Ecumenical Peace Building in Zambia

Last week I had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony for the Africa Peacebuilding Institute at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, a city about five hours north of here. MEF was founded a long time ago by the World Council of Churches and the African Council of Churches (I hope I got that right), and is a training center for African church leaders. Once a year MCC sponsors a six week training course in Peacebuilding for African church leaders. This year there were participants from as far away as Ethiopia and Nigeria. The twenty nine people who took the course this year are from a wide variety of church and faith backgrounds, including at least one Muslim participant. Inter-faith peacebuilding is a topic of great relevance as it seems that all you hear about on the international news these days is tension between Muslims and Christians. It’s interesting to note that from our perspective that this doesn’t seem to be as big an issue in Zambia as in other countries, or as big an issue at the grass roots as at a political level.

It was great to meet the participants; they all had very interesting stories to tell and were very nice folks. Peacebuilding is an important subject to study and apply, there are lots and lots of people doing the opposite (i.e. conflict building) in Africa, especially in trouble spots like Sudan, northern Uganda and so on.

What do you get when an American MCC worker, a Tanzanian pastor, a Zambian Nun and a Congolese Professor have a barbeque together? A peace of meat... er ... sorry.

Spot the Canadian with the inappropriate footwear

The Happy Graduates

MCC is placing a couple at MEF in August to continue peace related training there. We took the opportunity of delivering a piano to the house where the couple will live.

Here is a picture of our country rep Siggi making like Elton John before we left. Note the MCC predilection for sandals. (see previous picture as well) Thankfully the piano made it all the way without any problems.

One of the interesting things about driving in Zambia is all the stuff that is sold on the side of the road. This trip showed us that it was watermelon season (heaps and heaps of watermelons, for about $.50 to $1 each,) and sweet potato season. We also saw: bush honey, little red fruits called “bush onions”, lawn chairs, legs of unidentified animals (bush meat) and of course loads of tomatoes, which are always in season here.

People also sell very large bags of charcoal, which they make in the bush. Charcoal is what most people use for cooking (and it makes an excellent barbeque), but it raises concerns about deforestation. The economics of charcoal are very interesting. Far away from the city a very large (50kg) bag of charcoal costs about $8, but in the city it costs about $16, so if you can get a big bag from the country and sell it in the city you can make some money. So, every day you see men on rickety old bikes, with three 50Kg bags of charcoal riding hundreds of kilometers into the city to sell their charcoal, all for about $25 of profit (and of course, they have to ride back). Still, $25 is probably about 10 to 15 days average wage, so it pays. When the charcoal gets to the city, it goes to any one of one hundred charcoal markets, where it gets divided and subdivided into smaller and smaller bags, which are sold for some profit. The final stop is that ladies sell small plastic shopping bags of charcoal, with just enough charcoal to cook one meal, which is typically the most people buy because that’s usually all they can afford. There are a lot of people in this supply chain, and each takes their small cut.