa.

About three decades ago, Williams was a librarian in Roanoke, Virginia, when she met her future husband while both were working to found a local peace center. Af-ter marrying in 1981, they joined Brethren Volunteer Service and moved to Haiti to work with street children. Thus began their lives in the service of victims of structural and other kinds of violence.

Outstanding Personal QualitiesRemains functional when the going gets tough. Tested and tempered by living and working in war zones, amid the nightmare of killings and dead bodies. Understands

“survivor guilt,” after seeing many good people, including close colleagues, killed. Has chosen the path of non-violence, even when others around her were hiring armed guards or picking up arms themselves. Sue and Steve Williams long ago decided, “If we’re going to get killed, we might as well get killed doing something we believe in.”

One (of Many) Challenges Faced“I was at a (Quaker) meeting in Oxford, England, when someone spoke about the biblical verse ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’(Matthew 5:8). I felt kicked in the stomach. You can’t be pure after the things I’ve seen.” One of the worst periods of “defilement” for Williams was

1984-87 and again in 1990-91, when she and her husband were trying to support peacebuilders in Uganda while 100,000 people were being killed, sometimes right outside the doors of their unguarded home. And then there was Rwanda and Burundi…

“All the war zones have come back to me in nightmares. The bodies in the streets. The tastes and the smells of it. It stays with you for years.”

EnjoymentsSwimming and walking. Calisthenics in hotel rooms, when swimming and walking are not options. Prayer/meditation. Humor. Playing guitar. Weaving and gardening – “doing something constructive amid destruction.” Keeping a journal. “But I don’t do any of these things particularly well or regularly enough.”

Church AffiliationReligious Society of Friends (Quakers)

EducationBA and MA, both degrees in French and politics, from Brown University in Rhode Island

Strengths To Offer SPIUnderstanding the impact of violence and trauma on one’s psyche and ability to function as a peacebuilder. Also vast on-the-ground experience and lessons to offer,

some of them contained in a monograph she co-authored, Working With Conflict: Skills and Strategies for Action (Zed Books, 2000), now circulating in 14 languages.

Memorable Quotes“My work can be likened to pollination. I have worked in 40 or 50 countries, and each time I try to bring people examples of what has been done successfully or unsuccessfully elsewhere. Actually, it’s much harder to learn from success than from failure. If something failed, then obviously something has to change. But that doesn’t mean we should throw it all out; we should just decide what needs changing. This kind of cross-pollination can, with luck, open up possibilities that have not been considered before.”

“I will sit and talk with anyone. Ex-combatants are at least straight forward

– they have an energy you can do something with. They are passionate about their country. You don’t want to throw that away. I find them easier to deal with than, for example, people in war entirely for their own greed

– such as narco-, diamond- or human-traffickers – who display no human interest in their country. But even they need to be at the table. I’m not trying to convert people, to make them share my values. They do not have to be converted for us to negotiate a way to have peace.” ■

Sue Williams has been tested and tempered in war zones.


Path to Healing In War-Torn Sierra LeoneBy Elisabeth Hoffman

On a warm late-March evening, two young Sierra Leonean men gathered at a village bonfire, surrounded by family members, elders, and neighbors. Once close friends, Sahr and Nyumah had been torn apart while in their teens by Sierra Leone’s 11-year civil war. One boy was forced by rebel soldiers to brutally beat and maim his friend. The two came face to face that night. One man testified about his suffering; the other admitted his guilt and begged for forgiveness – which, in an astonishing act of grace,

was freely given. The village sang and danced in celebration.Sahr and Nyumah are not alone. Part of a groundbreaking

new national initiative called Fambul Tok (Krio for Family Talk), similar acts of truth-telling and reconciliation are taking place between victims and offenders in villages across Sierra Leone.

Sahr and Nyumah’s experience – and the experiences of others like them – illustrates the ways in which “thinking small” may be the key to acting big. That is, working at the smallest possible level – the individual and the social unit closest to the individual, the village – may be the key to building a sustainable national peace in war-devastated nations in Africa.

Launch of Fambul TokThe foundation I head, Catalyst for Peace, aims to forward peacebuilding by helping conflict-ridden areas draw on their local resources and culture to build peace. We are partnering with Forum of Conscience, a Sierra Leonean NGO headed by John Caulker, in designing and implementing Fambul Tok. Caulker, who fled his home and lost his mother during the war in Sierra

Dancers from the village of Kongonanie in Sierra Leone wait to participate in a welcome ceremony prior to the bonfire that will take place that night, as part of Fambul Tok’s grass-roots reconciliation program.

PHOTOS By Sara Terry, courtesy of Catalyst for Peace


Women in Kongonanie prepare a feast for the community, the day after a truth-telling and forgiveness bonfire.

Leone, spent well over a decade as a courageous voice for human rights during the war years. He has been a committed activist in the rebuilding process, giving voice to those who suffered most during the war.

When I first met Caulker last summer, he was at a point of utter frustration with the postwar reconstruction in his country. Having lobbied earlier for the creation of the Truth and Recon-ciliation Commission in Sierra Leone, he was disappointed with how little actual reconciliation it accomplished in the end. He felt the Commission had largely conducted its work in the country’s political centers, and used processes that made it difficult for many Sierra Leoneans to participate.

He also questioned the impact of the UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone, which has spent more than $300 million to try the nine men held most responsible for the war. “The people of my country live on less than a dollar a day, yet hundreds of mil-lions are being spent on trials that will not make any difference at all to the average person,” said Caulker.

In an effort to help heal the lives of the average person, Caulker and I began to work together to shape his vision for a communi-ty-based reconciliation process, which evolved into the program now known as Fambul Tok. The heart of the Fambul Tok process involves community members gathering around a bonfire and talking, as they did long ago. Victims and offenders have the op-portunity to come forward and tell their stories. They can ask for forgiveness or offer forgiveness, as they choose.

The next day a “cleansing ceremony” – often involving ap-peasing the ancestors – is held at a site that holds special, often sacred, significance for the locals, such as a particular rock, tree, or dwelling. Often a fowl or goat is killed during this ceremony. Almost all communities in Sierra Leone have such commonly recognized places and rituals, yet the process of using them was also a casualty of the war.

Finally, the community designates a “peace tree” surrounded by a seating area to serve as a permanent meeting place to resolve conflicts using the principles of Fambul Tok. It also serves as the site of a radio “listening club.” Battery-operated radios are pro-vided for people to listen together to a half-hour weekly broadcast of locally recorded Fambul Tok stories. The Fambul Tok theme song, played on the radio broadcast, is already sung through much of Sierra Leone.

Some communities have gone on to develop other joint projects, such as community farms where everyone pitches in, or soccer events for the children.

