everyday gandhis Summer 2009

Who are we who say we wish to build peace?by cynthia travis

There are questions and then there are Questions. You know the ones - so startling they knock us into silence. A good thing when

contemplating peacebuilding and one’s role in it. The question of who we are as peacemakers comes from our dear colleague, Emmanuel Habuka Bombande, Co-Founder and Director of WANEP, and John Paul Lederach (who coined the word ‘peacebuilding’), Founding Di-rector of the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University. Many of us in the field owe our grounding to his seminal work. So it is noteworthy that on WANEP’s 10th anniversary, they are asking the question that, if we’re lucky, will continually strip us bare: Who are we who say we wish to build peace? This naturally leads us to deeper questions that shape our work: How is our presence understood by our host communities? How are our words and actions interpreted and understood?

As an organization, there are other questions that haunt and guide us: One of these is as shocking now as it was when Topanga Daré mainstay Danelia Wild asked: “What if Liberia can be seen as having undergone a terrible initiation (of civil war), emerging with deep wisdom as a result?” The implications of that insight have shaped much of what we do, down to the way we greet people in the street.

When everyday gandhis Co-Director, Bill Saa traveled to Rwanda with fellow Master’s Degree students from the School of International Studies in Vermont, they found themselves wondering, What is the impor-tance, as in the case of Rwanda, of using the pain of the past as a way of gaining strength and courage that transforms into compassion that we can share? The ques-tion is a cousin to the initiation

question, but its nuance shows how carefully we must work, especially in peacebuilding, to avoid ‘one size fits all’ thinking, even or perhaps especially when the thinking is startling and fresh.

Another question that arose in Rwanda and also guides us in Liberia and California, is, What is the relationship between individual and com-munal healing processes? They are interdependent, of course, indistin-guishable perhaps. This interconnection between individuals and the community is central to Liberian society where, in fact, the depth of connection was a factor in the spread of the war. Now, rediscovering and revitalizing these connections is key to community-based peace-building and a source of great joy.

issue i • summer 2009

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In this issue, we look at some of the structures and relationships that sustain us: the buildings we live in; the ways we grow our food

and recycle our waste; the dreams and ancestors that guide us; the inner strength we find to stand up for what we know to be true; the recovery of our war-ravaged children and their communities; and the ways we reach out to each other that bring lasting joy.

Within those structures and relationships, we must be nourished, yes, and also offer nourishment to the invisible world we depend on. We must give voice to our own hearts in ways that allow non-human life forms to speak to us and through us. This makes it possible for us to live life as a dialogue rather than as a self-centered one-way broadcast, in reciprocity rather than unilateral consumption.

We must grieve what we have done to the earth and each other, and the ways we have cursed future generations. More than that, we must grieve who we have allowed ourselves to become that this world we struggle in could have happened in the first place. By metabolizing this grief, we release our trauma and fear. We turn to face the demons that give us no rest. We create the fertile space inside ourselves to celebrate who we are already becoming so that the better world of our dreams becomes possible – or better yet – inevitable.

Cynthia Travis Founder & President

everyday gandhis

Table of ContentsWho are we... by cynthia travis · 1 ·As Westerners, we are neophytes at living in community, natural and human, but we urgently need to learn. The ‘progress’ of modernity and material aid directed at those we perceive to be in need often misses the mark. At worst, it is a new form of colonialism. Along with material wealth donors are exporting their addiction to the natural resources that happen to be plentiful in the very places that have suffered war and where now help is being offered.

Alliance In the Seluos by deena metzger · 4 ·Overcoming fear takes time. We took what time we had. I knew that fear had to be overcome if we were to have the relationships with the wild creatures that we all craved. Combatants and ex-combatants know fear. War is based upon it. The designation of ‘enemy’ depends upon it. We were here to make alliances.

Dream Matrix by carol sheppard · 10 ·The focus of the Dream Matrix is to ask the question: What are the important dreams that are coming and how might we be guided by them as healers and peacemakers and by extension, be led to the paths of the restoration of the natural world?

Architecture in Africa by oury traore · 12 ·In traditional Africa, buildings are not just mere edifices but a min-iature of the universe where both the physical and spiritual realm interact. Traditionally, the houses were built to ensure that all the elements of the universe were in harmony. The traditional construc-tions paid attention to the orientation of the wind, the sun and used local recycled materials.

Permaculture by warren brush · 15 ·As history is being played out in this materialistic age, our indig-enous soul has gone into hiding. There is a scared hollow place that exists within us and is aching to be filled, not with material empti-ness but with the substance of an intact story in which we can recog-nize and play our part, and which has its umbilical chord rooted in place and relationship. This is the genesis place of true healing.

Gifts from the Ancestors by ki’na dark cloud · 18 ·I dream of Africa often, and have been told by my own brother that it makes sense for me to do so. He says that we all began there, and so it is right that we begin our journey of healing and new ways there.

2 • everyday gandhis • summer 2009

In Voinjama, the community where we are based, as elsewhere in Liberia, the connections between people are organized in many over-lapping spheres: by counties, quarters, districts, towns, villages, clans, chiefdoms, tribes, ethnic groups, secret societies, uncles/nephews, intermarriages, taboos and religions, to name a few. The implications for peacebuilding of this kind of sophistication are staggering but largely overlooked by Western aid agencies.

As Westerners, we are neophytes at living in community, natural and human, but we urgently need to learn. The ‘progress’ of modernity and material aid directed at those we perceive to be in need often misses the mark. At worst, it is a new form of colonialism. Along with material wealth donors are exporting their addiction to the natural resources that happen to be plentiful in the very places where help is being offered. This is not a coincidence. Even if it is unintentional, we of the donor nations are eroding systems of great wisdom (what is left of them) and missing the opportunity to learn to reframe success from quantifiable material gain to, say, being able to travel throughout Liberia or West Africa and be welcomed as family (as is still the case) because of the connections between people that are recognized and acted on.

I will always remember when we were traveling from Voinjama to Monrovia in September of 2005 – before Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected President – and all the cars in our convoy got stuck in the mud, along with everyone else. We became a party of 15 tired, dirty, hungry, cranky, miserable, would-be peacemakers. Three of us were American, dirty, hungry, cranky, miserable would-be peacemakers. In our misery, I am ashamed to admit, we began to feel frightened and suspicious. The road was closed in both directions and we felt the world could come to an end, and we with it, and no one would know. After about an hour of walking, we arrived at a village. A small circle of people gathered, smiling. Someone handed each of us an infant twin. In the traditional way, the town chief came to greet us, saying proudly, “You are OUR strangers, and we welcome you!” That gener-osity changed us. Instead of being afraid, we immediately began to wonder, How can we reciprocate by simply being who we are?

These questions invert the notion that war creates a population of victims who need outside help to find a way forward. If we ‘helpers’ see war as a horrific gateway, then every person we meet who has passed through that gateway is, or might be, a true Wise One. Who are we who say we want to make peace? Perhaps we become people who come seeking the counsel of the Wise Ones, and in so doing, help them to see themselves that way, too. And I wonder, what might hap-pen if we start with that change in ourselves?

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All photos were taken by members of Future Guardians of Peace unless otherwise noted. For more information about donating and purchasing please contact everday gandhis or visit FGP online at www.futureguardiansofpeace.org

PhotoCredits

everyday gandhis • summer 2009 • 3

On our first entry in the Selous, we saw the animals only from a distance. As we approached, they ran and hid. We had been

alerted to this possibility by Josephat Mdegella, our guide, in the Ruaha where Cyndie Travis, the founder and co-director of everyday gandhis, and I had been on safari in Tanzania in the first days of Au-gust 2008. He had said that the animals in the Selous are more than wary as much of the territory is designated for hunting – a major source of income for Tanzania. The animals know – even without newspapers and ipods.

At the threshold of this journey to Africa, I’d come upon a newly re-leased internationally researched report from the University of Wash-ington that the world’s elephant population could become extinct by 2020 because of hunting and poaching by global crime syndicates using modern weaponry to attain ivory that they sell, illegally, primar-ily to China, the US and Japan. Consumers in the US have become fascinated by ivory handles for their revolvers. [By 2020?.” ScienceDaily 1 August 2008. 1 September 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/07/080731140219.htm>.University of Washington. “Ivory Poaching At Criti-cal Levels: Elephants On Path To Extinction.]

In contrast, the Ruaha, where Cyndie and I had spent the preced-ing days, was teeming with wildlife. We approached and spent long stretches of time in intimate observation or, perhaps, we dare say, unspoken conversation, with the animals. The connections we had daringly prayed for had occurred, perhaps affirming our vision of the possibility of global restoration of the natural world; humans, animals and plants vitally co-existing and interdependent. Admittedly, these and other earlier experiences were leading us to imagine that the res-toration was possible because alliance with the animals was possible. A daring, terrifying and necessary consideration.

