Planting Peacer Profile: Aylam Bar-Shalom

I was invited to fly this summer to Calgary, Alberta, in Canada as a young adult from Israel, and meet with a group of eight young internationals from across the world. The program, which we were invited to attend was called “Planting Peace” and was run by MCC Alberta (Mennonite Central Committee). The program was led by Kim Thiessen and Abe Janzen, who had invited us and stayed in contact with each of us through the whole process of travel which included for some of us complicated visa arrangements. At last we met in Calgary, a group of representatives from Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Nigeria and Uganda.
Our group has already bonded and become friendly very quickly and has been enjoying each other’s company very much. This success is thanks to the winner combination of such a group of warm, open mindedness and hearty people alongside a good, relaxed setting outside the busy and stressful worlds we come from. Kim and Abe were very supportive and took care to notice our needs and take good care of us. So were the rest of our hosts. It was good that we bonded so successfully. It gave us the energy to really have a key role in the social and educational aspects of Camp Valaqua.
Camp Valaqua, which is held yearly for several weeks every summer, has been taking place in the same beautiful forest for about fifty years now. We arrived at the camp just before the campers began to arrive, and went to put our luggage in the cabins we were to spend our nights in. We were given one cabin for men and another for women. Surprisingly for me, I had found myself enjoying the time I spent with the other men in our cabin. This was unlike many of my past experiences of gender separation. Actually, being separated from the girls gave us a chance to get much closer and bond as men. On a separate issue, I was also very surprised to see how well Camp Valaqua operated, how much cooperation took place and how nice everyone was to one another, staff and campers. Also, as a vegan, I was so relieved and happy to find the kitchen staff prepared special food for me including some excellent desserts!
The camp consists of a number of large wood paned buildings and cabins surrounded by a gorgeous spruce and pine forest. There was so much wild life to see, and I enjoyed especially an early morning walk I had on the second day on which I spotted a pair of fawns in the meadow who walked very close to me. I was fascinated by all the huge colorful mushrooms, and the lush moss, that cover the damp forest floor. A nice wide river flows just a few minutes walk away from the center of the camp.
As internationals from conflict struck regions of the world we were invited to the camp to share our stories with campers and the staff. We had been asked to tell our personal stories, share hopes, and political information about the countries we came from, regarding the hardships we have seen. As a very colorful group of activists, peace workers, victims of oppression, and oppressors we had a very rich and complex collective story to tell. We had several campfire sessions in which each of us was interviewed live, in front of the campers about ourselves. In my turn I told the campers about El-Araqib, a Bedouin village which is now struggling against ongoing destruction. I told of my experiences there as an activist and a little about my vision for struggling towards the end of all forms of oppression – Sexism, Racism, Classism, Ageism, Specisism and so forth.
Unfortunately, and to my disappointment there was no formal attempt to make connection between our stories and the responsibility the 1’st world; Canada included, has in creating and feeding those conflicts. Israel, for example is supported quite blindly by the American and Canadian rich governments and attempts to speak against that support are regarded as anti-Semitic and as attempts to support Terror organizations. Nothing was mentioned about the Native Canadian Indians, who too have suffered so much oppression and poverty, under the rule of Colonialist Europe and ever since. After all they are human victims of oppression who live just around the corner. I can only hope we will be able to take a step up in the facing these facts, this week when we get together with other Canadians our age.
Anyhow, each day, after breakfast, we all walked down a path leading to an open chapel in the woods for a morning ceremony, which included singing, dancing and short educational sessions with Gopar and Sani, partner peacemakers from Nigeria. Gopar is a Christian, and Sani is a Muslim and they work together in their home land, trying to ease the tension and establish peaceful relationships between Christian and Muslim communities, in a land that has seen much violent conflict between these two groups.
Our group was asked to put on short skits, as interludes into the lessons the Nigerians were to lead. We put together funny little acts of children stories such as “Ferdinand the Bull” and “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and made the campers laugh. I accompanied these skits with my guitar. The main subject chosen for the lessons, led mostly by Gopar, was “Journey on the mountain”, seeing as that was to be the main activity in the fifth day of camp. On a mountain shaped cardboard module, boxes were inserted with words on either side. Each pair of words symbolized an obstacle and a positive solution which was to be unveiled at the end of the session.
It felt strange being a secular Jew in an almost entirely Mennonite Christian atmosphere, especially during Chapel. I took part in the singing and dancing, which generally was fun, sometimes hushing in the parts which were strange for me, such as “There’s no god like Jehovah” and “Jesus loves us”.
After Chapel, each day, we were separated into activities, such as camping skills, Archery (no live targets here), Wall climbing, canoeing, swimming, etc. I mostly enjoyed climbing the professional climbing wall they had set in the middle of the forest. I became friendly with a certain camper who later on turned out to be teased a lot for his difficulties to fit in. He really reminded me of myself at his age, but he does not have a supportive family to lie back on, living in a foster group home. I was asked to stay close to him and take part in the activities he was to take part in, and I did so gladly. I especially enjoyed canoeing with him and playing pirate wars with the other boys in the river.
I had a great time getting to know the other internationals and their stories. I will tell of a few. Daniel, from Colombia is such a nice, warm guy and we had loads of laughs together. He has told me of the fight against militarism in Colombia, which is split up into governmental army forces and Guerilla warriors, who all strike terror across the country. Diana and Rosemary, come from two different parts of Uganda, which suffer from of an unsteady shifting economical favoritism, depending on the current ruler’s origin.
Rosemary is one of the most warm and outspoken women I’ve yet to meet. She had told us so beautifully about her work with girls, who ran away from “the bush”, where they were abducted as children by the rebels. These girls, who escaped after years of rape and brutality, after being forced to become children warriors and sometimes kill their own family members and friends, in threat of their own lives, have a long way to go in reclaiming their freedom and building their own lives again from the rubble. Rosemary works with these girls in a special educational center in which she teaches simple basic skills, such as cooking, baking, sewing, housekeeping and even jewelry making. Rosemary brought with her a big sack full of the jewelry these girls have made, in order to sell it in Canada and send the rest to sell in the US. The money made from these sales could help start out these girls lives.
Alejandra, whose mother tongue and sole spoken language is Spanish, needs regular translators with her throughout the whole event. She is from Colombia and she works with children in a beautiful city divided by gangs and street wars. She told several stories of success she had with these kids. In one account, one of the kids she works with was walking home from school, through a neighborhood ruled by a gang known to bully people who didn’t ask passage permission from them. He was surrounded by the gang who bullied him and told him to take all his clothes off. He was about to do so, when one of the gang members, who recognized him from a conflict resolution workshop held at the school told them to let him go and not harm him.