Emergent Design The rapid development of Fambul Tok (work only began on the ground in December of 2007) is due to several factors, one of which is the unique partnership Catalyst for Peace and Forum of Conscience have forged. In our early conversations, Caulker and I realized that implementing his vision of community-based reconciliation in Sierra Leone would likely require a robust collaboration – an unusual relationship between a “funder” and a

“recipient” in peacebuilding.

I myself was a peacebuilding practitioner for 15 years before making a transition to the funding side in 2003 as the founder and president of Catalyst for Peace. I didn’t want to step away from direct involvement in the practice side. I recognized that, with Fambul Tok, actively bringing my peacebuilding sensibilities and grounding in the field could contribute to Caulker’s skills, while tapping into his established credibility and network of rela-tionships. It could lead to a nationally transformative process.

At Catalyst we don’t simply read grant proposals, issue funds, and read the reports sent back by those we fund. We participate in project design and implementation, go into the field ourselves, and bring in expertise from other individuals or organizations when useful, in response to needs that emerge on the ground. This kind of close collaboration on Fambul Tok has allowed us to respond quickly to local realities and to work together to fine-tune our practices.

I call our design process “emergent design,” in that we build upon core elements, objectives and operating principles, but we leave room for flexibility and creativity in implementing them. Those of us from outside of Sierra Leone feel it is important not to arrive in the country with a preconceived program for a local entity to implement on our behalf. This is also the spirit the implementers on the ground in Sierra Leone embrace – it’s not their program, but rather it belongs to the people of Sierra Leone. The results from local ownership are inspiring.

Sahr, Nyumah, ReconcileIn the case of Sahr and Nyumah, both stood before the village bonfire in Gbekedu as the first step in their healing journey. The boyhood friends were barely teenagers when the rebel Revolutionary United Front invaded their village near the Liberian border. Sahr spoke of how the rebels ordered him to kill his father and of how he refused repeatedly.


Robert Roche, back to camera at right, listens as a member of a “circle” in which participants tell their often-troubling stories.

As a result, Nyumah, also taken by the rebels, was ordered un-der threat of death to beat his friend. He complied, beating Sahr so severely that even today Sahr’s body remains misshapen – he is able to walk only with great difficulty, supported by a cane.

Living since the end of the war in villages just a mile or so apart, the former friends had not spoken about these events until the evening last March around the bonfire. Acknowledging what he had done, Nyumah asked Sahr for forgiveness, while bow-ing in a gesture of humility and apology. Sahr immediately gave his forgiveness. Villagers broke into song and dance around the bonfire as the young men hugged.

The next day, upon learning that Sahr’s father had also been killed that day in the bush, our documentary filmmaker, Sara Terry, gently queried Nyumah about what had happened to Sahr’s father, asking the question lingering in everyone’s mind: Had Nyumah killed him? Misery was etched on Nyumah’s face. Terry recalls:

…the young man said, very softly, yes. I was watching Sahr; he didn’t flinch at the news, didn’t move away from his friend. In a few minutes, I turned to Sahr and asked him how he felt. He was very direct and simple in his reply: “I forgive him everything.” Nyumah swooped into a bow at his friend’s feet. “I want this forgiveness to last forever and ever,” Sahr added. And then they started to shake hands – the handshake turned into an embrace. The two started walking back up the path into the village – Nyumah in front of Sahr, who was struggling a bit as he walked behind. Nyumah turned back. They put their arms around each other and walked back into the village together.

To see film clip on Fambul Tok, visit www.catalystforpeace.org.

Eager To Heal woundsSahr and Nyumah’s experience exemplifies a broader national consensus around a desire and readiness for reconciliation. “Yes, we are ready” was the overwhelming response we received in every district during the national consultation process that launched the Fambul Tok program, an eagerness that far exceeded our expectations. Representatives at every consultation acknowledged the unhealed wounds of war, as well as the difficult realities of having perpetrators and victims living side by side. It was also clear the communities had local cultural traditions and practices of reconciliation, dormant since the war, that they were eager to awaken and use for social healing. As a rule, these practices were geared toward reintegrating perpetrators into the community, rather than alienating them through punishment or retribution.

Perhaps most remarkable, the towns that participated in the pilot phase of Fambul Tok this spring and summer viewed the program as being theirs, rather than being imported (or imposed) from the outside. With local leadership and design, no two ceremonies have been alike, nor will they be. They have common elements, though, including a snowballing effect whereby the first set of encounters between offenders and victims – characterized by confession, contrition, and forgiveness – are usually followed by many more in the group.

Though the recipe for Fambul Tok depends on the locals, Catalyst for Peace realizes that outsiders serve a valuable role, akin to yeast helping the dough rise. “We’re here to walk the partici-pants though the process initially,” says Catalyst field program officer Robert Roche, MA ’08, who is based full time in Sierra Leone. “In a way, we validate the process. But once it gets going, they make it theirs.” (More about Roche in the sidebar “Outsider Suited to Fambul Tok.”)

The Fambul Tok program is expected to spread nationwide by


‘Outsider’ Suited To Fambul TokRobert Roche, MA ’08, brings unique qualifications to his role as field program officer for U.S.-based catalyst for Peace, serving as a “technical advisor” to the Fambul Tok process.

The son of an American man employed by catholic Relief Services and a congolese woman, Roche spent his first 14 years living in seven African countries. His mother made a point of speaking to him in French and the dialect of her family, while his father made sure he was versed in English.

“I understand the extended family involved in the Fam-bul Tok process and the respect for elders,” says Roche.

“That’s how it was when I was growing up. If it was a close friend of my mom, I called her aunt.”

Yet he knows he is viewed as an outsider in Sierra Leone – well, anywhere he goes in Africa, actually. “My eyes are not brown and my skin color is not dark enough for me to blend in. And I don’t speak the way anybody speaks here.”

He is ideally suited, however, to his role as facilitator. It taps his cross-cultural background, comfort with Africa’s variety, and his cJP training in trauma healing, media-tion, group processes, conflict analysis and restorative justice.

“Everything I learned at cJP I am using. we [trained at cJP] are really knowledgeable compared to many other people I meet working in this field. I don’t want to be biased, but I think that’s the truth.”

Another cJP person involved directly in Fambul Tok is Amy Potter, MA ’02, associate director of cJP’s Practice and Training Institute. As the overall Fambul Tok pro-gram officer for catalyst, she has been integral to the design and implementation of the program. Robert Roche

the end of 2009, with ceremonies reaching every village over the next five years. This is an ambitious project, considering it may take Roche and the Sierra Leonean nationals he works with 10 to 20 hours to travel from their base in the capital city of Freetown to some outlying districts, often over routes that are basically bumpy footpaths.