We had come to Tanzania after reading Peter Matthiessen’s early books on Africa, Sand Rivers, African Silences and The Tree Where Man Was Born, in which he had tracked the assaults on indigenous cultures and on the wild. We were hoping that something of what had been sorely threatened when he was writing, might still exist. Certainly, we were gratified that this might, indeed, be possible when we crossed paths with Peter Matthiessen himself, who had just spent a long time observing the interactions of a herd of Kudu. “This is the real Africa,” Matthiessen said during our brief meeting.

Bill, a bull elephant, had been only a banda away, eating content-edly and ignoring us completely, when we entered our lodging at the Ruaha. Later we stopped on a bank over a sand river where an elephant cow and her three calves were grazing and drinking water. We were grateful for their proximity and we watched for a long time when it became clear that something more than observer and observed was occurring. Excitement and doubt intersected again and again, intensifying each other. Then there was a moment of silent but explicit prayer or request: “If this connection is what we think it might be, would you please come toward us.” It was not the matriarch who stepped forward immediately, but the young one we then named Spirit Sister, who caught our eye and came toward us, blowing water

first into her mouth and then toward us. After a long time, Mde-gella asked if we were ready to move on. “Not until she releases us,” I answered. Her gaze and intent had become so clear, we were riveted by the connection. It would be diminishing to put words to the silent nature of the exchange, but it would be equally foolish to deny it. Then, in her own time, Spirit Sister turned and stepped away, the other three followed, until the four elephants were out of sight. We began to drive very slowly too, but stopped immediately when one of the elephants trumpeted loudly. The mother followed by the three little ones came up the bank and lined up so that anyone of them might have easily reached out with her trunk to the back of the open truck. They stood still; we stood still. Waiting. Out of the bush before us, came a young bull, watching us closely, circumventing the front and side of the truck until he stood next to Spirit Sister, holding our eyes, as she was doing. Seemingly, she had wanted to introduce us to her brother, or we to him.

Travis and Camille, Cyndie’s son and his girlfriend were seated on the raised seats at the back of the truck, close to eye level with the elephants. Travis was overwhelmed with surprise, joy and awe. He and Camille were in each other’s arms weeping. His response was similar to a response we would hear later from Lisa Armstrong, a journalist who traveled with us for the Liberia section of our journey with ex-combatants on behalf of peacebuilding: “I have stepped into another world.”

For so many indigenous and traditional peoples, alliances with animals are not unprecedented. They may not be frequent, but sacred gatherings and exchanges do occur and the people are guided by them. Our experiences were teaching us that skepticism did not serve us as well as openness.

In our work of deep peacebuilding, we have had to allow ourselves to change sufficiently to be worthy or capable also of such connec-tions. At the end, our journey in Liberia brought us together with an indigenous man, a Mandingo, a Muslim who is an elephant dreamer and who has been faithful to and guided by conversations with the wild for over thirty years.

Alliance in the Selous: Healing Fearby deena metzger


The elephant dreamer is as brave and forthright a man as the former rebel, Master General, now also a member of everyday gandhis’ peace-building team in Voinjama, who demanded that his 36,000 troops lay down their arms after sighting elephants on two occasions during the war. Master General is as devoted now to peacebuilding as he has ever been to anything in his life. He is one of five regional peacekeep-ers from different West African countries who are on call to ease conflicts. “I cannot bear violence anymore,” he says. A vision echoed by the elephant dreamer.

Our interest in the elephant is not arbitrary, though we did not, when we first recognized it, know that the elephant is considered, at least in Liberia, an avatar of peace. Heartbroken by the plight of these intel-ligent and socially developed beings, whose respect for and mourning of their dead equals any human grief and ritual, we have come also to understand in our own bones and souls that elephant carries the spirit of peacemaking.

We had met the Elephant Ambassador in Botswana for the third time in 2004 on the first eg sponsored safari that had included Cyndie Travis, founder of everyday gandhis, the Libe-rian trauma expert William Saa who is co-director of eg, and eg peaceteam member, Tornorlah Varpilah, who has since become Deputy Minister of Health in Liberia. Cyndie had speculated on whether the elephants who were somehow communicating with humans over thousands of miles, might, similarly, com-municate with the elephants in Liberia. [See Deena Metzger, Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing and From Grief into Vision: A Council, Hand to Hand]. Now we were wondering whether the Ambassador might have alerted the elephants in Tanzania that we were coming. Such a thought is reasonable within many cosmolo-gies based on extant indigenous wisdom traditions. Networks of species and interspecies com-munication are possibilities that can be mediated in the old ways by ancestors, signs and omens, dreams, divinations, prophecies, as well as direct experience of the small miracles that Spirit has been offering on behalf, we think, or hope of, the restoration of the natural world and the future.

It was shortly after this meeting with Spirit Sister – and other similar meetings as well – that we went to the Selous to meet members of our Liberian peacebuilding team, including traditional people, an

ex-rebel general and seven young people, six child soldiers, including one woman and an ex-refugee. Our intuition, research and experi-ence have led us to the understanding that healing from war requires healing the earth that has suffered our battles and violence and that we have warred against directly. For animals, even the relationship of predator and prey is not military, cruel or sadistic. If the predator is not hungry, the prey is entirely safe in its presence. The wild is not by its nature a place of terror, though we humans often make it so. Rogue elephants attacking rhinos are examples of the distortion of the elephants’ inherent peaceable nature, resulting from human cull-ing, hunting and territory degradation and diminishment. As we try to learn the nature of peace, it behooves us to study the exquisite bal-ances and alliances that characterize the natural world. Peace among people cannot be achieved without deliberately extending peace, as

the animals know it naturally, to all species and to the earth itself. Peace, like pregnancy, cannot, by its nature, be partial or condi-tional.

At first, we were afraid we had made the wrong choice bring-ing the eg team to the Selous, the southern area of Tanzania, after accommodations in the Ruaha for everyone had not been available in high season for our 18 member ‘delegation.’ After a frustrated afternoon and similar disappointment the following morning, recognizing the furtive activity of the animals living in fear of human hunters, trucks and guns, we stopped in a sand river where we saw evidence of elephants having passed through to dig water holes. It was the right place, I knew immediately, to make offerings and call the spirits to be with us.

What is an offering? What-ever the particular medicine or sacred matter given, offered, or ‘sacrificed’ as the Liberians say, the essence of an offering is the prayer postulating an activity or transformation of self to benefit the situation and all beings. It is also, as the Liberians describe it, ‘Giving more than you can.” Thus our silent promises and spoken

utterances in English, Lorma and Mandingo to live on behalf of the animals. Also Cyndie’s verbal commitment to act, as she is able, to protect the animals, the elephants, in particular, from hunting and poaching, so they may survive. The sun was high. The animals were hiding in the cool shadows of the forest. We drove on. We stopped for lunch.


Later that day, we met a mother lion who had just given birth, her cubs hidden somewhere in the bush behind her, resting upon the small hill from which she commanded a 360 degree view in order to protect as well as hunt. We stopped very close but our presence between her and her cubs did not disturb her. Most of the Liberians had not been on safari before and so were frightened by this proxim-ity to a lion, particularly one who had just given birth and was clearly pained from the trauma. But seeing that she had only the most casual interest in us, if that, was an experience that had to be understood and integrated; it required rethinking everything that had been assumed and believed before about the wild. Traditional wisdom might have prepared them but it no longer exists in the ways it once did – colonization, industrialization, urbanization, modernization, imperialism and religion have seen to that.

Overcoming fear takes time. We took what time we had. I knew that fear had to be overcome if we were to have the relationships with the wild creatures that we all craved. Combatants and ex-combatants know fear. War is based upon it. The designation of ‘enemy’ depends upon it. We were here to make alliances. Fear had to surrender to respect and discernment. It could not be improvised or counterfeited. The wild demanded our authentic selves. We stayed with the lion a long time, cameras clicking or silent, people sitting still or changing places for a better view. How easily she could have leaped among us. There was nothing that could have prevented her from taking anyone of us out of the vehicle. We learned to be with her, watching while trying not to intrude.

We were seeking the possibility of new relationships with the wild and wilderness. We were following an essential process of peacemak-ing: Step out of fear, assumptions and prejudices on behalf of the pos-sibilities that emerge from new associations. ‘Us” and “Then” become ‘We” through common jeopardy and common concerns.

The time with the lion prepared us. Afterwards, we saw elephants in a sand river but they were not close in the ways Cyndie and I had experienced both in the Ruaha and years before in Botswana. We became very still, respectful and prayerful. A bull came toward us

tentaively but another truck’s engine in the far distance caused him to bolt. We went on. We crossed the sand river and watched the herd from another vantage point. Climbed the bank. We entered the forest. Hopeful.

