The last three weeks in Kenya were the whirlwind that I expected. On April 10th I took a matatu to Nairobi to greet Friends who were coming for the Pre-Conference peace activities sponsored by the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) in western Kenya. I went back and forth to the airport four times to greet arriving Friends, all of whom were grateful for me efforts. On Friday the 13th 15 of us went in two matatus to the Spring Park Motel in Turbo where we were met by Getry Agiza, David Zarembka, Gladys Kamonya, and five other participants. We were all signed up for different activities: a work camp, Alternatives to Violence Workshop, Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshop, and a Tour of Friends Peace Work.
HROC on Mt Elgon
I went with eight others for two HROC workshops on Mt Elgon, one of the hotspots of post-election violence. The first problem was that due to a flat tire and some delays for shopping along the way, we were very late getting to Mt. Elgon. The plan was to have four or five of us wazungu (white people) with 15 Kenyans in each of two HROC (trauma-healing) workshops. Local people had been invited and assembled to attend these workshops, but we were so late that some left.
The second problem was that when they reassembled, there were too many of them. The facilitators have much experience with this and know that a workshop must be limited to 20 people, so they explained that we would be back and those who couldn’t attend could come back for the next workshop two weeks later.
The third problem was expectations of the participants. When they saw all of us wazungu, they thought we brought money for them. Many of them are still internally displaced people (IDPs), who had been chased away from their homes in December 2007 and are still landless living in temporary quarters. Their expectations were that we would buy them land and provide support for the widows and orphans. At the very least they expected to be paid a “sitting allowance”, which has been done by some large organizations. People are paid to come to a workshop, so they come for the payment with little interest in the content. But AGLI stretches their limited funds by refusing to pay sitting allowances, so the facilitators explained that there would only be tea and lunch served. Some potential participants leave when they learn they will not be paid, but those who stay are interested in the content of the workshop.
After all this we settled into two intimate groups where we learned about the effects of trauma and healing from trauma, and we shared deeply of our stories. The stories from our Kenyan sisters and brothers were very sad and brutal, which made my little traumatic experiences seem like nothing. They had all lost family members in the violence and had been struggling for four years to get food and shelter just to survive.
We wazungu and the Kenyan facilitators stayed at the home of Joseph Mamai, the President of the Friends Church Peace Team who wrote the foreword for my book. At the end of each day we had a debriefing session with the facilitators, which were very helpful to me. But still, the experience was very intense and I was exhausted at the end of each day. After having written about these workshops from the interviews I did for the book, Ending Cycles of Violence, I experienced one directly. If you are interested, click here for my notes from the HROC workshop.
6th World Conference of Friends
From that intense experience we went directly to another, the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) 6th World Conference of Friends at Kabarak University in Kenya. Friends from all over the world gathered, 850 of us, for nine days. The Epistle and the attached Kabarak Call for Peace and Eco-justice are both available on the Conference website.
Readers can get a glimpse of the Conference from the plenary presentations that are online. I was especially inspired by the presentation by Thomas Owen of New Zealand, as well as that by Noah Baker Merrill, but I recommend all.
For the first three days, 47 “thread groups” were offered in two time slots. These groups produced “threads” that were woven together as the product of the Conference. Along with Moses Musonga and Jill Anderson, I facilitated one Thread Group entitled “Climate Change, Food Security, and Deadly Conflict.” Click here for my notes of that Thread Group.
The “weaving” was presented as a serious of queries. Click here for my notes from the weaving sessions. The final product will be compiled in a report which will eventually be sent to all participants and presumably be available online.
We also were assigned to Home Groups which met every day and became an intimate sharing of our stories and our experiences of the conference. The most intense discussion was after a concern was raised that an epistle from the Friends for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transsexual group in the U.S. had been removed from the Bulletin Board. This issue represents a great gap between Western (North American and European) Friends and African Friends. Most of the former have approved same sex marriage, while most of the latter consider homosexuality to be a sin. The sharing that day in our Home Group was very deep and respectful.
Although there were great differences in styles of worship of Friends from different traditions, I found great joy is all manners of worship. I can still hear the incredible African harmonies in the singing. But most important for me were the wonderful conversations with Friends from all around the world, a richness that I cannot adequately express. The last event was a celebration where the whole group let loose. Click here for a You-Tube snippet.
After the Conference, there was a repeat of the Pre-Conference AGLI-sponsored activities with mostly a new set of people. I did another workshop on Transformative Mediation. Again it was an intense sharing experience. We learned some mediation theory and techniques and then practiced. We took turns practicing what we had learned in role-plays with disputants and mediation teams. I am no actress, but when I was role-playing a Kikuyu woman who had been chased off her land and her house was burned, I found myself weeping.
After these Post-Conference activities were over, I organized our departure with 13 of us in two cans for the all-day trip to Nairobi to the airport to begin the two-day journey home. I was very happy to be home! Thank you so very much to everyone who supported me in this great adventure and for all your emails that kept me connected with back home while I was so very far away. I am grateful to everyone of you!
Leadings: Judy Lumb 