Yet we believe everyone in Sierra Leone needs to engage in the healing process, wherever they are. The people of Sierra Leone are moving toward acknowledging and accepting what went wrong in their community and, by extension, their country. They are re-discovering their power, their goodness and their capacity to contribute to their society in helpful and healthy ways. They are finding a way to start anew, in the process helping their country do the same. ■

Elisabeth “Libby” Hoffman is president and founder of Catalyst for Peace (www.catalystforpeace.org), established in 2003 near Hoffman’s home in Maine. Libby holds an MALD from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a BA in political science from Williams College. She

attended the 1996 session of EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute and completed an EMU course on conflict transformation taught by John Paul Lederach in 2000. She has been active in conflict resolution and peacebuilding for nearly 20 years as a professor, trainer, practitioner and funder. This article was adapted with permission from a longer article that appeared in the summer 2008 issue of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs. The source article is posted at fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/summer08.html.

Robert Roche with young friends in Sierra Leone

PHOTOS courtesy of Robert Roche


Kenyan Peacebuilders Show Way Out Of Election Violencewhen the previous issue of Peacebuilder went to the printer on January 7, 2008, it contained uplifting thoughts from Jebiwot Sumbeiywo, a 2004 MA graduate of cJP who lives in Kenya and is the continental coordinator for coalition for Peace in Africa.

In that pre-press version of Peacebuilder Sumbeiywo spoke of how pleased she was that Kenya had sustained its democracy and its peace since the late 1990s, all the way through its 2002 general election. This was a change from the violence-plagued elections in 1992 and 1997, when thousands of Kenyans had been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

“I have just come from town having met with the local press where peacebuilders made a press statement on violence that affected some parts of Kenya,” Sumbeiywo wrote to friends in November 2006. “It’s amazing how people no longer sit and watch violence escalate out of hand – kudos to all of us.”

A week after Peacebuilder went to the printer – at the color-proof stage, the last moment when pages can be changed – the editor rushed to remove Sumbeiywo’s optimistic thoughts about Kenya.

Kenya had exploded. “It was really terrifying,” Sumbeiywo recalled recently. She and her one-month-old baby – named

“Amani,” meaning “Peace” in Kiswahili – were caught at home in a Nairobi neighborhood. “My world changed in two days from peace to disaster. we were suddenly unable to buy food. I would watch from my window as youths ran up and down the streets being chased by riot policemen. Things got so bad I stopped thinking about anything but survival.”

It was like 1992 again, only the toll was higher. By the time the violence wound down in late January, at least 1,000 had lost their lives; more than 350,000 had been forced to leave their homes.

what happened? And what did cJP-trained peacebuilders in Kenya do about it? can Kenya remake itself into a model of democracy, economic prosperity and peace in Africa – or will it devolve into the opposite?


KenyaAT CROSSROADS

PHOTO by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

A man passes near a burning barricade in the Kibera section of Nairobi on January 18, 2008.

14 ■ peacebuilder fall/winter 200814 ■ peacebuilder winter 2008

PHOTO By Lindsey Roeschley

CJP People Took ActionEMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP) has more MA graduates in conflict transformation in Kenya than in any other country of the world, except the United States.

Thirteen graduate-level alumni or professors are based in Kenya. Our Summer Peacebuilding Institute has hosted 50 people from Kenya, including Dekha Ibrahim Abdi, one of six named from around the world as recipients of the 2007 Right Livelihood Award. (Read about Dekha in the winter ’08 issue at www.emu.edu/peacebuilder.) Seven U.S.-based CJP faculty and staff mem-bers have done peace-themed work in Kenya.

So, where were “our” people when the killing started?Ironically, most were taking a brief break from their usual

jam-packed work lives, like folks everywhere tend to do over the Christmas holiday period. Let’s look at these three people – Do-reen Ruto, Babu Ayindo and Hizkias Assefa – as examples of the range of responses from the CJP group to the violence.

DOREEN RUTOMuch of last year, Doreen Ruto, MA ’06, collaborated with Babu Ayindo, MA ’98, on developing a curriculum designed to teach conflict-transformation and peace education skills in Kenyan classrooms. By Christmas 2007, the UNICEF-funded project was nearing the pilot-stage of testing the curriculum in some schools and refining it. Ruto’s 11-year-old son Ronnie was out of school for the holiday period. (Her older son, Richard Bikko, was and is an undergrad at EMU.) She left Ronnie with cousins and went to vote on December 27.

“It was the first time in my life that I voted. I just was not inter-ested before,” she says. “But after going through CJP, I went back and said, ‘We need to be part of the change.’”

(Ruto came to CJP as part of her healing process – and desire to explore the path of nonviolent change – after losing her hus-band, the father of her two sons, in a terrorist attack on the U.S.

Embassy in Nairobi in 1998. Her husband was not the target of the attack; he was in a neighboring building that collapsed.)

“I stood six or seven hours on the queue to vote. I was so de-termined. I wanted to see a difference. I wanted Kenya to have a more inclusive government and not confine its leadership to one part of the country.”

Ruto comes from an ethnic group that is different from the one of the current president. To understand why this is highly sig-nificant in her country, read “Towards Understanding the Violence in Kenya” on page 17.

When the violence began, Ruto was at home in Nairobi with Ronnie. They were imprisoned by the violence. Outside their doors, in the streets, supporters of her ethnic group were attack-ing and killing others and vice versa. After three days, she decided

“enough.” She phoned George Wachira, senior research and policy advisor of the Nairobi Peace Initiative, to discuss what steps to take.

By January 2, Ruto, Wachira, Abdi and about 60 others – in-cluding Jebiwot Sumbeiywo’s uncle, Lt. Gen. Lazarus Sumbeiywo

– convened at the Serena Hotel in downtown Nairobi. They called themselves Concerned Citizens for Peace.

For Ruto, traveling via taxi to the meeting took faith and courage. Soldiers and tear gas filled the streets. Roaming bands of young men could easily stop a taxi and pull out a single female occupant whose ethnicity did not suit them. Ruto had left Ron-nie in the care of relatives, hoping that she would be returning to her son at the end of the day.

About 10 of the 60 in Concerned Citizens for Peace had a history linking them to CJP and thus to each other. Perhaps most remarkable – and fortuitous in this situation – the Kenyans trained at CJP have come from seven different ethnic groups. Ruto sat across the table from Anne Nyambura, MA ’06, who comes from the ethnic group viewed to be “in power” in Kenya.

“As graduates of CJP, we speak the same language,” says Ruto. “We see what is going on through the same lenses. We condemn the same injustices, even if we may have voted differently.”

More on Ruto follows in Babu Ayindo’s story.

Doreen Ruto and Babu Ayindo chat between classes at SPI 2008.


KenyaAT CROSSROADS


BABU AYINDODoreen Ruto’s collaborator on the UNICEF-funded peace curriculum for schools, Babu Ayindo, MA ’98, was among the first Africans to earn a master’s degree in conflict transformation at EMU.