Thus we were prepared for a meeting with an elephant that resembled what Cyndie and I had experienced in the past. A great bull, with long, long, gleaming ivory tusks, came slowly, deliberately ambling toward us. I have experienced this now so many times and each time it is an incomprehensible miracle. When Cyndie and I were together on that eg peacebuilding safari in Chobe, Botswana, organized, in fact, with the impossible hope for such a meeting, the Ambassador, who had been so close to me a few years earlier, met us once again at the same place and same time we had met years before. This time, he did not approach so closely but he carefully and deliberately made contact with us.

Elephant bones have great value for elephants. They spend days in mourning ceremonies honoring the bones. This time the Ambassador honored us by throwing to us an ancient elephant thigh bone. There is no greater gift he could have offered us. Then he twisted his trunk in an impossible knot as he had the first time we met. And before walking away altogether, he deliberately stepped into a small ditch so that he could easily get down on his knees before us. Then he rose up and disappeared.

This elephant was clearly a different being from that Ambassador, but we felt that he knew who we were. He had, perhaps, also been sent to us – or we to him. When he stopped before us, I thought of him, immediately, as a Delegate, a representative of a threatened spe-cies, whose people have been, like the young ones and the elders, the members of the eg peace team, victims of war. Warriors, each, touched and wounded by war, meeting each other. It could only be achieved, without harm occurring, if everyone of us, experienced or not in the wild, could set aside their fear. Human and elephant alike.

Slow, deliberate steps. First to one truck, then toward me and the others in the other truck. Silent prayers for alliance, continuing. The silent assumption of love and reciprocity that is our birthright.

It is said that elephants are almost blind and that he could only know us by hearing and smell, but we would maintain with certainty that we had seen each other truly.

Afterwards, Varlee, the youngest, who had been a refugee, said he would like to meet the elephant again so he could touch him with his own hand.

We felt confirmed, as we had with the lion, that there are situations in which the fear instinct, originally an early warning system, would have to be, wisely, contradicted. This was such a one and it prepared us for another entirely unprecedented encounter, this time with humans, with the people from the adjacent village, Kisaki, and the local Maasai who are the most traditional people, maintaining, against the insistent pressure of modernization, territory and acculturation, their distinct traditions, ways of life and nomadic herding patterns.

Scheduling problems had made it impossible for us to spend the full days we had imagined on safari. Accordingly, the manager of the Sable


Mountain Lodge suggested a football (soccer) match with the village team. “Football is a universal language,” Christian Bethelson, our kids’ former rebel commander, asserted later as we prepared for the match. The language of negotiation is, however, not universal, and the first negotiations were botched by the tourist agency administrators trying to arrange it in a western manner, and the team returned to the Lodge unable to play, though they had done their best to overcome the obstacles and make some human contact.

We held a council that night, airing fears and distrust and yet reflect-ing on eg’s stated role as peacemakers. It was not acceptable that we would succumb to disappointment, especially in ourselves.

Originally, the peace team members, who had never seen Maasai, were daunted by them, particularly the large sheathed knives at their waist and their long spears that are essential for people who walk across the bush. For those who have known the cut of violence, weapons are not neutral. Until they were supplied by international arms smugglers, Africans often fought with nothing more than machetes, clubs and tra-ditional spears. Still, the eg peace team members felt they had to over-come their own prejudices and Bill Saa and the other elders, J. Flomo Sawo, Christian Bethelson (General Leopard), and Robert Zoma, returned to the village on their own to honor the open heart and protocol required between strangers. Traditional culture everywhere recognizes the careful steps all parties must follow at a first meeting.

Because of Saa’s and the elders’ skills, their transparency and determi-nation to proceed with the utmost respect, the Mayor and the Maasai tribal elders reciprocally opened the doors of indigenous hospital-ity to the strangers. Consequently, a match was scheduled and held the next day on the community soccer field. But not the expected one; this time it was our football players and the Maasai team, their weapons set aside, playing as one team against the village team. Lent jerseys by the community and even shoes because they were severely challenged playing barefoot, the Liberians displayed camaraderie to all involved. Of course, the game turned out to be a draw – 2 to 2. The Mayor invited us back for other matches in the future and began imagining coming to Voinjama. On our return to the Lodge, we took a long detour so we could visit the Maasai elder in his home. The ancestors who surely guided us, as the I Ching often states it, “turning conflict into creative tension”, are wise and kind.

The week after the Safari, we all returned to Voinjama. The team was challenged to a soccer game. Unlike the game in Tanzania, violence broke out between the players. The members of the eg team carefully avoided being embroiled and worked skillfully to quiet the dissension. One of the members, Morris, embraced an angry player, containing him skillfully and kindly – Cyndie called it ‘a human safety net’ – until he was calmer. Afterwards, they could not imagine competing with them again. But a few days later, as we were leaving for the US, I casually reminded Lassana of the ways they had met the Maasai challenge. Bill Saa’s question earlier – How do peacebuilders meet violence and aggression? - was pertinent again. Lassana understood immediately and saw the opportunity, I don’t think I had finished phrasing my question when he began imagining aloud how the team could approach the other team and what they could offer them and what all might gain in addition to a conflict-free tournament? He knew that some of the players were, like himself, ex-combatants and he knew the long road toward healing and that he could not have

done it alone. Now he and those who are farther on that road than they ever imagined would prepare themselves to make what offerings they could to those who are still deeply wounded, poor and angry, while despairing of ways to recover from the war.

Master General accompanied us to the village to meet the Elephant Dreamer, who at his first meeting with a live elephant had, terrified, climbed a tree to escape the elephant he thought was pursuing him, but meeting the elephant eye to eye from his perch, had calmed him-self and the great animal by reciting the Koran aloud to him. When he came to the end of each sutra, the elephant bowed his head, the Elephant Dreamer said.

In the past, on the occasions when the elephants come into the vil-lages for food, the Mandingo people take a week to read the Koran to the elephants and make offerings on behalf of peace between the species. Often the elephants depart peacefully. The war and industri-alization disrupted the annual ceremonies through which traditional people honored the elephants, made offerings, and prayed for peace between them and now their relations are often troubled.

In 1975 when the elephant had first come to the Elephant Dreamer in his dreams, the elephant said that he only wanted to be friends with the Elephant Dreamer. Later this was validated as he elephant guided the man through the war, advising him when he and his family should leave and when they could return, where to plant and when. Whatever the elephant told him in his dreams came true and he and his family survived the war and his farm was never raided by hungry elephants. Inevitably, the Elephant Dreamer was seen as a witch by those who believed such good fortune could only cme from the devil, and so his connection with the elephants was ambiguous and he was often afraid of his dreams and afraid as well of meeting elephants in the wild. When we heard some of the stories, we looked for ways


to support the communication between the animal and the human worlds, so that all benefited.

The elephants were in the area when we arrived but we did not see them. We were, however, able to assist the villagers with what they needed for offerings and we brought rice to feed those in need. Bring-ing rice, however, can be mere charity. More importantly, eg was able to offer training in permaculture so that the village could much more sub-stantially and reliably provide its own food. We hoped the gifts would be attributed to the benevolence of the elephants as well as to eg.

The war has devastated the villages, and the forest and the people and the animals are suffering. The people are hunting the animals for food and the animals are foraging on the people’s farms. During wartime, the elephants, like many of the people, escaped to Guinea. Now the war is over and the elephants, like the human refugees, are returning, but the land no longer serves all of them.

“Where shall the elephants live?” I asked. “There is room for them,” the Imam answered, “deep deep in the forest.” We concluded that the prayers for the elephants could pragmatically include visualizing the corridors and safe destination for the animals.

It is not a new idea that the people, the animals and the earth suffer similarly from war. For example experiments have begun in Uganda treating war-traumatized populations and elephants at the same time in the same place and in similar ways for PTSD. Each one’s healing is

accelerated and deepened through their proximity to each other. [See Charles Siebert, An Elephant Crackup? N Y Times Magazine October 8th 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08elephant.html]. Reconnection, re-establishing sacred relationships, is at the very root of healing.

These connections and alliances may be beyond our understanding but they are substantial nevertheless. Living according to kinship is a medicine.

In the Selous, in the wild, in the wilderness, principles of trust and alliance intrinsic to restoration, peacemaking and hospitality were experienced, learned and enacted on all sides by all concerned beings. Alliances between the animals and the humans on behalf of survival. If the peacemakers become extinct, how will we have peace? We have been trying to imagine the ways warriors, soldiers, ex-combatants, might become guardians of the natural world. We have all been speculating on the ways rehabilitation and restoration might work together, providing economic opportunities for humans while restor-ing the land so it can sustain and be sustained by all creatures in right ecological relationship to each other. Making a home for the animals; making a home for themselves. Perhaps even eco-tourism for Liberia, promoted and sustained by those who have been traumatized by war.

