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Unexpected focus : gender reconciliation

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Today we started the seminar with reports from each small group about the ideas they had been given through society, family, experience, etc., concerning the relative value of their group when compared with others.

I had expected the discussion to be a bit tense, with the backdrop of Hutu and Tutsi conflicts dating back decades. But what ended up dominating today's discussion was something different entirely.

Here are many of the people who attended the Reconciled seminar.

Women are a distinct minority in the seminar; there are only four here among the 50 or 60 who have shown up so far. But on this day, they had a lot to say.

One of the questions the small groups considered was the messages they had received concerning their gender in relation to the other. Across the board it was confirmed that the value of women was considerably inferior to that of men.

They shared many examples. And this is where things got interesting.

Because they were asked not only to cite the messages they had received, but then they were asked to cite God's opinion on the matter to see whether the two jibed.

We had already talked about Jesus's repeated affirmation in Scripture that we were were to love our neighbor as ourselves, meaning that we had to put our neighbor on the same level of worthiness as ourselves. But then they mentioned other Scripture, in particular Galatians 3:28-29.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

And then, as if to make sure that it was understood that loving our neighbors as ourselves included wives, they cited Ephesians 5:27-29.

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

So is it possible to love God as Jesus said while not considering our neighbors (women and men, Hutu and Tutsi) as equal to ourselves?

NO? BUT ...

It was agreed that the answer to that question was no, but many began then to talk about other passages.

It was one woman in particular who asked about the idea of women submitting to men. Didn't that suggest that men were of greater value? She wasn't arguing for women' rights, she was simply trying to wrestle with different ideas she had received.

Another woman asked about a wife who is beaten by her husband. Did she have to stay in that marriage in forgiveness even if the husband continued to beat her?

AVOIDING THE CULTURE TRAP

Of course I came into this with my Western mindset, and I wanted to be careful not to impose my cultural thinking on their situation. The Bridge beleives that the key to our work is encouraging local people to develop models for peace and development that fit their culture.

We wanted to stick to the broad ideals and let them work out the applications for their own culture.

But we did ask one question: "Is it possible for a man to beat his wife day after day and still consider her equal in value to himself? Is it possible that he can do that and still follow the principle to love her as he loves his own body?"

"If not, then it seems we have a choice to make: Do we follow what our culture says or do we believe what Scripture has said? I don't have the answer for you. It's up to you guys to figure out how to follow Truth in Burundi. I have to do it in Paris and the United States."

It was a great example of the challenges that we face in the business of reconciliation. We need to repent from false ideas that affirm inequality if we are to have any hope of the forgiveness and repentance needed to see groups reconciled.

And those of us from the West, though perhaps more subtle and sophisticated in the way we talk about it (or not talk about it) still do not see women as completely equal. We still have received notions about women from past generations that go against the general truth of equality.

Burundians are not alone in their need to repent from these past notions. And we have little to say to them if we are not willing to look into our own hearts and turn from notions and actions that work to keep women in a second-class status.

ENCOURAGING SIGNS

I was encouraged to see that there was not major opposition coming from the young men that made up the majority of those in attendance. Most of the young men affirmed the value of their sisters, and nodded in agreement that when it was suggested that much needed to change.

One young brother and sister from the Congo later invited me to address their Congolese student group on campus on the women's rights subject. My schedule won't allow it, but I was encouraged to see the desire of young people to move to another place.

That bodes well for the possibility for reconciliation in this country and in this region. There is a generation in Burundi and Rwanda and Congo and elsewhere in this war-gutted region who have seen what the status quo has brought them.

It has destroyed their past an it threatens their future. They don't see holding onto the flaws of tradition as a quaint luxury. They know that it is vital that they root out the flaws in their tradition and redeem them with traditions based in equality, love and respect.

Today, I saw hopeful signs that men and women, Hutu and Tutsi, Europeans and Africans ... can come together to make some progress.

Reconcilié, le Seminaire

Wednesday, March 5

"God's sun travels over the entire world, but it sleeps in Rwanda."

So goes a Rwandan proverb shared by a brother during a group exercise during the debut of the version française of the Reconciled Seminar this afternoon.

On this first of three days with about 60 students enrolled in the seminar at Hope of Africa University in Bujumbura, we were able to cover the basics of reconciliation and finished with a group exercise in which participants listed ideas about their own value and the value of their people that they had received from various sources.

Here is the illustration about the wall of mistrust, pain, etc. that separates people on the two sides of conflict, making it virtually impossible to settle an issue by going directly to our adversary.

We were simply trying to get an idea of the types of ideas we had all received from our infancy about ourselves and others.