If you Google his name, you will find that he has led trainings in places as diverse as South Korea, Fiji, Australia, the Philippines, and most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. He is renowned for us-ing improvisational theater techniques in conflict transformation.

Yet at the end of December 2007, Ayindo was doing none of the above. He was in his backyard – literally. He was in a city on the edge of the Rift Valley. He was eight hours by bus from Nairobi, but only 100 meters from the area where violence would be the worst over the next several weeks.

“My wife and I have a quarter-acre farm where we raise cattle, goats, chickens. We grow passion fruit, mango, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, onions,” says Ayindo. “My wife grew up on a farm. We are resurrecting a tradition of sustaining oneself. Having constant contact with the land is important. I want my children to experi-ence all this.”

Ayindo took a break from his gardening to cast his vote for the opposition on December 27. Not that he thought a new president might bring great change to Kenya – more equity, less corruption

– but he thought it might be an improvement.Then the attacks began on non-Luos in the streets outside his

compound. Ayindo is Luo (though “I don’t look like the typical Luo”); his mother and wife are Luhya. “The crowds were out with stones and other crude weapons, looting and driving away people perceived to be sympathetic or to have voted for other parties (other than the Orange Democratic Movement). The police and the para-military were engaging the crowds with tear gas and live bullets.

“We kept down and away from the windows. Our three kids (ages 14, 10 and 4) came to recognize the sound of every type of gun. They saw their first dead people…I wish they hadn’t.”

By the end of the first week – a week with no water and electricity in his home – Ayindo was in cell-phone contact with George Kut of the Nairobi Peace Initiative. Kut flew to join Ayindo and by January 9 they were traveling through parts of the Rift Valley and Nyanza regions together, listening to people, particularly the youth, to learn more about what was going on. On January 12, they reported their findings back to the Nairobi Peace Initiative.

Their main recommendation was to urge peace workers to “lis-ten deeply in order to understand the root causes of the unprec-

edented violence,” says Ayindo. The Nairobi Peace Initiative later expanded this “listening project” to other parts of Kenya.

Meanwhile, the Concerned Citizens for Peace had started circu-lating peace messages – “choose peace and not violence” and “let’s give dialogue a chance” – via cooperating cell phone companies and mass media. They put up a website, www.peaceinkenya.net, which presented constructive ways out of the conflict and offered the personal cell numbers of CCP’s leaders, including Abdi’s. Celebrities weighed in with a song of peace played widely on the radio. It began to be hummed throughout the country.

Out in the land of the center of the opposition, Ayindo felt that the youthful voices of despair that he had listened to over several days were not being addressed by the peace messages coming from Nairobi. “If the grievances of the people in the streets get ignored, another cycle of violence will occur. And I didn’t hear enough about addressing those grievances.”

Ayindo’s colleague Doreen Ruto – who had also voted for the opposition – was saddened by a text message she received after speaking on TV about the need for dialogue. A good friend tex-ted: “We want justice and not peace.”

“I understood my friend’s anger,” says Ruto. “But my immedi-ate priority was ending the loss of lives and the displacement of people from their homes. My greatest fear and concern was that if we went on like this, the violence would soon take the country to a point of no return. I tried to convince my friend of how the violence on the streets would soon catch up with us, even in the safety of our homes, but both of us seemed to be from two differ-ent worlds at that time. She wouldn’t hear of it.”

This exemplifies the truism that those working for peace also must deal with divergent views among themselves. In this case, Ayindo, Ruto, and Ruto’s friend saw the violence somewhat differ-ently from their differing vantage points.

Perhaps most remarkable – and fortuitous in this situation – the

Kenyans trained at cJP have come from seven different ethnic groups.

Babu Ayindo uses drama in his work.

PHOTO By Howard Zehr


HIZKIAS ASSEFAHizkias Assefa, born in Ethiopia but based in Kenya, was among the founding group that launched CJP in 1994. Holding a PhD and JD, Dr. Assefa has taught at EMU’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute ever since.

Known globally as a skilled and trusted mediator, Dr. Assefa is often one of the unnamed faces in photos taken at negotiat-ing tables, when the big-names finally come face-to-face despite their mutual hostility. It suits Dr. Assefa not to be in the news – it makes it easier for him to quietly offer guidance on how to talk and what to talk about.

When the elections took place in Kenya in late December, Dr. Assefa was on holiday with his family in neighboring Zanzibar. He returned a week after the elections to a country that felt pro-foundly different. “Everyone seemed to be polarized,” he says. “At the early stages of the violence, it was difficult to find citizens who could stand above this polarization and see the big picture.”

After the Concerned Citizens for Peace began to assert itself, Dr. Assefa says it took time for the public to recognize that the ad-hoc group crossed ethnic lines and that it was not aligned with one or the other side in the conflict.

Many leaders from other African countries poured into Kenya to try to stop the violence from escalating and to bring the parties to the negotiating table. After a few weeks a mediation process sponsored by the African Union got underway in the same Serena Hotel where the Concerned Citizens for Peace had been meeting.

The mediation was led by Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the United Nations. Also on the team were the former presi-dent of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, and the former first lady of Mozambique and of South Africa, Graca Machel. Dr. Assefa was invited by Annan to join the mediation team.

“I was brought in as a mediation expert to help provide guid-ance on how to handle the negotiation process,” says Dr. Assefa. He dealt with such issues as how to structure the process, how to think through the root causes of the conflict, and how to help the parties move towards agreement. He also advised on overcoming

obstacles, avoiding pitfalls, and involving civil society.The Annan-led mediation process, held from late January to

early May, is widely regarded as the turning point in easing the violence. From it came an agreement that moved the parties to a political solution to the crisis. The mediation process brought in national and international experts to help develop a power-sharing government, as well as to design roadmaps for electoral, constitutional, land, public service and economic reforms to ad-dress the issues of the crisis.

“As a long-time resident of Kenya, I was directly affected by the conflict and could also see how it affected the lives of those around me,” says Dr. Assefa. “I therefore had an opportunity to bring the perspective of everyday Kenyans into the process.”

Dr. Assefa frequently argued for addressing the root causes of the conflict, such as the unequal distribution of resources, and not just papering them over. He said he sought consideration of the steps necessary for long-term stability and harmony, rather than being satisfied with temporary peace.

“Regrettably, addressing root causes is very complicated,” he says. “It is a long-term process. Once there is no immediate pressure of turmoil, it seems that the pressure is off of everyone – the politi-cians, the negotiators, the population, even the mediators and sponsors of the process. So people lose focus on the long-term underlying issues, and things slowly begin to return to business as usual.”

In Dr. Assefa’s eyes, one of the challenges of peacebuilding is getting people to recognize the factors likely to lead to destruction for a society and to take preventive steps before a crisis looms. ■

one of the challenges of peacebuilding is getting people to recognize the factors likely to lead

to destruction for a society and to take preventive steps before a

crisis looms.