Going to Tanzania we took small, first steps. There elephants and other animals taught us peacemaking, as they have done for thou-sands of years, and we commit ourselves to pass it on: Small miracles in the Selous.


PhotojournalA compilation of essays and pictures from the Future Guardians of Peace safari in Tanzania, August 2008©

PostcardsA small collection of photographs taken by the Future Guardains of Peace from their first week of photography instruction up to their present day work. Share the beauty with friends and family.

PrintsHigh quality framed prints of the Future Guardians of Peace photographs, some of which have been on exhibit at the Corcoran gallery in Washington D.C. These stunning photos capture the beauty of life and healing through images of people, nature and communities. Perfect for the home or office.

Future Guardians of Peacewhat happens when former child soldiers receive food, care….and cameras?everyday gandhis is privelaged to present a documentary about our early work with traditional peacemaking, photojournal, postcard set, and framed prints by the Future Guardians of Peace documenting their lives in Liberia, and their safari in Tanzania. This incredible film and these unique photographs capture the beauty of the natural world and all its inhabitants. It is a step in the process of building peace through reconciliation with human communities and the natural world.

Join us in the journey by bringing their stories home…www.everydaygandhis.org/store

Please visit us online to purchase any of the above mentioned items as well as our first documentary

The Dead Will Guide Us: teachings from liberia’s civil war.

everyday gandhismarketplace

The work of everyday gandhis is in great part organized around the collection and disseminating of stories of peace building.

The focus of the Dream Matrix is to ask the question: What are the important dreams that are coming and how might we be guided by them as healers and peacemakers and, by extension, be guided in the restoration of the natural world?

The everyday gandhis Dream Matrix began through a series of conver-sations between several dreamers. We had each received dreams that were at times mysterious or frightening but that had ultimately also trained and guided us. As we sat in awe of the revelatory nature of each other’s dreams and the startling ways that these dreams some-times seemed to be in dialogue with each other, we also felt our hearts aching for connections to dreams and dreamers beyond our immedi-ate circle. How might we be in community with each other, even sit in council, not only with them but, perhaps more importantly, with the wisdom of their dreams? We sent out a call for dreams and stories that might tell us something about the important issues facing us all: illness and healing, spiritual training and awaken-ing, the natural world and its suffering and restoration, and the nature of violence and war and the paths to peacemaking that might be possible.

In one of our early conversations about the Dream Matrix Cynthia Travis shared the following dream that we believed held the essential quality of the vision: “I arrive home to an apartment complex that is being renovated. A warren of small dwelling spaces. The walls are dark brown, maybe adobe. They are covered with white dots like plaster patches. When I look closer, I see that each white dot is actually a spider and her egg sack, filled with stories, ready to burst.” Around the same time I had the following dream: “A spider mother allowed me into the nursery in the under-world where her young were being born. Before entering, she taught me the words of a lullaby that I was to sing to them. Although my mouth could only approximate the song, the translation into human English went like this: You are young, and life is long, and we are all together”.

In response to the call, people began sending dreams: One wrote: “Several days ago I dreamed that I was cooking spiders. There was a specific way that they needed to be prepared, a precise point where the legs had to be separated from the bodies. The spiders were very large, the size and shape, I realized as I was cleaning them, of inkless squid.” How might these spiders be trying to nourish us and what are the stories they might want written with this invisible ink?

Many people sent spider dreams, pointing quickly to the consider-ation of the ways we are all connected and the synchronous or simul-taneous dreaming that is ongoing although we may not be aware of it. This recognition of our mutual connection and the common peril and possibility it implies is an essential understanding in peacebuild-ing and healing alike. Like the web that Spider Woman weaves, the

dreams remind us of the interconnection between all beings.

A dream within a dream: “I dreamed that I fell asleep and dreamed a spider. She was large, two or three inches across, black, and shaped like a star. She sat on a large web, also star shaped. There was another web hanging beside her, maybe a foot away. As I looked at the second web I wondered, where was its spider? Then I noticed that the web was tattered and becoming more so until it was hanging down and dusty like an old cobweb with progressively less webbing remaining. It was being eaten by the star spider. Then I “woke up” from the spider dream. Still dreaming, I realized that while I had been dreaming about the spider my brother had died. There were people with me.

Dream Matrix: Dreaming the Path to Peaceby carol sheppard


We were preparing to go somewhere, a road trip perhaps, and were packing up. We were barbecuing food to take on the journey. I was struck by profound grief over my brother, and knew that it was his web that had been eaten. I kept trying to express my grief to the people I was with but couldn’t make them understand or listen as there was a great urgency to depart. We continued preparing and then were on the road, many roads, many journeys, many people.”

Many of us are working together to restore the lost connections and deeper meaning that are casualties of modern consumer culture. One woman in the Matrix dreamed, “An indigenous land where the native people were housed, mattress after mattress, in a colonial manor house turned into a dormitory of squalor and despair. The men are on the ground floor and the woman above and the only communication between them is hostile and in conflict. I am put into a vehicle that is driven backwards and taken to a large garage set up as a movie studio. A huge spider, several feet across, is propped up on a web in the corner. I notice that this is not a living spider but rather, a plastic prop collecting dust. A blonde, non-native woman is being tortured, hung

up by one foot, while men leer and the lights shine and the cameras roll.”

Where there is no connection to the land, where the true connectivity of us all is reduced to a mere prop, torture and devastation inevitably prevail. But this tortured woman is also the classic tarot vision of the Hanged Man or in this case, Hanged Woman, which asks us to consider things from a different perspective, upside down if you will. That this is a non-native woman amongst indigenous people impris-oned within a loss of their own cultural ways asks that we all consider our parts within the breakdown, and the paths toward the restoration of those sacred webs as well as our own indigenous nature, even if its

wisdom seems inaccessible at times. In order to do so, as the dream suggests, we may need to ‘drive backwards’, return to the old ways, and look at things from an entirely different perspective than that of our usual comfort zones.

During the everyday gandhis 2007 Annual Meeting, the following story moved the circle deeply: In Texas, after heavier than usual rains, a huge spider web was discovered. It covered over two hundred yards and upon examination was understood by the scientists to have been made by many different types of spiders, spiders that do not usually build webs together or hunt cooperatively as they were observed do-ing. I have since discovered that this is a phenomenon that has been seen in a number of places, including California, Florida, Arkansas, Ohio, Canada and even Italy! One can only guess at how many more undocumented communal webs have been built around the globe. If we look to the natural world there are unexpected alliances that can, perhaps, show us paths toward the restoration of healthy communi-ties, capable of including and honoring all the different beings.

In response to this story Tornorlah Varpilah (peacebuild-er, Deputy Minister of Health in Liberia, and member of our team) told the council of an Ethiopian proverb that says when spiders spin a web together they can tie up a lion. In other words, the strength of many can accom-plish what one alone can not possibly do. In speaking about the ex-combatants in Liberia, Bill Saa then shared that in Africa it is believed that when you touch one person you touch twenty-five people. And that those twenty-five will touch another twenty-five, and so on. It is my

belief that dreams want to work this way as well, that they are an integral part of the web of radiant intelligence that can lead us all to places we would not otherwise imagine on our own.

We invite you to participate in the everyday gandhis Dream Matrix. Send your dreams of the ways of healing of the earth and all that make their home here, be they plant, animal, elemental or human, so that the strength and wisdom of the web might become more apparent, teaching us authentic and essential ways of supporting and sustaining one another. (Dreams can be submitted to info@everyday gandhis.org.)


In traditional Africa, buildings are not just mere edifices but a min-iature of the universe where both the physical and spiritual realm

interact. Traditionally, the houses were built to ensure that all the elements of the universe were in harmony. The traditional construc-tions paid attention to the orientation of the wind, the sun and used local recycled materials.

The house of my grandmother gathered all these elements. The oval entrance of the compound obliged visitors to lower their heads while entering as if they were bowing in reverence to generations of ances-tors. The house was made of mud and biodegradable materials mixed with a water proof resin. It stood proud - naked of any kind of pre-tension. As a child my fondest memory was the natural smell of fresh mud that always gave me the craving to lick the walls. I used to enjoy caressing the rough walls with my fingers to suck in all the coolness it stole from the rain. My grandmother was a freak for cleanliness and did not allow anyone to enter the house with shoes on-besides it was also a sign of disrespect. The floor was bare, very smooth with a few bumpy imperfections at some places. I simply enjoyed the feeling of the cold floor under my bare feet penetrating my entire being. The ceiling was a thatched roof and at times one could see a filter of sunlight piercing it and making a free passage for air to ventilate the various spaces. These gaps in the ceiling were also some of the imper-fections of the traditional houses because they were sources of leaks during raining seasons.

