API Course at Mindolo

While undergoing the peace-building course, in May at MEF, a group of participants sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee have come for an intensive peace-building course for one month. They are from Nigeria, Mozambique, Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zambia and Sudan. The interaction during the time they have been here has been dynamic, as we have met together with group discussions, practical exercises, and shared in our planned modules. I personally, as a diploma student, was highly enriched by interacting with those who are already deeply involved in peace-building activities in conflict situations like the Sudan, South Africa, Uganda, and the Jhz, in Nigeria.

During this time, I have seen how these conflicts bring a lot of trauma in Africa. We were introduced to trauma awareness in our course, including healing interventions, to bring people back together again.

We took a field trip to visit the site where Dag Hamarskold died in a plane crash, not far from Kitwe. His life and work inspired us.

To my observation, this one-month course is too intensive with too much content squeezed in. It would be better to have 6 weeks or two months. We were placed in two groups and each group received different content. We would hear about what another group had studied, and we wished we could have also had that content. The course ends Friday, June 4.

We thank Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation for arranging this event and for being truly ecumenical and Peter Smith for his excellent professional coordination of this course.

peace and conflict transformation

Greetings in the name of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Being a quaker by faith, we are known to be a people who love peace, and as a Kenyan, Luhya by tribe, our greetings are said this way: "mirembe" meaning peace .
By the end of this year, the peace program in Zambia will have finished. I would like to further my diploma to a degree, to get more experiences with peace studies. I have found a program at Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania, and I am seeking a sponsor so that I might study there for a year.
This would be from January 2011.
If there is a faith community or any persons that could offer some support, I would appreciate hearing from you. When I return to Kenya I would like to work along the border with Somalia or the border between Kenya and Uganda. These are areas where there are conflicts.
Please contact me by email at margarema@yahoo.com .

Greetings from Zambia

I am a Kenyan who is in Zambia at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation (MEF) in Kitwe. My being here is to study peace and conflict management for a year. I would like to communicate with institutions and people interested in peacebuilding. since this is a deep interest of miine, I hope to study further after my time at MEF.

I am a Quaker from the Nairobi Yearly Meeting,which has twenty monthly meetings. I fellowship in one of them, Makadara Monthly Meeting. We have two Quarterly Meetings that consist of six Monthly Meetings. I am an evangelist at my Monthly Meeting and a USFW leader in my Monthly Meeting.

Anyone who would like to communicate with me about peacebuilding or about Kenya Quakers, please contact me at this email address: margarema@yahoo.com .