Dr. Hizkias Assefa, mediation resource for Kofi Annan

PHOTO By Matthew Styer


KenyaAT CROSSROADS

Towards Understanding the Violence in KenyaThe race leading up to the December 2007 election between presidential incumbent Mwai Kibaki and op-position candidate Raila odinga was tight. Early returns showed odinga leading substantially.

Then there was a sudden shift in the reporting of votes. Kibaki took the lead for inexplicable reasons. Internation-al observers reported anomalies in the way votes were being counted, suggesting rigging of the polls.

odinga and his supporters protested. odinga declared himself the “people’s president.” Kibaki dismissed their complaints. Fanned by inflammatory media reports (the Kenyan media tend to subscribe to one or another political party) angry people – most of them young men who were unemployed or under-employed – took to the streets to battle those perceived as being on the other side.

As is common in some parts of post-colonial Africa, politi-cal allegiances in Kenya tend to run along ethnic lines.

President Kibaki’s base is Kikuyu, the largest single ethnic group in Kenya, comprising about 22 percent of the popu-lation. He got support from the Kamba and Kisii, adding up to a total of about 39 percent of the population in Kibaki’s camp.

challenger odinga is Luo, a group numbering about half as many as the Kikuyu – or 13 percent of the

population. In this election, however, some other ethnic groups joined the Luo in supporting odinga, including the Kalenjin and Luhya. This brought support for odinga to about 40 percent of the population. Kenya has 43 mostly smaller ethnic groups, who tended to support the opposition.

Thus challenger odinga’s voter base at least matched and may have exceeded President Kibaki’s in this election.

Kenya has had three presidents since gaining indepen-dence from Britain in 1963. The first, Jomo Kenyatta, and third (current president) are Kikuyu. In between came Daniel arap Moi, who was a Kalenjin and who ruled for a very long period, from 1978 until 2002, when he was con-stitutionally barred from continuing.

In the booklet Peace and Reconciliation as a Paradigm, Dr. Hizkias Assefa notes that “in many African societies, losing an election can mean exclusion from power for an entire ethnic group, followed by discrimination and even repression. This can therefore foster the mentality among competing parties that they must win at all cost.”

In other words, elections in Kenya can be literal battle-grounds, with groups feeling that their very existence is at stake since they have no assurance of their well-being and security if their group loses.

This sense of insecurity is played upon by politicians seek-ing election. “If you elect me, I will watch out for you” is a message guaranteed to attract votes, especially when paired with: “If you don’t, your suffering will worsen.”

At Maai Mahiu camp for internally displaced people in Narok town, this man was beaten almost to death outside his home. He recovered sufficiently to later testify before a commission

probing the post-election violence. He said a particular politician had fomented the violence.

In Mirera, Nakuru, attackers removed items from houses belonging to people perceived as “foreigners” in the

village and burned them, as seen here.

PHOTOS By Charles Nyoike Ndegwa


What Future for Kenya? In recent years, Kenya looked as if it were going to be among those African countries in the forefront of finding their way toward national unity and social equity, with peace and prosperity as the ultimate outcomes.

Kenya’s peace was fragile, however, mostly because its economic gains were unequally distributed. When the violence erupted last December and January, some observers feared a Rwanda-like ethnic war. This didn’t happen. To repeat: the violence did not es-calate into an all-out civil war. Kenya pulled back from the brink.

This is evidence that millions of Kenyans from all walks of life doubt violence will lead to the changes they desire. Church, school, health, refugee, and even military leaders in Kenya routinely use terms like “sustainable peace,” “reconciliation,” and

“dialogue.”Much of this awareness can be traced to CJP-trained people,

who in turn have trained and reached out to thousands of others in Kenya. CJP folks, of course, do not work alone. They become employees, consultants, and partners with like-minded organi-zations, sometimes founding new ones. [See list of CJP-linked people in Kenya on page 21.]

“It’s hard to determine the full impact of CJP-trained people in Kenya during the post-election crisis,” says Janice Jenner, MA ’00, director of CJP’s Practice and Training Institute. “Clearly, though, the conflict-transformation skills taught at CJP do work in the ‘real world,’ as they did in Kenya.” Jenner and her husband Hadley were co-country representatives for Mennonite Central Commit-tee in Kenya from 1989 to 1996.

Notice the language used by president Kibaki and opposition leader Odinga on January 24, when they shook hands, smiled and shared the same platform for the first time since the election was disputed. Beside them was a visibly pleased Kofi Annan. Out of

the spotlight but nearby was EMU professor Hizkias Assefa, the mediation advisor for Annan’s successful peacemaking effort.

Both political leaders appealed for immediate calm, according to the BBC, with Kibaki pledging to rebuild destroyed homes and towns, resettle the displaced, and “do everything else possible to ensure Kenyans live as brothers.”

Odinga said his party was committed to peace, but stressed that to be sustainable, it had to be based on justice.

Annan summed up: “I think we have begun to take some first steps towards a peaceful solution of the problem, and as you can see, the two leaders are here to underline their engagement to dialogue and to work together for a just and sustainable peace.”

Over the next few months, Kenya’s government took new shape. Odinga filled the newly created position of second prime minister and the president’s cabinet was enlarged to make room for mem-bers appointed on the basis of their party’s numbers in Parliament.

“We can now consign Kenya’s past failures of grand corruption and grand tribalism to our history books,” Odinga said when he took office. “We will ensure that power, wealth and opportunity are [in] the hands of many, not the few.”

To reach these worthy goals, Kenya must navigate through minefields: a high rate of unemployment, budget deficits, poor infrastructure, corruption in the civil service… not to mention the still-simmering problems of refugees and ethnic tensions.

And here is where the people trained at CJP – and those who they, in turn, train; who in turn train others (it’s a multiplier ef-fect) – come into play.

“Last spring when I was East Africa, I heard our graduates called the ‘EMU mafia,’” says Jenner. “It was meant as a compliment, in the sense that our extended family of peacebuilders has had a major impact on the easing of violent conflict in Africa.”

In a September 27, 2007, Washington Post article, reporter John Prendergast said that after spending 25 years writing about atroci-ties, tyranny and famine in Africa, he wanted to write about the

“hope, self-transformation and inspiration” he was seeing of late,

Dr. Gladys Mwiti, director of Oasis Africa, in center (sixth from right on front row), flanked by CJP leaders Lynn Roth and Jan Jenner during their June 2008 visit to Kenya.

PHOTO Courtesy Oasis Africa


KenyaAT CROSSROADS

belying “outsiders’ low expectations for the continent.”“Africans are demanding that their voices be heard – through

the ballot box, through civil society organizations, new media, revitalized political parties, and reformed institutions to provide accountability,” Prendergast wrote.