The main entrance of the compound led to a fairly large circular veranda called “Blong” in Bambara. The Blong was the area where older men in the neighborhood usually sat cross-legged to chat the entire day while the women of the house were busy inside with their multitude of household chores. The Blong was a deception because it did not give a clear picture of the entire compound. It led to a massive circular courtyard which hosted several neem trees and where all the activities of the entire households were taking place: fetching of water from the well, cooking with firewood, collective eating, and even afternoon naps on a traditional mat or hammock under the trees. My

grandparents’ residence made up one half of this massive compound. At the main entrance of their quarter was a very cool and long rectan-gular veranda with massive pillars made of huge jacaranda tree trunks holding up the roof. Opposite my grandparents’ quarter and just directly facing the main entrance were six fairly large domiciles- one of which was my octogenarian grandfather’s watch repair shop.

In contrast, on the streets of Accra, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi, it is common to find modern buildings that are made of imported materials: steel, marble, glass and other sophisticated construction materials which are often not adapted for Africa. These materials and building styles, though suited for cold countries, are not really appropriate to the often hot climates of these cities. They are heavily dependent on electricity to operate the elevators and air conditioners. Consequently, these buildings are fully loaded with air-conditioners whose emissions are contributing to global warming. These new buildings are highly demanding on Africa’s scarce re-sources and contrast with the current realities whereby many African governments are unable to provide electricity and water for their populations. When the electricity is out, it is impossible to remain inside these types of buildings without air conditioner because the construction usually over emphasizes on aesthetic style, but not on air flow, natural light and so on. This is very much in contrast to the traditional architecture which uses local materials and designs, usu-ally better suited to the local climate and conditions.

The month of March is the height of the hot season in Bamako, Mali. The sun is merciless and unbearable for even the most passionate sun-seeker. Once in Bamako around this time, I rushed into a thatched mud house and instantly felt relieved at the cool and soothing tem-perature inside. To my surprise, I was pleasantly reminded that for ages, the ancestors were able to fend off the scorching heat with this simple construction that does not only regulate the internal tempera-ture of the house but is also environmental friendly, cost-effective and utilizes renewable energy: the sun.

Architecture in Africa: Learning From Traditionsby 0ury traore


There are well known examples of this traditional architecture. The mysterious mosques in Djenne and Timbuktu (one of the World Heritage Sites) both located in Mali are vivid example of the beauty, simplicity and comfort of this type of architecture. The Kiriaokoo market in Dar es Salaam is also an impressive structure built in 1974 by the architect B.J. Amuli. The building, which offers three layers of market area, is perfectly adapted to its function and also to its environment as it provides the necessary air flow. The roof, made of gigantic funnels, also harvests the rain and stores it in underground collection tanks. The Kassena houses in Northern Ghana are another good example, which merge practicality and exquisiteness. Plastered with clay, the walls are repainted at the beginning of every dry season with bold decorative motifs inspired by daily life. “The paintings de-pict the relationship between man and his environment as a harmoni-ous whole, which is the Kassena ideal. The three motifs most widely used are Zalenga, representing the fiber net that holds a woman’s calabashes, Wnzagese, broken calabash pieces, alluding to the inter-locking phases of family life; and Tana, which refers to men’s clothing and suggests a state of well-being and prosperity.”

After so many years of traveling and exposure to other cultures, I have begun to appreciate that places where we live and work contrib-ute enormously to our physical and spiritual well-being. One becomes whole when one’s soul is in harmony with the physical environment where one is living and working. In African traditional culture, the ancestors believed that humans need to adjust to their environment to live in peace and harmony rather than transforming the environment to fit human needs.

When I first moved to Accra, Ghana, I spent six months searching for a home to rent. I was shown two to three houses weekly and I always responded that my “soul will not fit the space” or that “my spirit will not feel at home”. Finally, one day I found a house that seemed right. Unfortunately, when I moved in, I realised that though the windows were large, the air did not circulate and the sun would shine directly in the rooms. In the afternoon, the air condition-ers were not enough to appease the fury of the heat.

Unfortunately, my office on the third floor of a modern build-ing also felt the same way. The construction paid little attention to the harmony of the different elements, the air flow, and the natural light. So when the elec-tricity was off, the staff had no choice but to leave the premises because the office was way too hot and totally dark.

As a peacebuilding practitioner, I have realised that the building where a truth and reconcilia-tion process is often taking place makes a world of difference for the victims to be at ease to recall

their experiences and to be disposed to reconcile. Holding a truth and reconciliation hearing in a space where people feel trapped and uncomfortable inhibits the free spirit of the victims and clouds their memory to recall incidents and events. Just imagine the discomfort of victims who come from rural Africa and were subjected to horren-dous violence. How will they feel when they are removed from their environment to some colossal, freezing and intimidating buildings with air conditioners, bright lights and elevators to testify before the TRC? This grotesque kind of structure is in complete contrast to their familiar settings. What could be the impacts of such a cultural clash on the victims? I believe it could further alienate them from the TRC process.

A year ago, I was in Kenya for a meeting and went out on a Saturday sightseeing. The tall glass buildings in downtown Nairobi reminded me of Europe. I shared my observation with a colleague who replied that he is so proud of Kenya because they are “so developed”. Sadly, for many Africans, development is synonymous with modernization and material well-being. The aspects of “development” that matter the most are modern structures and buildings mimicking North America and Europe. The sight of fellow Africans struggling for their daily subsistence has become so common that their well-being rarely fac-tors into the perception of whether a country is developed or not.

In Africa we think of our cities as being inhabited only by the well off – the reality is that our cities have more poor than rich people. However, the poor have a tendency to become invisible because they cannot afford electricity, gas or extortionate rents. Against a back-ground of increasingly expensive and scarce resources, they survive in peril and urban poverty – in small kiosks – unfinished buildings – cooking with coal pots, and often sleeping in the open. Our archi-tecture should consider their needs as much as those of the affluent. Through the importation of Western architecture at Western prices we are sidestepping the needs of the majority.


This leads us to some underlying issues in Africa: One of our prob-lems in Africa tends to be the over-valorization of Western culture, products and consumption. If one walks through the streets of Amsterdam, London, New York, and Paris it is difficult to find any edifice or other architectural design that is African or Afro-centric. The situation is even distressing when walking in the streets of Accra, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lagos or Nairobi, where most modern edifices that proudly stand in the midst of many high-rise buildings are not beaming with the pride of African traditional architecture. It is obvi-ous that architectural design and construction in modern Africa are neither inspired by age-old African tradition and cultural richness nor do they take into consideration climatic, environmental and even spiritual factors of the continent.

When this “development” is taking place, trees, forests, biodiversity and species are wiped out to clear the way for the construction. Clearly, there is a need for a different development paradigm for Af-rica. Like so many development concepts and models, our buildings need to be adapted to suit our needs and be practical and functional. I foresee an architecture that builds bridges between traditional Africa and the modern world. There is a need to adapt or upgrade tradition-al architecture to meet the demands of our modern life. The expertise of modern architecture and the wisdom of traditional ways could be combined to create structures that are comfortable, sustainable, and glow with African pride.

First, I foresee a cosmopolitan architecture with a blend of modernity because the traditional architecture is no longer relevant in our con-temporary African cities. Instead, African cities should display their distinctiveness and cultural richness by resisting becoming blueprints of Western cities. African cities need to have some, if not all, of the following elements: originality, spirituality, “Africanness”, traditional shapes, signs and symbols, sustainability and cost-effectiveness, rel-evance, adaptability and eco-friendliness.

African architecture should stand out for its uniqueness by bearing its own trademark and originality. Furthermore, buildings, especially residential ones, should strictly avoid the use of air conditioners or electric fans. The harmony of the elements is important for natural light and airflow. In many African traditional beliefs, blocking the flow of energy, thus the spirit, has negative ramifications on one’s life.Moreover, shapes and signs are also very symbolic in African tradi-tions and cultures. The contemporary African architecture should make good use of symbols and designs to exhibit Africa’s cultural heritage.

The use of circular designs is pivotal to most African culture because circles symbolize community, togetherness and continuity. Circles also facilitate air flow, thus coexistence between the physical and spiritual realms. The use of locally available materials is equally important for cost-effectiveness, adaptability and sustainability. In short, all these details would add-value to contemporary African architecture and showcase African heritage.

Oury Traore is a Consultant in Organisational Development, Peacebuilding, Governance, Hu-man Rights and Gender and Development. She is currently residing in Accra, Ghana. She has travelled extensively throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and USA.

