Peace Teaching: stories from North Kivu, the Congo -- by Zawadi Nikuze

Camp de Kahe IDP camp, Kitchanga: by Médecins Sans Frontières

Despite the official end of the Rwandan genocide, Burundi civil war, and the 2nd Congo War, over 5 million have died and at least 1 million have been forced from their homes, most recently by the 2005-09 violence in North Kivu with mass rape and kidnapping of child soldiers, intertribal and intra-tribal murders, which the UN force (MONUC) has been unable to stop. Kivu's gold, copper, tin, coltan,cobalt and diamonds are looted by all factions to buy arms. See this UN map for place-names in these stories from FWCC World News (2009/2) about the work of African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) Peace Teams.

Salome Mapendo Sife is a 31 year-old mother of eight. Her children range from 11 months to 14 years old.

My husband and I are originally from Shabunda in South Kivu but my husband was working in Mweso Hospital as a nurse. Life was good in Mweso, my husband was earning a good salary and I had a kitenge (African fabric) business, sold salted fish and had a small cosmetics shop. We had been living in Mweso for a year when the war erupted. That was the turning point of our life.

On September 7, 2007, war broke out in the Congo and we left with our children. We were fearful to carry anything else. The whole village was on the road, some people were able to carry a few belongings and cattle. On the way, I lost my 7 year old daughter and I got more depressed. We arrived in Bulengo internally displaced persons' camp [see photos] on September 13, 2007. By God's grace, I found my daughter in the camp with other lost children. She was with another little girl, whom we later adopted.

We were extremely hungry, tired, thirsty, dirty, and had no shelter. During the day, we were roasted by the sun and in the night we were soaked with the rain. Each family was entitled to five litres of water per day; there were only four latrines for thousands of us. Due to lack of proper sanitation, cholera broke out and many people died. Other people drowned in lake because we did not know how to safely fetch water.

Life continued to be difficult and I contemplated joining my father in Kindu. I then learnt that he had been killed with my five brothers, my three uncles, my grandparents and family friends. They had taken refuge at our farm and the killers had found them there. This made my life even more difficult and I wished I was also dead!

At the same time, my husband could not stand the suffering and joined a group of stressed men who used to drink the local brew from morning to evening. This brought a lot of quarrels and fights in the home. The children suffered the most for both my husband and I were taking our stress to them. The idea of running away with children came to my mind because my husband was becoming more violent and we were all frustrated.

When the Friends Church under the Goma [Rwanda] Relief program began the training in Bulengo camp, my husband was among the first group. After the 3 days of HROC workshops [Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities, of African Great Lakes Initiative], he shared what he learnt and he began changing a bit. He stopped spending his whole day drinking.

In October 2008, I also attended a HROC workshop and I was really blessed. The sharing moment helped me see that there are other people who are also suffering even more than me.
Johari's Window (a HROC exercise where you realize how others see you and how you see yourself) also helped me to understand myself and others. I have also attended the Alternatives to Violence workshop (AVP) which has been helpful too. Now I consult with my husband and there is no more violence against our children.

I had developed hatred against Tutsis because they are the source of our suffering but we have some Tutsi here in the camp and we are all undergoing the same suffering. I tried to find out who killed my father and all who were with him and I was shocked to learn that it was his own people, our own tribesmen. This changed my perception and I no longer discriminate. I apply all these teachings in my Women's Loan Group work, especially when there is a difficult conflict. I thank everyone, including the donors and facilitators, for the different peace workshops, they bring to us in the camps, for we live in a conflict environment.

Camp de Kahe, Kitchanga : UNHCR / S. Schulman. See more

Floribert Mushi is a 36 year old married father of five. He too has adopted a child.

I am a nurse by profession but I used to be a farmer, too. I led a good life in Ngungu. Professionally, I was well paid and my farming was also doing well. I used to harvest 30 sacks of potatoes, 20 sacks of peas, and 18 sacks of beans which I would sell in Goma [Rwanda]. I also had livestock which I used to sell in our local market. But, by the time I fled, I only had 25 sheep which were all eaten by the militias.

I fled in November 2006 with nothing. Life was difficult in the camp; no shelter, no water, no food. We slept outside for 6 months. This situation made me a bitter, unhappy man. I was developing some hatred towards some people and ethnic groups.