Despite the temporary (one hopes) lapse in Kenya last year, Washington Post journalist Craig Timberg echoed Prendergast’s optimism about Africa in an article published March 13, 2008.

“Peace, however fragile, is the norm rather than war,” he wrote, citing the growing vigor of civil society and democracy in Ghana, Benin, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria.

Here’s an example of how peace spreads: An organization called Oasis Africa, directed by Dr. Gladys Mwiti, has partnered with the Ford Foundation to train Nairobi high school teachers in trauma counseling. Dr. Mwiti came to EMU’s STAR program in 2004 . Later, she helped field-test and refine a training manual for Youth STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience), funded by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Oasis Africa agreed to pilot test the STAR manual with youth in a Nairobi slum, with “amazing outcomes,” according to the Oasis Africa newsletter.

The completed version of the Youth STAR manual arrived at Oasis Africa this year, when Jan Jenner and CJP director Lynn Roth visited Nairobi and hand-delivered the full STAR package to Dr. Mwiti. She and her staff are now using the manual in training about 114 teachers in 57 high schools in Nairobi.

“It is expected that each of the 114 teachers will train 30 peer counselors,” said the Oasis Africa newsletter. This means that about 3,420 peer counselors will be trained. Each peer counselor is “mandated” to pass along his or her training to at least 30 fellow students.

Here’s the math: more than 100,000 people will be impacted by Oasis Africa and its usage of the Youth STAR manual, developed by Vesna Hart (M.Ed.’04) at EMU with the help of Dr. Mwiti and many others. And this is just one of a dozen far-reaching

programs in which our alumni are involved in Kenya. Earlier versions of the trainings caused Kamiti High School,

which was formerly conflict-ridden, to be “a shining example of the transformative power of this intervention,” said the newsletter.

The current trainings are aimed at schools “situated in slums, such as Mathare, Kibera and Mukuru, the most affected commu-nities during the post-election violence.”

The idea is to reach “the most needy and the most affected youth, and so hope to break the cycle of trauma and anger that may in the future become a brewing ground for community vio-lence,” explained the Oasis Africa newsletter.

Oasis Africa doesn’t limit its work to schools. In response to post-election tension among its multi-ethnic employees, the management of the Coca-Cola bottling company in Nairobi en-dorsed a six-day program led by Oasis Africa that covered conflict resolution, peacebuilding, team building, and trauma healing. Many of the 600 Coca-Cola employees had been affected by the violence outside their workplace – injuries, loss of loved ones, loss of income and loss of their homes or other property – and they responded eagerly to the lessons offered in self- and community-healing.

Trained peacebuilders also are working with churches in Kenya. For example, Charles Nyoike Ndegwa, MA ’05, gave a speech to 100 pastors at AIC Kijabe Mission Center in late February, just a few weeks after violence in the streets had ebbed. Ndegwa challenged them to pay attention to the early warning signs of up-heaval – such as the tribal divisions evident in the 2004 national referendum on changing Kenya’s constitution – and “to be fully involved in looking for solutions to the problems facing our com-munities.”

“Burying the dead and distributing relief aid is not enough,” Ndegwa said. “Christians must do more to avert conflicts and violence... and that work should include confronting the powers that be.” Charles Nyoike Ndegwa photographed the scenes on this page and on page 17. ■

People protesting the outcome of presidential elections broke into this electronics shop in Naivasha town. Afterwards,

these children mopped up some of the loot.

“Africans are demanding that their voices be heard

– through the ballot box, through civil society

organizations, new media, revitalized political

parties, and reformed institutions to provide

accountability.”

PHOTO By Charles Nyoike Ndegwa


Students at CJP Note Role of MediaFour students from Kenya are at CJP now, pursuing an MA in conflict transformation.

One of these students (Jeannine Cinco) is American, but she was working in Nairobi last year at a vocational training school for disadvantaged girls when the violence occurred. The girls had gone to be with their families or to their orphanages during the Christmas break. All the girls returned to school by mid-January, a week late, but most came with horrible stories, said Cinco, a Catholic Relief Services volunteer at that time. “We tried to help them process their experiences and journey with them.”

The three Kenya-based students are:■ Jude Fondoh, originally from Cameroon, but most

recently a student of peace studies and international relations at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (Kenya).

■ Muigai Ndokak, a native of Kenya, who spent last year working with his wife Valerie at a center for rehabilitating street children in Moshi, Tanzania.

■ Dennis Oricho, a Kenyan well educated in Catholic theology, who spent last year studying conflict analysis and resolution at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey.

For Ndokak and Oricho, whose families live in areas affected by the post-election violence, it was particularly hard to be on foreign soil, too far to help their loved ones.

“My parents could not go out of the house for five days,” said Ndokak. “They ran out of food and water.”

Asked about his ethnic group, Ndokak politely side-steps the question: “I prefer to simply call myself ‘Kenyan.’ We have to get beyond our tribes of origin and view ourselves as equal citizens in one nation.

“When people settled into Nairobi, they seemed to settle by

tribe,” Ndokak adds. “There is a good aspect to this – in village life, everyone shares everything – so people found others who would help them in the city.

“But the city has become crowded, the slums in particular. And tribes are spilling over, bumping into each other. We must find a way to address these problems that don’t pit one tribe against the other.”

Oricho’s mother and siblings support themselves by buying fish caught in Lake Victoria, taking it to a city market, and selling it.

“Some of my mother’s best customers are Kikuyu,” Oricho notes. His family is Luo.

The violence caused their business to grind to a halt for two months. It was dangerous to walk in the streets, much less sell fish in the market. One of his brothers was caught on his way to the market by Kikuyu youths who yelled “You are Luo!” and beat him so badly, he required three days of hospitalization.

Today, the news from home is better. Oricho says his mother’s Kikuyu customers have resumed buying her fish.

The media, says Oricho, initially fanned the flames of the con-flict by news reports that made everyone more fearful and more determined to defend themselves – or to seek revenge.

But gradually the media shifted, offering different stories: about the member of Parliament who led a group to rebuild the destroyed home of a poor woman and who gave her goats to restart her flock; about the police officer who talked to an angry crowd and calmed them down instead of threatening them; about the Red Cross and other non-government organizations who were trying to help the hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Some church leaders persuaded their members to prepare food and to share it with those previously viewed as the enemy, with amazingly positive results.

At her girls’ vocational center in Nairobi, Cinco noticed that certain radio announcers – she mentions Caroline Mutoko in particular – stayed on the air hour after hour, day after day, plead-ing with their listeners, “We’re better than this! It’s our Kenya! We have to stop killing each other!” ■

Current CJP students with ties to Kenya (from left) Dennis Oricho, Jeannine Cinco and Muigai Ndokak. Jude Fondah, pictured on the inside back cover, also has lived in Kenya.