Ways to Support Lasting Peace in Liberia

• Literacy school for an adult, semester . . . . $100

• Cooking pots for a village, shared. . . . . . . $150

• Sporting equipment for a soccer team, balls, jerseys, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . $300

• Sponsor a traditional peacemaking ceremony, livestock, rice, transportation, for 250-2,500 people . . . . . . . . . . $250–500

• Sponsor ex-combatant for school tuition, books, uniform. . . . . . . . . . . . . $500

• Build a composting toilet . . . . . . . . . . . $500

• Build a ferro-cement rainwater catchment tank, cholera prevention. . . . . . $750

• Build a Village Peace Hut . . . . . . . . . . . $750

• Sponsor Permaculture Training for a Liberian Permaculture designer. . . . . . .$1500

• Photography equipment for Future Guardians of Peace, digital camera, batteries, memory card. . . . . . . . . $600-2,000

• Build a School for 250 children . . . . . . .$5000

• Sponsor photography training for Future Guardians of Peace, training for 10 ex-combatants. . . . . . . . $7,500

• Sponsor Permaculture Training for 25 Trainers in Liberia . . . . . . . . . $15,000

• Host an event

• Host a screening of our new documentary

The Dead Will Guide Usteachings from liberia’s civil war


I fondly remember looking into the faces of the twenty people sitting in a semicircle in the living room of the everyday gandhis

guest house in Voinjama, all facing up towards the front of the room where there was a projector screen, an empty flip chart and my quiz-zical eyes. They had all been chosen by their community to attend our

Permaculture training as representatives of the many constituencies that exist in this area of northern Liberia: Faces of young and old, women and men that served as village elders, tribal leaders, heal-ers, college educated agriculturalists and peacemakers. I began that morning training session in early December 2007 by dropping to my knees looking at everyone at eye level and acknowledging that we are all peers in this journey we are embarking upon together. I asked them to remember that even though I would be standing in the front of the room for the next six days, that I was not there just to teach about this vast subject of Permacultue but to learn from each of them through their wisdom and experience and to bring those gifts back home to America. I could feel the immensity and importance of the moment as we began the first part of our journey together learning from one another and sharing about the essentials of how we humans can work with nature to provide sustainable shelter, water, energy and food for all.

Humanity has recently stepped, or might I say stumbled, into an era of reconciliation in our relationships with one another, the land and the unseen forces that continue to give life. For this I am deeply grateful. Fortunately, there are growing numbers of people living deep in the heart of this understanding who are weaving diligently a great tapestry of healing. everyday gandhis is one of these rare assem-blages of people and traditions that are showing themselves to be an instrumental weft in this great tapestry that is being woven for a time beyond our own.

I am very fortunate to have been asked to take part in their important work in Liberia as a Permaculture educator and designer. You might

be asking yourself, “What is Permaculutre and why is everyday gandhis involving it in their peace work in Liberia?” These are good questions that I will attempt to answer on many different levels through this article, as I peel the onion of this high-impact, worldwide movement and its capacities as one vital cornerstone in the foundation for peace and reconciliation.

When looking at the surface layer of our onion, Permaculture is described as the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability and resil-ience of natural ecosystems. It provides for the harmonious integra-tion of shelter, water, energy, food and both material and non-material needs in a sustainable manner. Permaculture teaches us to be humble with the land by working symbiotically with her and other universal energies in how we involve our techniques, strategies and patterning to promote a forest-like diversity of mutually beneficial relationships with all beings. As you can see, it is a big subject that encompasses many subjects, traditions and understandings.

Many people refer to Permaculutre as a design science that links together the many disciplines of science. It may seem too broad to be effective, yet there are over 850,000 projects on the ground in over 122 countries that feed more people than all the world food organiza-tions combined. It is a movement that has the substance of experi-ence, validity through years of action and feedback from the impacts of those actions. It offers a rare attainable hope that is so needed in today’s world. It offers an unbiased opportunity for sustainability for people and communities from all geographic regions, all walks of life, socio-economic backgrounds and beliefs. The Permaculture move-ment is a tangible response by concerned and responsible humans to reconcile the damage and long-term degradation of the planet by many unsustainable personal, social and industrial practices.

So let’s peel another layer off the onion and see what we uncover: I have often asked in my life, “Where does intact culture originate?” It wasn’t until about four years ago that I came upon a distilled defini-tion that sits well with my heart and my observations of land and people. It states that: Intact culture comes from a group of people who knows the origins of where all that sustains them comes from and honors those things deeply. It is almost too simple yet it is profound in that it honors the link between people and place. Using this definition, intact culture would therefore come from the very land that sustains us and expresses itself through the deep root of people living in close rela-tionship with the story of that land. Each group of people and their region will be seen as having a different culture by the very nature of what that land provides through the language of that landscape. Per-maculture offers a framework and tool set that serve as a highly effec-tive container for healing and reclaiming this relationship with place and with one another. It requires us to be in a feedback conversation with the land and one another through deep listening, observation and appropriate interaction.

So many of us no longer know the story of that which sustains us and are no longer in dynamic communication with the land and one

Permaculture: Restoring Land and Communitieswarren brush


another. Most of all that sustains in the westernized world we have no idea where it was grown, who grew it, how it was grown on the land, the honor or dishonor in which it was harvested, if there was a return of nutrient to the land, the journey it had to make to get to us or the impacts on the people and the land where all this is taking place. The story that links us with the land is lost in this common scenario. Our cultural vessel is now being filled with material separatism and a static grief that prohibits the land from voicing itself through the people.

This type of rampant materialism has been the source of so many wars, so much environmental and cultural destruction and the loss of arable land for our grandchildren to be able to live well on the earth. We are literally starving the grandchildren of all beings to feed ourselves and our children now. This unsustainable syndrome must be reversed.

For many generations, an imperialistic syndrome has circled the earth, forcing people whose connection to the land is intact (all of our ances-tors at one point or another) to be separate from its story. In the name of progress, commerce and religion, entire cultures have been plucked from their intact connection to the land as they were separated from the deep root understanding. They (we) are then exploited in a world marketplace that lacks the origin story and subsequent responsibil-ity to that which sustains us. As history is being played out in this materialistic age, our indigenous soul has gone into hiding. There is a scared hollow place that exists within us and is aching to be filled, not with material emptiness but with the substance of an intact story in which we can recognize and play our part, and which has its umbili-cal chord rooted in place and relationship. This is the genesis place of true healing.

Unlike the distant ancestral memory of this happening to our Eu-ropean and pre-European lineages, Liberia has recently experienced these things, facing many generations of Western exploitation of their natural resources and imposed agricultural and living practices that have discredited and subsequently caused people to abandon traditional understandings of sustainability. For this reason, our work there has been rooted in deep listening that allows for the subtle ancient knowledge to find a home in the present.

The next layer of the onion is that of the ancient understanding found in intact peo-ple around the world of how we condole each other and digest and metabolize grief. There exists a rudimentary necessity in community to be able to support the ritual, ceremony and daily life steps that keep condolence of our grief fluid and moving in a dynamic process. When the ceremonies and rituals that work to break the grief down into its most essential parts are lost and abandoned, the grief solidifies in the individual and community and can cause illness, depression and often lead to war. When a community is fluid with its con-dolence practices, the grief itself will break

down and metabolize into useful nutrients from which new things may grow to feed a time beyond ourselves.

An example of this is when we lose a loved one either through natural causes or even war. The ancient death rituals, mourning periods, burial ceremonies are often lost in the highly regulated commercial industry of funeral homes, crematoria, and legal red tape. In the unfortunate circumstances of war, the dead remain unburied and those who would perform the rituals are running for their lives or have been killed. The grief we all have and will experience in our lives no longer has a home and begins to consume our spirits, our emotions and our physical wellbeing. This embodied grief, if left un-metabolized, will be carried as ghosts on the backs of the next generations. Sometimes, as in the case of many western societies, the ghosts of so many generations have become so heavy that they express themselves in individual and mass depression, war-making and enslavement of the natural world.

The land where we live is instrumental in the condolence process for humans and is often overlooked in the peacemaking process. I ap-plaud everyday gandhis for seeing that for peacbuilding to continue to spread its roots, it is necessary to reconcile the relationship between people, the land and all the beings who dwell there. This is the layer where Permaculture offers direction for this reconciliation process. Few people write about this aspect of the work yet it can be clearly traced and tracked through the fruition of its ecological and social applications.

As the workshop progressed, there was a wonderful sharing that took place that I know will have a long term impact on both Liberia and America. At one point, I noted that all the folks at the training were sitting at the edge of their seats in rapt attention as we delved into learning about how to increase our productivity by reducing our waste. When you live with a miniscule buffer between having enough food or not, there is a thin line between life and death. Learning how to convert waste to food becomes a very relevant subject.