In May 2008, I attended the HROC workshop, then AVP, conflict transformation, mediation and I also participated in setting up the peace committee of Mugunga. All these peace teachings have helped me a lot in dealing with day-to-day conflict in the camp. My wife also got a chance of participating in HROC and this helped us manage the trauma in us and in our children.

child soldier in N. Kivu, 2003: Der Spiegel

In March this year, my tent was torched by bad people in the camp and all the belongings perished in the fire. These guys were caught and the camp directing committee was suggesting to delete their names from the list of IDPs but I said, "No, let's settle this by peaceful ways of dialogue".

Now I use these teachings in resolving differences in my family and in the community. We thank you for such teachings for it helps us in difficult situations. Please take these teachings to the people in our villages for they are suffering and are very traumatized. I was there recently and they are undergoing a lot of things. They are in conflict and there is no peaceful cohabitation between the farmers and cattle owners. I strongly believe that they will change like we did in the camp.

[Prof Carl Taylor's 2004 study for Oxfam by points to climate and overpopulation as factors in these conflicts. - Ed.]

HROC (pronounced HE-rock) is a three-day experiential reconciliation workshop modeled on AVP that deals with the personal and community trauma from the violent conflicts in the region. An advanced workshop and a special workshop for HIV+ women have also been developed. See our blog on HROC in Rwanda and the video Icyizere : Hope; also AGLI, Friends Peace Teams and FPT Peaceways magazine; CYM workcamps in Rwanda, Kenya, Burundi, Uganda; Martin Gilbraith's photos of Quaker reconciliation work, videos of CEEACO Yearly Meeting and Women's Forum in S. Kivu 2008; and photos by children of Bududa Vocational Institute in Uganda.

Other sources -- N. Kivu refugee map Jan 2008, Emily Troutman's blog, Tyler Kacek's photos of Bulengo IDP camp, the work of other churches in AGLI. Women's stories in African Renewal Jan 2007. UN says Congo must prosecute rapists, offer compensation: Reuters 3 Mar 2011. On "blood minerals" see BBC 13 Nov 08, Global Post 4 Dec 09, and UN investigators' report to Security Council 23 Nov 09.

There is nothing I can do but search for love

...closing words from a survivor of the Rwanda genocide, in the video Icyizere : Hope from the African Great Lakes Initiative of Friends Peace Teams:

AGLI workshops on Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) take 10 people from one side of a conflict and 10 people from the other side for intensive encounters lasting three days, seeking something good in every person, a radical notion where neighbors and even family members have committed gruesome act. In Rwanda, this means Tutsi survivors of the genocide and the families of the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide. AGLI is now working in Burundi, Congo, and Kenya.

“Sense of Safety” is the first stage. It is common for participants to be wary of attending workshops fearing they might be a trap where they will be attacked, sent back to prison, or killed. Through experiential activities and cooperative exercises, participants begin to relax.
The second stage is “Remembrance and Mourning.” There are two Rwandan proverbs that emphasize the importance of speaking out about one’s pain: “The family that does not talk, dies” and “The man who is sick must tell the whole world.” Traditionally Rwandans and Burundians talk about their losses and talk through their grief with family and neighbors. Broken trust and dismantled families have impeded that intuitive process of healing, but it is widely accepted in the cultures here as an important step in the journey toward healing.
In the workshops a forum is created for participants to pay tribute to their losses and to share their grief with others. This process helps to humanize the “other” thereby laying the foundation for the third and final stage, “Reconnection.”

See also: other videos by Patrick Mureithi, the origin of Alternative to Violence (AVP) in prison work in the USA and Canada. "Peace cannot stay in small places", the story of its application by Friends in Rwanda since 1999. "Now, I am Human" testimonies from Rwanda and Burundi; Andrew Petersen's blog about environmental and peace work in Burundi, All Quiet on the Quaker Front. David Zarembka's Kenya Update and previous Kenya posts tagged in this blog.

Quaker peacework in Western Kenya

This is an excerpt from a compilation of messages from David Zarembka, compiled by Mary Gilbert of Friends Meeting at Cambridge MA. For more details, see the Kenyan Peacework anf FWCC Kenya blogs.