PHOTO By Jon Styer


KenyaAT CROSSROADS

EMU-Linked Folks in Kenya

Nuria Abdullah Abdi (MA ’07) works for International Peacebuilding Alliance (Interpeace), a UN-affiliated organization (www.interpeace.org), where she is the program manager for Eastern and Central Africa, in charge of strengthening the role of women in peacebuilding and decision-making through participatory processes.

Priscilla Adoyo (MA ’03) recently completed a PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary in California and is teaching at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology.

Hizkias Assefa is EMU professor of conflict studies. See page 16 of this magazine and

“Assefa Nurtures Cease-Fire in Uganda” in the fall/winter 2006 issue of Peacebuilder at www.emu.edu/peacebuilder.

Babu Ayindo (MA ’98) is a global consultant. See page 15 of this magazine.

Jim Bowman (MA ’03) and his wife Cathy (Grad Cert ’02) were representing Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya when the post-election violence hit. In partnership with churches, the Bowmans helped provide personal hygiene items and foods for thousands of displaced people.

John Katunga (MA ’05) works for Catholic Relief Services as technical advisor for peacebuilding and justice in East Africa. He and other EMU-linked personnel have played a key role in CRS-sponsored “Leadership in Peacebuilding” workshops in South Sudan.

Karimi Kinoti (MA ’02), recently completed a PhD at Bradford University in the United Kingdom and works for Christian Aid in Kenya.

Charles Nyoike Ndegwa (MA ’05) consults on conflict issues from his base in Nairobi, with a particular focus on the ways that the media can be used to promote sustainable peace.

Anne Nyambura (MA ’06) is from Kenya but works as program manager for Mercy Corps, focusing on promoting peace and reconciliation in neighboring Somalia.

Doreen Ruto (MA ’06) works for USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives. More on pages 14 and 15.

Emmanuel Lesiri Ole Sayiorry (MA ’07) is teaching conflict transformation and peacebuilding at Daystar University.

Ngoriakou Joseph Riwongole (MA ’06) is working in the Kenya office of Catholic Relief Services.

Jebiwot Sumbeiywo (MA ’04) is the continental coordinator of Coalition for Peace in Africa, a membership network of individuals and organizations working for sustainable peace in Africa.

Tecla Wanjala (MA ’03) is deputy chief of party of the Kenya branch of PACT, a large U.S.-based peacebuilding organization.

Nuria Abdullah Abdi

Priscilla Adoyo Hizkias Assefa Babu Ayindo Jim Bowman John Katunga Karimi Kinoti

Charles Nyoike Ndegwa Anne Nyambura

Emmanuel Lesiri Ole Sayiorry

Ngoriakou Joseph Riwongole

Jebiwot Sumbeiywo Tecla WanjalaDoreen Ruto

More than 50 people working in Kenya have received training at EMU’s annual Summer Peacebuilding Institute. Additional numbers have been educated in other EMU programs, particularly at the undergraduate level and in Eastern Mennonite Seminary. As an example, clair E. Good, a 2002 seminary graduate, and his wife Beth, a 2003 nursing grad, returned to Kenya during the January ’08 violence. In clair’s capacity as Africa representative of Eastern Mennonite Missions, clair worked with Beth to help distribute emergency EMM funds to associated churches. They witnessed Mennonite bishops and other church leaders “risk love” by reaching out to people perceived as “the other,” even inspir-ing church members to buy food and feed

“the enemy.” In sharing food, both sides in the conflict were honoring each other – one in giving, the other in accepting the gift.


David Brubaker, PhD

PositionAcademic director of CJP and EMU associate professor of organizational studies.

Focus in 2008Responding to increasing demand for training and consulting services, both within Mennonite

organizations and more broadly, drawing on 20-plus years of study and experience in workplace mediation and training and in organizational conflict.

HighlightsTwo presentations at the annual meeting of the Association of Conflict Resolution.

Major publicationsBook in progress entitled Promise and Peril: Managing Change and Conflict in Congregations, scheduled to be published in early 2009 by the Alban Institute.

Major work-related tripsOne training session in Myanmar/Burma, sponsored by Hope International, and a three-day training in Egypt on “managing community and congregational conflict,” sponsored by the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services. (CJP colleague Barry Hart also went on this CEOSS-sponsored trip to Egypt and led a training in trauma healing.)

Lisa Schirch, PhD

PositionDirector of the 3D Security Initiative and EMU professor of peacebuilding.

Focus in 2008Promoting conflict prevention and peacebuilding as alternative U.S. security strategies.

HighlightsOrganized three conferences between peacebuilding organizations and U.S. military and governmental agencies, such as the Army War College, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Joint Forces Command, State Department, Catholic Relief Services, and Iraqis and Afghans studying at EMU, with the objective of creating new relationships and forging new ideas in U.S. policymaking.

Major publicationsTen policy briefs detailing the relevance of peacebuilding to U.S. public policy issues, such as immigration, Africa, Iran, and Iraq. Also a Washington Post/Newsweek online article in April, “The Two Wars in Iraq: Ours and Theirs.”

Major work-related tripsWorkshops in Amman, Jordan, with Iraqi community development and humanitarian aid groups. Weekly trips to Washington D.C. to meet with Congressional offices, branches of the military, the State Department and others willing to consider conflict prevention and peacebuilding as security strategies. Keynote speaker at several national conferences on the U.S. coasts, including Ecumenical Advocacy Days, Women in Security Conference, and the Presbyterian Peace Conference.

Faculty 2008 Highlights


Nancy Good Sider, PhD , LCSW

PositionFounding partner / therapist at Newman Avenue Associates (mediation, psychotherapy, consultation) and EMU associate professor of trauma and conflict studies.

Focus in 2008Trauma specialist offering trauma-healing interventions using Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and post-traumatic growth emphasis; circle process in family traumas; retreat leader for peaceworker care and resiliency; diversity workshops and race-related facilitations.

Highlights “Celebrating a Diverse Workplace and Transforming Conflicts” at James Madison University (Virginia); mediation training at Washington & Lee University (Virginia) for third-year law students; family and community mediation trainings at Baltimore (Maryland) Mediation Center; several mediations with church leaders and family businesses; course in trauma at American University in Washington D.C.

Major work-related tripsLead facilitator for cross-regional community trauma healing symposium held in Amman, Jordan, with participants from Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, the Great Lakes Region in Africa and the Balkans. Sponsored by American Friends Service Committee, symposium emphasized spirituality and trauma healing. Worker care and networking during July with CJP graduates and partners in Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine.

Howard Zehr, PhD

PositionEditor of the Little Books of Justice & Peacebuilding and EMU professor of restorative justice.

Focus in 2008Restorative justice; crime victims; sentencing.

