Come here to be friends.

Hello all ...

Yesterday, Friday,  marked the end of the week at Camp Valaqua with the Planting Peace International Guests.  Today,  they had the day off.  This evening, Diego, our translator, was taking most of them on an evening excursion in Calgary.  Gopar is visiting some friends.  Tomorrow, they have most of the day off,  but by about 6 pm,  we will be setting up for the evening opening event, which will have all 12 international guests,  (Uganda, Nigeria, Palestine/West Bank, Colombia, Israel, plus one IVEPer from each of the Dom Republic and Jordon) present, along with 2 people from MCC Canada in Wpg,  4 from MCC in Sask,  and about 20 from Alberta, including MCC staff.   We will work together (we hope) for 3 days, including also one public event hosted at First Menn Church in the evening.

The theme continues to be "How do we stop killing each other", with sub themes for each of 6 sessions.  Monday, "Listening, and  "Speaking/Intervention".    Tuesday,  "Cross Cultural Dynamics"  both sessions.   Wednesday,  "Understanding",  and "Forgiveness".   We are proposing that each of the first 4 sessions be shortened by 30 minutes,  and that 30 minutes will be taken up by each of the "Planting Peace" Countries to tell us Canadians and each other about the situation in their countries.  Uganda,  Colombia, Paletine/West Bank, Israel.    During this past week,  each evening, at campfire,  we would interview several of the guests,  and, in about 5 minutes, they would all do a really good job of introducing the campers to the situations from which they have come.  The last day fireside, (which I missed)  introduced Nicolas from East Jerusalem,  Usama from West Bank/Bethlehem,  and Diego (our translator, originally from Colombia).   At the end of their 20-minute interview,  the campers,  a bunch of tired, often unruly older teenagers with all kinds of dysfunctioning issues,  cheered and clapped.  (Kim will summarize those interviews when she gets a chance and we will send them to you as well.)

The camp director told us yesterday that the impact of this group of visitors, led in the sessions by Gopar and Sani from Nigeria, has been very significant.  There has never been, she said, such a marked improvement in behaviour of some campers, at Valaqua, over such a short and intense period of time.  As I mentioned earlier,  we have a strong invitation to repeat this next year.  Would we do it the same way?  Would we bring as many guests?  Would we bring them a week earlier so they could get to know each other and be more adequately introduced to the Camp Agenda and the Camp personnel?  Perhaps all of those.  

A few of us visited for an hour or so with Usama and Nicolas last night, after returning to Calgary, where the group is now, in the cold of Calgary (down to 15 degrees today, and colder tomorrow) snuggled into normal beds at the FCJ (Faithful Companions of Jesus) Center.   Usama lives in Bethlehem and works with Wi'am, a social organization working with young people.  He cannot travel freely, and has not, he said, in about 22 years.  He is 25.  A Palestinian living in East Jerusalem has privileges and can travel quite easily.  Nicolas can travel to see Usama, but Usama can not ever get permission to leave the West Bank to go anywhere.  And yet, when someone asked if he could get permit to move away permanently,  he said that in that case, the Israeli Government would go out of its way to get him that permit quickly.  The relentless pressure that Israel puts on Palestinians living in the West Bank,  the always increasing Settlements that take up all the hilltops and are populated with subsidized Jewish mostly brought in from Europe and the United States, the road system that now makes sure they never meet each other as people .. (.the only Israeli the average Palestinian ever sees these days, is a young man or woman at the end of a big gun, at any of the 600 checkpoints that keep Palestinians from going to their jobs on time, from visiting their families, from running their businesses) ... that pressure, which changes forms all the time as the Israelis invent new and subtle ways to create frustration, seems clearly designed to provoke,  to mock, to humiliate, and in the end, to drive them out.

At huge risk of misrepresenting entire and very complicated Conflicts,  Colombia has a kind of violence that seems to be almost randomly indiscriminate.  People  with any property are victims of extortion, kidnapping, murder, all the time.  And if you are living in a community where either the army, or the Paramilitary or the Guerrillas occupy,  then the others assume that all citizens living in that place, have become sypmathizers, and  they become targets of the other two armed groups.  Uganda ... the LRA and the violence to children and that long-term trauma suffered by the entire country comes quickly to the center of that story along with immense poverty, the presence of a military and neighboring militaries, and a long history and capacity for brutality.   Israel/Palestine ... so very complicated with Zionism, Christian Zionism,  the immense power and self assured "righteousness" of the Israelis, who seem wiling to oppress, humiliate, persecute relentlessly, as they have themselves been victims and who have a zealousness that comes from a profound understanding of their own "being chosen" status.   And, as Aylam says, from their capacity to keep reminding themselves and the entire world, that they are victims.  And that that history justifies a lot of oppressive and brutal violence to other people now.   Rob Baerg, our Board member, after visiting the West Bank 3 years ago, said that they seem now to be willing to do to the Palestinians what the Germans did to them. Aylam and Sharon say that some of the Peace Searching people in Israel don' t even use the word peace anymore,  It is a search for Justice.  They are not sure that just bringing people together to meet each other as human beings and then learning to talk together, will resolve anything.  But many others, experienced leaders, say that that basic principle is the one that will, in the end, lead to any kind of peace in the Middle East, and anywhere else.   Nigeria ... the north, being mostly Muslim, and the South, with its advantaged history of English schooling ... from which comes a constant imbalance of power, that looks, or can look like a religious war, but which often degenerates (as if war can degenerate any further) into mobs running through the towns and killing the"other"  people.   And then we have Canada, where we throw more young people into jail than any other country in the world, per capita, as if somehow, we are going to eliminate unruly behaviour by locking them up.   I wonder what the other countries would say to us about that.  In every case,  people are suffering, and in every case,  peace making work, and peace seeking people ... are needed ... to live lives that bless rather than curse their neighbors.  Elias Chacour,  the Bishop in Haifa said to us, sternly last year ... don't come here to pick sides.  Come here to be friends.  That is our hope, he said.  He is a Palestinian.