For example, we talked about how much energy it takes for people to walk to the community well and carry five gallons of water back to their homes and how this water, used only once, is just five gallons. Yet if used multiple times, you increase the amount of water available without having to expend more vital energy to obtain it and more water becomes available to everyone else. Most families in Liberia would use the five gallons for washing dishes, clothes, themselves, or for cooking. Yet when they finished washing, they would pour ir out on the are ground, or into pits, where it could cause erosion or foster germs that carry life-threatening illness. As the group sat listening intently, I shared a technique of making a ‘banana circle’, which is a simple system that harvests the nitrified waste grey water and con-verts it to a highly diverse and resilient food production system. This increased their water usage from the same five gallons they carried to ten gallons of usage.

After sharing the details of this system with the group, one of the elders stood up and addressed the group by sharing how he remem-bered as a young child in a village that his family would plant banana circles where they would wash themselves and pour their wastewater. He shared that they have not practiced this for many, many years. It was an important remembrance that showed us all that there has been so much lost and that the understandings that Permaculture offers are rooted in traditional knowledge of place.

We then took the learning process out of the ‘classroom’ and pro-ceeded to build two banana circles with our hands, sweat and a bit of laughter. One greywater circle was planted with the primary overstory plant being banana and another with papaya trees. Because of the excess nutrient found in the greywater, we were able to plant an entire multi-layered food system in a small area that included cassava, sugar cane, ground nut, edoe sweet potato, pepper and other foods. When we finished the first banana circle, one of the participants said, “This is one of the most important days for Liberia because Permaculture has arrived!” This was one of the many teachings offered to the group during those incredibly intense and wonderful first six days of learn-ing.

Every single person contributed in their unique and diverse way to the process. When I returned in Spring, 2008 to complete the train-ing, I saw how people were beginning to apply Permaculture to their lives. (Recently, the group reported that cucumbers planted in the compost we had made were ripe and ready to eat in half the normal growing time.)

everyday gandhis, the Liberian people and Permaculture movement have come together through shared dreams of understanding, hard work, ancestral listening and intense learning. Together we are mak-ing a unique container for the regeneration process of essential griev-ing, condolence and the reestablishment of the umbilical connection of people and place so that mutual healing may have a home. This healing is not just for Liberia, but for the Western world as well. Our combined long term vision beautifully weaves many ancient traditions with the many facets of today’s needs. This is where Permaculture offers a relevant strand in the everyday gandhis tapestry.

In Gratitude and Peace, Warren Brush

Warren Brush

Warren Brush is a certified Permaculture de-signer and educator, storyteller and co-found-

er of Quail Springs Permaculture Farm, Wilderness Youth Project, Mentoring for Peace and Trees for Children. He can be reached through email or by contacting everyday gandhis.

Quail Springs • www.quailsprings.org A learning oasis and permaculture farm where stewardship and sustainability are nurtured and expressed through a caretaking ethic, permaculture education and application, and the honoring of that which sustains us.

Mentoring for Peace • www.mentoring4peace.com Mentoring for Peace is dedicated to discovering, ex-periencing and sharing mentoring tools that sustain and nurture life with people who influence the lives of children.

Trees for Children • www.treesforchildren.org Trees for Children offers relevant solutions in reducing the causes of global warming through the sustainable planting of trees. We are a part of both local and global movements that are leading the way in restoration ecology and carbon sequestration us-ing permaculture understandings and applications and the hand-on sharing of stewardship ethics with the next generation of caretakers...our children.

Wilderness Youth Project • www.wyp.org Wilderness Youth Project (WYP) promotes meaningful social change through an innovative, nature-based curriculum and mentoring program. Our programs return children to the traditions of childhood: outdoor time, child-centered exploration, skill/self-esteem development and connection with the natural world.

Sustainable Vocations www.sustainablevocations.org Permaculture Certification Training for Youth.

Warren Brush: [email protected]


In September 2008, I went for the second time to the everyday gan-his annual meeting, a gathering of Africans and North Americans.

My original thought process was to go teach these people I have come to love so deeply how to achieve and maintain peace. What could possibly be so difficult about that? Somewhere deep in my mind I thought it was kind of silly to have to cross continents to concentrate on peace. Peace is simply an absence of war, I thought. I can hear hysterical laughter resounding in my head as I now ask, “Who taught whom about peace during this time?” I learned so very much and I will never forget what was given to me. Liberia took over my dreams, her people took my heart, and her ancestors took my spirit. For many days I heard stories of war and peace, atrocity and redemption, responsibility and forgiveness, hope and agony, sympathy and fury, hunger and gluttony, ancestors and aliens, and family and loneliness. I heard these stories, and they changed me. I cried and laughed, grinned and hurt, but above all I hoped, and none of it was about me. My life was not impacted while this war was happening to these people.

The lure is to feel guilty, this war did not touch me, I lost no one, I received no injury. This is a deceptive lure and I am more able to look at myself as a “good” person when I ask these questions: Would I want the world to actually experience these stories as their own? OF COURSE NOT. Peace is what I want the world to experience. Can I offer my efforts to these people who have suffered if I am mired in an odd guilt because I did not? NO. My efforts must come from a healthy spirit so that I offer healthy efforts. Will I accept the change in my perceived kin net? YES. Hearing these stories, in their voices, with our tears blending in solidarity, has broken down all barriers for me. No longer are the anguished faces on my TV “others”. They are my kin.

At the meeting this past September I watched very carefully the gathering of people. I tried to remain objective and clinical. Once again I could not. These are the people who are parenting the birth of a new way, a way of peace and reconciliation, a way of respect to ALL

Dreaming: Gifts from the Ancestorsby ki’na dark cloud


beings, a way of breaking chains of greed and resentment. These are the people I find myself trying to emulate in my daily life. They allow me to call them family and I allow them to carry my heart with them at all times. I know it is safe there.

With them I would share all dreams that I hold sacred. everyday gandhis has made this possible for me and through that possibility have come many blessings. I live in Iowa and now hear talk of peace shimmering in the air around me. The waves have reached the shores of another continent. The wisdom of elephants is being shared with many who have never seen one. The people of Liberia have given that gift, at much sacrifice, with great and inspiring intelligence.

I dream of Africa often, and have been told by my own brother that it makes sense for me to do so. He says that we all began there, and so it is right that we begin our journey of healing and new ways there. May it be so. I offer the following dreams, all of which were given to me at the gathering of everyday gandhis. I brought them into circle daily and found that my fear of sharing dreams was unfounded in this group of people, even when I knew that my words or cadence were unfamil-iar. I also knew that they were heard and respected. I find that I am drawn now to those dreams in my daily life as I search for ways to be a peace bringer and healer. I believe that one cannot exist without the other. On with the dreams and thanks beyond measure to the ances-tors who gave me these dreams and the people I now call family.

in this first dream, i realized upon telling it that i had dreamed from the point of view of an elephant:I awakened in the very early morning, standing up and feeling desperately afraid for my baby. I was VERY conscious of thinking in images rather than English, German, or Arikara. In this dream, I needed to find water for my baby and food also, but could not find another person to help me. The place I stood was quiet, too quiet, and hot. There was a river by it and I could hear the water calling me to bring my baby to drink and to bathe. As I listened to the water calling, a male walked out of the trees, I knew him and had found him quite attractive before. He wanted to make sex with me and I was furious. I told him this could not happen now, maybe never again. I told him there was no food for me, no water for my baby- no hope for any more babies. He was angry and went stomping off to the river looking for a fight. As he passed by my baby he swatted at her. I ran to her and stood by her and slapped him. My auntie and Grammie came also but they were weak from lack of food and water. He told us that we were dumb women and headed to the river once more, looking for a fight.

We three women gathered and took my daughter to the burial place of my Grandfather. We mourned him and our mourning was disturbed from our anger that he had been disturbed from his earned sleep by grave robbers. Before we could start destroying the area in our anger a small male came from the trees, wearing a blue shirt. My Grammie told us to be still and watchful and to open our ears. The male brought his hands up to cross over his heart and looked at the ground. He said his name was N-GOM--BAY. He said he was worried about us. He said he knew we weren’t bad people but the people in the village were afraid of us, especially our males who were so ill tempered. He offered me a bowl of water that he had brought from the river. I tasted it and spat, telling him that it tasted of blood and I would not have my daughter drinking that. He opened his own canteen and brought out a different bowl, offering me his own water from a well in his village. It was sweet and cool and I allowed my daughter

to drink it. She became healthy and filled with a content spirit. I knew this man was our new friend and must be honored.