HighlightsLectures at the Stanford Law School in California. Keynote speaker at restorative justice conferences in Des Moines, Iowa, and Oakland, California. Talks at Ashland University in Ohio and Grinnell College in Iowa. Plenary speaker at U.S. Sentencing Commission symposium on alternatives to incarceration and on the death penalty at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. Organized (using $30,000 award money) the “Koru Project,” which collected the experiences of CJP graduates in restorative justice. Appointed to the Victim Advisory Group of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. (Overseas highlights below.)

Major publicationsBook in progress, based on photo-journalism exhibit entitled “When a Parent Is In Prison.” Book forwards and chapters, such as intro to Changing Paradigms: Punishment and Restorative Discipline by Paul Rededop (Herald Press, 2008).

Major work-related tripsLaunch of Portuguese edition of Changing Lenses in Brazil, with April speaking tour, media interviews, lectures to law students, law professionals and judges. In September, three-week return visit to New Zealand, hosted by the Restorative Justice Centre at the Auckland Institute of Technology, with a keynote to the national restorative justice conference and presentations to other groups.

NOTE Missing from this round-up: Professor Jayne Docherty, PhD, has been on sabbatical during 2008.


Barry Hart:Local and Global LeadershipFor more than 25 years, Barry Hart has exerted quiet leadership in the field of conflict transformation – it’s the kind that attracts little attention to the leader, but permits those around him to grow into their own leadership roles.

At EMU, Barry Hart is a professor of trauma, identity and conflict studies, holding a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University. He is also known as the person who launched EMU’s University Accord program, under which parties in conflict within the campus community can seek help from a trained mediator and work toward a positive outcome.

In the surrounding city and county, Hart is known as a founder of one of the first community mediation centers in Virginia. Since 2002 he has served on the board of the Community Media-tion Center of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County and Greater Augusta County.

Further afield – in Europe – Hart is a founding member and current academic director of the 17-year-old Caux Scholars Pro-gram in Caux, Switzerland (www.iofc.org/caux-scholars-program).

Under this program, two dozen university and graduate stu-dents from around the world gather for four weeks each summer in a beautiful mountain house owned by Initiatives of Change. There they delve into conflict transformation and analysis, trauma healing and justice, leadership and culture. Through his Caux Scholars leadership, Hart has nurtured 300 alumni from 85 coun-tries, many of whom have gone on to play prominent roles in such fields as academics, politics, international organizations, and grassroots initiatives.

This year Hart is one of the planners for a summer 2009 confer-ence on human security in Geneva, Switzerland. “We anticipate the conference will attract top-level government officials, dip-lomats, media experts, economists, and other leaders, as well as people working on the middle and grassroots levels,” says Hart. The conference is expected to cover how human security is im-pacted by the environment, the media, and the global economy, among other topics.

Finally, on a global scale, Hart is known for responding to requests for workshops on trauma healing and reconciliation. He has led sessions in the Balkans, where he lived for five years, as well as in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania (among Rwandan refugees), Burundi, Somaliland, Egypt, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

These workshops have attracted diverse people – teachers, sol-diers, police officers, religious leaders, politicians and civil society actors. Participants often “have experienced (or caused) the vio-lence of war – the breaking of the human bond,” says Hart,

yet many of them “become wise through their experiences and lend their wisdom to peacebuilding efforts in their communities and around the world.”

Hart is working on a joint project between EMU’s Practice and Training Institute and the University of Hargeisa in Somaliland to establish an Institute for Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding in Somaliland.

Hart’s latest accomplishment is the editing of a 362-page book destined to be widely used in conflict transformation classrooms

– Peacebuilding in Traumatized Societies, published in the spring of 2008 by University Press of America (at www.univpress.com).

This book – containing 14 chapters by experts in peacebuilding – examines trauma, identity, security, education and develop-ment as central issues related to breaking the cycle of violence and building peace in fragile, conflict-torn societies. The relation-ships of transitional justice, leadership, religion, and the arts to peacebuilding are also covered. ■

PHOTO By Jon Styer

EASTERNMENNONITEUNIVERSITYHarrisonburg, Va.

Give the gift of peace by sponsoring a peacebuilder!If you would like to support peacebuilders like these to attend the Summer Peacebuilding Institute, we invite you to do so online at: emu.edu/cjp/giving/sponsor

You may also mail donations to the address below.

SPI – SponsorEMU Office of Development1200 Park RoadHarrisonburg, VA 22802

The Summer Peacebuilding Institute is a program of EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding.

emu.edu/cjp/sponsor

sponsor a peacebuilderPeople around the world are working – some quietly and some not so quietly – for peace and justice in their communities. Many of those people come to EMU’s Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI) to learn skills and share ideas.

Jude Fondoh, Cameroon / Kenya

“It was like the world converging in Harrisonburg to see how we can make the world a better place for all.”

Nang Raw, Fulbright Scholar, Burma / Myanmar

“I feel very much empowered by SPI, because it reaffirms and reminds me that I am not alone. We Burmese peacebuilders are not alone.”

Preeti Thapa, Asia Foundation, Nepal

“The learning I have received here has been life changing. I hope to give back to my communities the knowledge to build a culture of peace.”

EASTERNMENNONITEUNIVERSITY

PERIODICALSPOSTAGE PAIDHarrisonburg,

Virginia

1200 Park RoadHarrisonburg VA 22802-2462USA

Seminars in Organizational Leadership$79/seminar or $399/series of six seminars; 9 a.m – noon.www.emu/emu/seminarseries

January 23 Leading Healthy Organizations in a Changing Environment

January 30 Cultural Awareness Matters: Effective Communication in Today’s Diverse Workplace

February 6 Building Your Business and Your Integrity

March 13 Transforming Interpersonal and Group Conflict

March 20 Leadership: Why Relationships Matter in Building a Quality Organization

April 3 Planning and Leading Group Decision-Making

Summer Peacebuilding Institute (SPI)Short-term intensive courses for professional development/training or academic credit. Participate in one or up to four sessions.www.emu/edu/spi

May 4-12 Session I

May 14-22 Session II

May 26-June 3 Session III

June 8-12 Session IV

Graduate Program in Conflict TransformationContact Janelle Myers-Benner at [email protected] if you are interested in enrolling in graduate classes.www.emu/edu/cjp/grad

Seminars in Trauma Aware-ness and Resilience (STAR)More information on fees and descriptions of seminar levels is online at:www.emu/edu/star

February 16-20 STAR Level I

March 23-29 STAR Level II

June 8-12 STAR Level I (during SPI)

September 14-18 STAR Level I

cENTER FOR jUSTIcE AND pEAcEBUIlDINg2009 Schedule of Events

emu.edu/cjp

Peacebuilder Fall 2008 - Alumni Magazine of EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding

Documents

Transcript of Peacebuilder Fall 2008 - Alumni Magazine of EMU's Center for Justice and Peacebuilding