It was interesting to hear the list of things that they all had heard. It got tense at times when some people started to mention "the arrogance of the Tutsis" or "the jealousy of the Hutus," but this group of people understood that the point was not to say whether or not they agreed with the ideas, but that this is what had been given to them.

Students break up into small groups to discuss the ideas they've been given by society about their value

We also began to touch on the idea of the relative value given to men and women at this point. Tomorrow, we'll go into depth about the results of all of this conditioning. The basic idea is that we need to realize what we've received so that we can compare it to "truth" and reject it if necessary.

Much of what we were hearing in this discussion is going to have to go, if our standard of truth is Jesus's teaching on equality.

COLONIAL VESTIGES

We saw clearly that not all of what we receive from society, even our own group, casts us as superior to others.

One idea that came up in all three groups was the inferiority that they all had learned when confronted with white people.

Though intellectually they knew and wanted to believe in their equality to Europeans, everything about their history, and their present for that matter, confirmed the belief that they were inferior.

Collegue Steve Thrall had an interesting role as the only white person participating in the week's activities.

Not only that, but even among their own culture and families, sentences about blacks as opposed to whites are laced with self criticism and even self hatred.

It was interesting to share with them that I had had pretty much the same exprience as a black American. Often, the worst things I ever heard said about black people came from black lips.

And, I have learned over the years, that many of those ideas remain in my mind and have taken the form of shame in my own life.

So, imagine the difficulty of trying to deal with forgiveness and needing to feel equal to someone who has wronged me or my people when I already feel inferior to that person. See the challenge?

We'll see where this goes tomorrow.

Reconciliation for Iraq?

Interesting interview with young journalist Alex Kingsbury on the Daily Show. He's spent a considerable amount of time in Iraq and has come away with some interesting conclusions about what is needed there.

You can bet my ears perked up on this one. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, skip ahead to about the 5:30 mark.

Bravo, Florida

Little by little, some states are starting to get it.

Florida joined the tiny ranks of states that have officially apologized for slavery in the United States.

Maybe someday soon we will understand that the past does matter and take this step as a nation.

By the way, I was interested to hear French President Nicolas Sarkozy extolling the past when talking about French relations with the British yesterday.

This is the same person who said the past didn't matter when he refused to apologize for French atrocities committed during its war with Algeria. To make this dichotomy even more striking is the fact that Sarko was talking about World War I (1914-1918) when he said that France would never forget and that it had no right to forget that Brits had made sacrifices for them.

In contrast, he wanted to talk about the future rather than apologize for the past of the much more recent Algerian War (1954-1962).

Again, this underlines our human need to keep our value. No one can exist long without a sense of self worth, and apologizing is a blow to our sense of value as a people or as individuals. But we must understand that it also gives back a sense of value to the victims of our acts, and this is a necessary step in the process of reconciliation.

Just say the words

Wednesday March 5, 2008

(I'm publishing stuff I wrote by hand in Burundi. After the initial posting I will redate them so they show up on the date they were written.)

After a day of talking and planning, today we got busy on our first day of teaching.

The last time I was here in Bujumbura we were talking mostly about the need for inner healing as we seek to be reconciled with others. We can't be reconciled with others, we stressed, unless we are first reconciled with ourselves, and with God.

We ended up focusing mainly on forgiveness even though we all agreed that reconciliation happens when forgiveness meets repentance. We left Burundi with a conviction that we had to better understand repentance if we were going to be of any usefulness in this country?

For more than a year we worked on coming up with a way to teach the two sides of reconciliation so that they could be easily understood, and much more importantly, in a way that would give people practical tools for putting the principles into action.

We watched clips and movies about victims and injustice and conflict. We interviewed people from various cultures and backgrounds: French, Jews, Germans, Zimbabweans, Black and White Americans, Asians, Armenians ...

We brought it all together into what we hoped would be a useful tool, first trying it out on a trip to the States in January at a small church in Kent, Ohio.

But now it was game time. The real deal. We were no longer talking to people about forgiving their mother for not coming to their high school basketball game. We were talking about war. Killing and maiming of parents and children alike.

BY WHAT RIGHT?

As we stood in the chapel of Hope of Africa University and listened to students sing worship songs for their weekly devotional service at the Christian University, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I had no right to be speaking to these young men and women.

By what right did I come to teach them something about reconciliation.

One of the young students helps out in our reconciliation illustration.

Had I been through the trauma of 11 years of ethnic fighting and civil war? Had I had members of my family killed, as I was assured was the case for almost EVERYONE in attendance? Had I been asked to forgive the people who had brutally murdered or injured me or my loved ones, watching them walk around freely in my neighborhood or in my school or in my workplace?

What did I know about forgiving like that?

JUST SAY THE WORDS, AND THEN LIVE THEM

As the singing went on, people continued to pour in from the rain and mud outside to join the service until there were about 500 in attendance. Here's a picture of some of the crowd. Below is another shot from the back of the room.