I went to my Grandfather’s burial place and gave him a token. He fell before me and began playing a drum. He started with a beat that I knew as feet running in fear and he turned it into a different rhythm, one of feet dancing. He said that when my village danced every village heard, and when my village ran in fear, every village feared. He put a necklace of beautiful white flowers around my neck and told me he was sorry the river had been contaminated with blood. He said he would bring my daughter water from his well all her life, so she would never be contaminated. I told him to take her with him she was now his daughter to protect. He accepted and offered me his own son. I ran my trunk over his head to remember his thoughts and went to the river to stop the fighting.

the dream from the second night, not offered in council:A small boy with no front teeth brought me a white tunic in the market. I looked at it and thought it was for a man and I should not buy it. He told me it was for me so that I could wear it at night and not be so angry that my husband had run off with the monkey troop that had just gone through the village. I took the tunic and saw that the child’s foot was caught in the hem. It had been sewn in. I asked the boy what we should do about this. He said to me that if I took his foot out of Africa he would die. And if I left his foot in the tunic I would die. He said only the monkeys would be able to help us with this problem. We went to find the monkeys and ask for their help. On our way we found an old man whose feet were on back-wards. We asked him which path to take to find the monkeys. He told us to take his hands and without looking over his shoulder began to walk us down a dark overgrown path. The boy began to shiver and I picked him up, carrying him on my hip and wrapping him tightly in the tunic. The old man died in the fourth year of our walk and I carried his bones and the growing boy in my arms, wrapped in the tunic. We walked for a total of seven years and on the last day of the seventh year we entered a clearing filled with the troop of monkeys.

One of the monkeys came forward and gestured for me to follow him. He led me to the center of the group and with great care unwound my arms from the old man’s bones and the boy. The tunic had become patterned with many symbols from the old man’s body and the young man’s sweat. There were many spirals in the tunic. The monkey helped me to sit down on a rock and poured a strong, sweet smelling oil on my head. He started making the sound of keening. I tried to stand up and could not because I was crying and did not want to leave the rock. The boy had come to me and held my hand for a while. He finally told me that I was a good wife to mourn for so long, but now I must say good bye to my husband. He said we were all widows and orphans, and would have to choose to take each other for family. The monkeys chose us as their replacement family members.

the dream from the third night, and to me the most important dream I have had, the conversation after I brought it to council was one of the most intense and soul shaking I have witnessed. The man who was in the dream was not as shaken as I, and still I felt the need to apologize. I would not have told it had I known who he used to be before he became fully present in his own soul. He and his journey are my proof that God works, in mysterious and stunning ways, and brings the right heart to the right person at the right time.


An 11 year old boy is trying to learn how to shoot a gun and cannot find the extra ammunition he had the day before. He is dressed in regular clothes and no shoes. His feet are wrapped in bloody rags. He walks to a boy he had been smoking and joking with the night before. That boy has the same type of gun and has just finished cleaning it. The first boy asks the second boy if he has any ammunition. The second boy hands him some and the first boy puts it in the gun and shoots the second boy. He tells him, “I will need it all, sorry.”

He starts walking along a road toward a small village. As he goes the plants reach out to try and trip him. He shoots them and all animals that cross his path. Some have intention of harming him and some do not, but he shoots them all. By the time he enters the village, he has run out of ammunition and an old, old man walks out of a building there. The man talks the boy into going and meeting a great healer he knows. He takes the boy to a tree that Bethelson is sitting under. Bethelson stands up and gets very close to the boy. I see a knife, a big one, in Bethelson’s hand. I hear drums start all around this place. Bethelson reaches to the boy and cuts out his heart. He then shows it to the boy and asks, “Is this the heart you hold true? Is this who you are?” The boy was afraid but Bethelson put his hand on top of the boy’s head and said “This heart is for washing in the river, I give you a different heart, you will have the heart of a leopard.”

The boy laid down on a rock by the river while Bethelson washed the heart and sang. Bethelson put the heart , now clean and beating without shame

or hatred, back into the boy’s chest. The boy became a leopard and began circling the village as a guardian, allowing no wild dogs in.

When I first awoke from this dream, for a few seconds, I felt very afraid to see Bethelson that morning, I did not want him to cut out my heart. Then at breakfast I saw him and of course he was singing and I laughed at myself for ever being afraid. After I told the dream in circle, I found out that his title before was General Leopard. I had not known this and thought that Bethelson was a minister that everyday gandhis had brought in to help the kids. I stand by my original as-sumption, he is a minister.

dream from the third afternoon, when i was feeling ill and had to take a nap:I was in conversation with Carolyn Raffensperger (Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network) talking about the planet’s needs in Niger and Liberia. We were talking about the soil being violated by greedy people. A man with many extra limbs walked up, claiming to be my aunt Nancy. I was disturbed because he had interrupted us. He laughed at the frown on my face and began wrapping me in layers of gauze. Carolyn told him to stop this and he began wrapping her also. We decided to keep conversing until this crazy man got tired of playing with us. A coyote walked to the man and began laughing. He said, “Good joke, my friend, I approve. But these children, especially the women, are very tired of jokes. We should go have a smoke together somewhere else.” As they started to walk away, a Thunderbird came and swooped down over us as we were


bound. He dropped a pair of scissors into Carolyn’s pocket, and a ring with a blue stone into my hand. He showed us his eyes and flew away shouting. Carolyn took the scissors from her pocket and cut us free. She was unhappy that her scissors were ruined because the outside of the gauze was very sticky. The man who thought he was my aunt, and he did have green eyes, turned and yelled at me, “YOU, with so many names, who ARE you?” “I am Ki’na”, I replied. He said, “Ki’na hah, and you are ee-a-man-ja(???) So, who is playing the joke here?!” Carolyn said we must go and begin healing the planet because the OTHER people were taking care of the other people.

The most amusing thing to me about two of these dreams are the words that were given to me that I neither knew how to spell, nor what they meant. Both were names. I have no idea what that means to the ancestors, or to the giggling universe, but it is a triumph to be able to write them out phonetically and have an African say, “Oh sure, that means this or that.”

dream from the last night, there were two and they are in order here:I was in the shower of the everyday gandhis council, and a tiny bug dropped on my shoulder. He told me --- If you break, do not run, seal the break with all the respect that you have been given. If you cause a break you have to give the respect to seal it. If you think this is about you there has been a sickness in your head. Heal it, seal it, with respect. Hearing stories of agony makes a spirit want to run but the wise spirit will stand

centered by the tree so the smaller spirits can fall on them. If you are asked to give your heart, put it in the middle of the altar, if it is rejected or deflected, do not take it back, the spirit who needs it will find it. The bug then bit my neck and I knew it was a spider.

2nd dream:A lioness walked up to a woman with a small bird in her hands. The woman looked at the lioness and saw that her mouth was slightly open and her shoulders were relaxed. The woman’s shoulders also relaxed and she showed the lioness the bird. The lioness took the bird very gently and took it to the largest tree in the area. The eyes of the lioness were compas-sionate and determined. She climbed the sloping tree trunk and set the bird down. The bird could not fly very well and hopped and flew up the tree to a nest. It got into the nest and counted the eggs, but saw that they were broken. It then jumped out of the nest and landed at the woman’s feet. The lioness and the woman stood side by side looking at the dead bird. They each took a feather. The lioness took the woman up the tree where they set the nest on fire and jumped without injury to the ground. They swam across a small stream together and came out of the water changed into two birds.

There was never a chance for me to tell my story of war and peace building in the circle, perhaps because it is over for me, perhaps because I am not African. My nose is not African, my eyes are not African, but my dreams are becoming African. I do not wish to be a pretend African, my big wish is to see the Africans that I have met,


and come to love as kin, know peace and unity in both their homes and their hearts. In talking of ancestors there has been a call sent to the universe and the spirits that guide us through the universe. This call is being met in astonishing ways here. I have seen women gain strength and men shed tears. I have seen men bare their teeth and women choose silence. I have borne witness to pain I cannot fathom, and yet I do. I have offered words that are not mine, yet they are in my voice. All in this circle will now travel with me to my own home, with my blue jeans and flannel shirts, with my rock music turned up too loud, with my son and my granddaughter hearing your names,

with my husband loving each one of you as a member of the Moyer pack (my family).

Welcome, welcome, bring all the stories, all the pain, all the healing, all the smiles, all the tears, all the wisdom, all the ques-tions, all the radiance, all the darkness. Bring it all and welcome, welcome, to my heart.

Love, Ki’na Dark Cloud


PROGRAM SUMMARIESThese are the major programs that we currently support with our money, time and energy. New pilot projects include solar power, permaculture, community mentoring for former child soldiers and work with international veterans.

Traditional CeremoniesBringing together deeply divided com-munities for unity, reconciliation, healing and future planning.

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Community ReconciliationStrategically supporting and encourag-ing traditional grassroots peacemaking in areas with potential for significant multiplying effect.

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