For a satellite view see Google Earth map of Kenya, zoom in on Eldoret. Places marked * are too small to show on Google Earth.
Kenya language map below is courtesy of Ethnologue.com. Click on the map for full screen showing Kikuyu (15), Kalenjin / Nandi (19), and Luhya (25) areas in the Western District.
David Zarembka, Coordinator, African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams (FPT):
May 1: We use the AVP (Alternatives to Violence) model of trauma healing, a look at violence, then a way forward... In *Kibera we have come face to face with the youth who battled police; whose friends were gunned down as they ran, or while uprooting the railway line; or when they had gone "shopping without money", as they call looting.

We have come face to face with intense mistrust and hatred as we bring Kikuyu and other tribes together... [Local chiefs told how] people ran to them for shelter or for advice on what to do. Their own lives were in danger. Nine of them lost all they had when their homes were burned by angry youth who [accused them of being] government supporters. One... cried when he saw 8 year old kids going to battle with arrows.

(Uzima is the Swahili word for wholeness, male vigour, perfection. Here it could be glossed as "warrior" - Ed.)

[In April] we started a series of one-day workshops for 120 uzima youth leaders in the border committees... [they told of] burning tires to block roads, ...making arrows, shopping without money; shooting arrows, stoning, killing... people are screaming and running, others are throwing stones and arrows, whistles and trumpets are blowing, gunshots and tear gas everywhere, dead bodies lying about with heads cut off, cows running all over... singing war songs.

Our aim is to let these young adults talk with no fear of victimization. Then we look at trauma; its causes, effects and consequences, We look at violence and how we can react nonviolently to violence situations. We look at cycles of violence and how the graph moves up every time root issues are not addressed. We look at the AVP themes of Affirmation, Communication, Cooperation, and Community based on trust and Creative Conflict resolution. We challenge ourselves: can we build a different society where we affirm each other rather than think of Kikuyus as thieves, Luos as arrogant and violent, Luhya as cooks and watchmen; Kalenjin
as cattle rustlers and Kisii as violent... towards the end, they get to hear what others say about their group and the whole issue of stereotypes... the difference at the end of the day has been tremendous. In Kibera, which began with Kikuyu youth walking alone, Luos and Luhyas alone, they were going for lunch together...

May 20: I do not personally attend any of the gatherings mentioned below except the May 30 ecumenical service. As a Mzungu (white person) I would be a distraction from the issues at hand. My presence might give rise to added suspicion.At the Quaker Peace Network - East Africa meeting, Eden Grace of FUM commented that this was the most exciting thing that Quakers were doing in the world!

Do you agree? Or are there wonderful other things going on around the Quaker world that are just as exciting? We are just a group of ordinary concerned Quakers trying to bring about healing and reconciliation. What is most interesting is that we don't really know what we are doing as we move forward step by step as "the way opens." We trust that God will lead us and give us the right words to use. We had to become accustomed to using the neutral words "returning community" for the Kikuyu from the IDP [internally displaced people] camps and "receiving community" for the Nandi [aka Kalenjin] and Luhya whom we used to call "aggressors."

Yesterday for the first time since January I met the Red Cross official responsible for *Lumakanda on the street here. Later I saw two Red Cross Land Rovers and then a UN vehicle racing through town. (Why are they racing through town stirring up so much dust?) I speculate that there was a meeting at the government offices of Lugari District to plan the return of the IDP at *Turbo to their home communities! We will see.

How is the reconciliation work going? [Following up on FCPT Friends Church Peace Team] yesterday [we] went to the Turbo IDP camp... to a Bible study meeting arranged by the 32 pastors at the camp. This was the first time that something like this had been done in the Turbo camp... Before we took the food last week we were told that there would be 60 people. When we took the food, we were told that there would be 102... At the actual meeting on Saturday there were 170 people! ... The presentation started about 11:00 AM and went to 4:00 PM... People did not want to break for lunch. There was rapt attention...

It is amazing how such a simple thing could be so effective. The presenters were three women, Rose Imbega, Lydia Bokassa, and Jodi Richmond and one man, Joshua Lilande. [It reminded me of the work of] Margaret Fell, Mary Dyer, Elizabeth Frye and all the other Quaker women... one of the pastors commented that they didn't know that women could speak so well about the Bible and its issues. Most churches in Kenya are male-dominated and many do not allow women pastors.