It seemed like more people than the last time I was here. This was possibly the largest crowd I had ever addressed in my life, in fact.It had been a long time since I felt this nervous before speaking.

When they introduced me, I was comforted to learn by a show of hands that the majority of the people in attendance had heard me when I was here in 2006. They greeted me back with smiles, and it was then that I remembered something someone had told me long ago about speaking to people about difficult subjects:

"If you've got the words, then just say the words," an older woman at a black church in the States told me a few years ago. "Don't worry about what they gonna think. Just say the words.

"And then live the words."

So I said the words I had.

They weren't mine anyway. These words had come from people like them. People who had suffered and forgiven. People who had hated and loved. People who had been treated like the scum of the earth but who had chosen to inherit it through peace rather than striking out in vengeance.

When I finished, I wasn't sure whether the words had struck home or not. Especially since I was speaking in French and then being translated into English by a young Burundian named Alliance.

But afterward, the response was extremely positive. People seemed to connect with the image of the scales that we used to illustrate how both sides in a conflict have a built-in need to keep their God-given value.

And in the end, people here -- especially the young -- seem hungry for peace. When it was over, several people came up to me and began talking about the need to keep sharing this message here. And they had only heard Part 1. On Friday we'll be coming back for the repentance side of the discussion.

"We are ready to do what it takes to get past this place," Alliance told me later. "We've had enough of this. It may be hard to forgive, but we have no choice."

I guess we'll just keep saying the words. Pray for us all to be able to live them.

Techno Burundi style

4 in the morning.

woke up to go to the bathroom (stomach is better, thank you). music is pumping from the nightclub nearby. techno type beat.

then i heard an interesting, arabic type mix in the music. it sounded like they had mixed in à muslim call to prayer with this music.

then i realized it was à muslim càll to prayer. it was 4 something. one of the times for faithful muslims to wake up and pray.

that was on the south side of the catholic hospitality house where i'm staying. and on the north side was pumping techno.

strangely, it actually sounded cool together. there's some image or spiritual message i should be pulling from this i guess.

but give me à break, it's 5 in the morning.

Rasta preacher

Another difference between last time and this: Last time I ate and drink everything with no intestinal problems.

This time I started getting a bit gurgly on Thursday and then had a full-fledged problem on Friday.

Thankfully I was able to finish part 2 of the morning chapel message, where there was a packed house of probably 400 to 500 students.

I would later learn in a discussion with a young man from Congo that at least a portion of the people were there to see the Rastaman preacher.

That would be me, by the way.

Word was starting to get around that there was a guy with dread locks who was a pastor. Apparently this doesn't compute in most people's minds here.

How can a man of God have such a fleshly appearance? It's interesting, I told the young man, because for months leading up to the trip I  considered cutting all my hair off so that it wouldn't become an obstacle to the message being heard.

''No!'' he said. ''It's very important for us to see this. It's exactly what we're talking about  in the seminar.

''We're so used to judging people based on our culture and traditions rather than seeing that everyone has value that comes from God.

''When they hear you speak, they know that you are speaking truth, and they are forced to drop this idea from their heads.''

So my hair has become a sort of object lesson on our need to reject the human tendency to judge everyone's value based on our culture's definition of value rather than accepting the inherent value of every human being.

WELL RECEIVED

This has truly been an amazing time. I would never have guessed the message would be this well received.

So far we've been invited by five different people to go to the Congo, two from Kenya and one from Rwanda to do the same teaching in those places.

We want to focus on having a real impact here in Burundi first, but it is encouraging to see the hunger for a way toward peace.

Today, we finished up the seminar had some excellent and powerful moments as people brought forward sheets of paper on which were written the names of people they have been reluctant to forgive.

We sang as the names were covered in a red cloth signifying the blood of Christ and then covered by a white cloth signifying his purity and forgiveness.

The singing went on and on and people were obviously touching a new place. Several told me so afterward.

One young man talked about how his family was held hostage for a month during the war here, and how he watched his father be tortured for days.

Others spoke of watching people be killed. Others spoke of the daily stress of going to shop in an area held by the other tribe and having to lie about their origins in order to get food.

And then living in terror that they would be found out and killed.

''There's not one person in this country who is not carrying deep wounds,'' one man said. ''If there is someone, then I want to see that person.''

Hopefully we are going to see some progress toward healing some of those wounds and assuring that this doesn't happen again.

The taste of war

the taste of war

Another thing that I'm aware of during this visit that I wasn't on my first is the taste of war.

I can feel the danger that I never really felt before.

Having grown up in relative peacetime and having never really lived in an atmosphere of war (though from time to time we worried about bombs in the subway in Paris), this is a taste I hadn't known.