Mt Elgon, on the western border of Kenya in the Rift Valley

Last week we had two AVP [Alternatives to Violence] workshops here in Lugari District. One was for youth from the Turbo IDP camp. Here the interesting point was one person who had fled the violence on Mt Elgon coming to Lugari District and then had to flee again during the post-election violence.

There was also a workshop here in *Lumakanda. One of the participants was a 27 year old Kikuyu man who had rented a room in town, but his parents were still in the IDP camp. His shop and house had been destroyed during the violence. His wife of six months had been a Luhya and they separated during the violence. This is very common; the stress of the violence destroyed many mixed ethnic marriages and their families.

Today... Malesi Kinaro, Getry Agizah, and Joseph Shamala are conducting a basic Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshop for people from diverse communities (including the Turbo IDP camp). Next week the two-week long Healing Companion training, which had been postponed in January, will start. We will be bringing Adrien Niyongabo from Burundi, Theoneste Bizimana and Chrisostome Nshimiyimana from Rwanda, and Zawadi Nikuze from North Kivu, Congo to lead the training. We hope to have ten people from the [Kenya Rift Valley] Mt Elgon conflict, who formerly participated in the HROC basic workshop, and also the best candidates from the present training.

The Great Rift Valley
Next week we will be doing two advanced AVP workshops at *Lumakanda Friends Church. For each workshop we will bring ten Kikuyu youth from the IDP camp and ten Luhya youth from the community. This will be the first workshop where we will be bringing the two sides of the Kenyan conflict together as we do in Rwanda and Burundi. I think this will work out fine.

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Gladys and I were at the Quaker Peace Network--East Africa (QPN-EA) meeting held at the Friends Peace Centre -- *Lubao. This consisted of mostly Kenyans with two Tanzanians, and four people from Uganda (including Barbara Wybar, AGLI representative currently at Bududa). The most interesting point I learned was that a high percentage of the youth in Nairobi who participated in the violence and were killed by the police were Luhya. [The majority of Quakers in Western Kenya are from this group -- Ed.]

Also in certain parts of Lugari District it was the Luhya youth who did all the damage. In western Kenya there was a tendency to think that it was the other groups -- Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luo, etc--who were the more violent ones. Is it a natural tendency to think that "others" are more violent than your own group?

We shared our activities and those from Kenya discussed how we could work together in our peacemaking and reconciliation activities.It is the Friends Church Peace Team which has been most active here. On Thursday thirteen of the FCPT counselors held a listening session at the Turbo District office in Uasin Gisu District. This is on the Nandi (a Kalenjin group) side of the road from Lugari, which is mostly Luhya. Many government officials, local politicians, church leaders, community elders, etc., participated.

At first they were suspicious of the mostly Luhya group that they were meeting with, but in time they began to open up. They mostly complained about the Kikuyu -- some of it true, some false, some stereotyping, some bitterness, and some excuses for the violence. They were not very happy to have them back unless the Kikuyu were willing to fit into and accept their Nandi culture. There was little of that "live and let live" concept needed for diverse people to co-exist peacefully. By the end of the meeting, the decision was for the FCPT counselors to visit seven Nandi communities to meet the people at the village level...

On Sunday we had a debriefing/organizing meeting at the Peace Centre and for seven weekdays, between Monday (yesterday) and Tuesday (next week), four or five person teams will visit the seven villages for grassroots listening sessions. I was most surprised to learn that in three of these villages, in the interior of the district, people may not know Swahili! We have one women counselor who is a Nandi (married to a Luhya) and knows the language of the Nandi. So she will go to the three interior meetings to translate if needed. Note that if a person does not know Swahili (or English) he or she cannot talk to a Nandi or Luhya without a translator.

On Friday of last week, FCPT had a listening session on the *Lugari (Luhya) side at the boundary. Again the team of nineteen heard many accusations against the Kikuyu.

The result from this meeting is that next week, on Thursday [29 May 2008], the FPCT listening team will go to *Mbagara, the place with the greatest violence in Lugari District, for a listening session with the community. In this case the whole team will go and hopefully the crowd will divide up into smaller groups as we did at the Turbo IDP camp. The next day, May 30, there will be an ecumenical healing service open to everyone. People from the Turbo side will come. Gladys and I talked to the pastors at the IDP camp and they plan on coming. This is what real Christianity is all about! ...

See also earlier postings in this blog about Kenya.