Kind of like the gooey loaf of partially baked bread made with manioc they've been serving often on this trip. I don't particularly like it (it's a little bland, a little bitter), but I can see there must be more to it for those who live here.

This taste of war is also bland. Aside from the police and military you see with machine guns, it isn't blatant. You get used to those guys, most of them seem like boys.

But when you get closer to people, closer to their hearts and their reality, you start to see what you couldn't see before.

Notice the guards outside the classroom where Augustin is teaching.

Fear. Fear that time is running out. Fear that the reconciliation process will bog down in politics as usual. Fear that it is only a matter of time before a key assassination or kidnapping or whatever sets it all off again.

Though the war hear has been over since 2004, you can taste that this is not peace. It's a bitter taste. Not too bitter to swallow. But I know that they taste the bitterness that I can't imagine.

I think it hit me at the University last night when one of the men showing up for night classes got out of his car with about six men armed with machine guns. They hung around near his car and near the classroom as he took notes.

Here's a picture of one of the guards. Sorry the quality is not great. I have to do this with my phone in order to post them on the blog from here.

This is completely normal here. His position in the government makes him a marked man. Or at least he must prepare for it.

This, and my discussion with Olivier earlier helped me understand how Burundians feel everyday walking amidst the reminders that the absence of conflict they are living under is not peace, and that it could fall apart at any time.

It helped me understand even more theurgency I sense in my partners here who are seeking to spread our concept of teaching reconciliation more broadly, and hoping to influence the way the country  goes about seeking reconciliation.

More soon. Have to go to another session.

Please hold us up for Saturday, when we will be presenting our message before a group of VIPs from the government and other influential positions. They zill most surely be showing up with their armed guards.

Pray that something we share will strike a chord with someone in position to make a difference in this country.

RDV Divine

I went out this morning to get some Euros changed into Burundian francs, which means coming out of the bank feeling quite rich and bulky, pockets bulging.

I changed 300 Euros and came out with a mind boggling 528,000 Fbu, as they call them here. since the largest bill they gave me was a 10,000, it makes for quite an impressive stack of cash.

Anyway, I was talking with my colleague Steve about my desire to do some interviews with people here in order to do some writing. But with our busy schedule of teaching and meetings, and with a general lack of cultural knowledge about how to go about it, I was doubtful that I'd be able to do it.

And then on our way back from the bank, a young man walking beside us says hello in English. He had overheard our English and wanted to talk a little.

We were glad to oblige. After a bit of small talk about his English we got on the subject of the economy and politics and the need for peace in the country.

He had a civil engeneering job with a British company that left the country folowing the interethnic fighting of the 1990s.

''I need peace,'' said Olivier, a slight man, about 35 years old maybe. ''I don't need political talk and political parties, I need peace in this country so we can get on with our lives.''

The more he talked the more I realized Olivier was exactly the type of voice I was hoping to find.

Our teaching focuses a great deal on how individuals and groups need to reject false ideas of inferiority and superiority, or that anyone has inherent worthiness -- regardless of good or bad deds they may have committed -- than anyone else.

We use the image of a scale as a key illustration that we want to stick in people's minds.

And here was Olivier, dropped down from heaven like a posterboy for everything we've been sharing.

''My mother was Tutsi; my father was Hutu, he said. ''So when the fighting started everyone wanted to get me.

''I was in secondary school at the time. And the attackers would target secondary schools.

''When Tutsi groups would attack, they would seek out all the Hutu, and they would take me.

''When Hutu groups would attack the school, they would seek the Tutsis, so they would take me.

''I don't know how I survived.''

Though the period was a nightmare for him, Olivier said he is thankful for the perspective he has.

''I know what happened,'' he said. ''I saw Hutus killing Tutsis. And I saw Tutsis killing Hutu.

''But I was also saved by Hutus when some of their own wanted to take me. And on other occassions, I was saved by Tutsis when other Tutsis wanted to kill me.''

He illustrated the scene of being litterally in the center of a tug-of-war as killers and saviors of the same ethnic group battled over him.

For Olivier, the idea that both good and bad are in all people is an undeniable fact of his existence.

Live from Burundi

Here I am in Burundi again.

Im in my room at the Par, the Catholic hospitality house here in Bujumbura where I stayed last time, typing on my portable phone.

It's funny how different it is this time now that it is not new.

Had to hit the ground running on meetings with the planning committee etc. and Im not being received like a first timer.

I almost feel at home this time. Like I'm not really a visitor or something. It's cool. I feel like I could live here.

Anyway, before writing further we will see if this is something i can actually transfer to the computers in the internet café.

Heres me at the Par in my new shirt from the airport in Kenya.

More soon.