Thursday, April 28, 2016

Border-crossers, mediators & go-betweens. Don’t we need more of them?


Teach GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP network newsletter no. 20

Border-crossers, mediators & go-betweens. 

Don’t we need more of them?  



Today, where confrontations and escalation of violence are flooding our media, I have begun to wonder:  
Where are the voices trying to reduce tension, and develop peaceful coexistence, and how do they do it? Further, how can we learn from them - and become inspired to duplicate their efforts? 
The content of this newsletter addresses this question through examples of organized activities & links, which I hope will inspire you - and if you are a teacher - to start exploration of these questions by your students.
Following are two examples of initiatives by border-crossers, mediators, & go-betweens that I’ve met through my teaching in Kenya:




Example One: “Zanzibar Interfaith Centre” and “Upendo Means Love” (hereinafter ZIC) 
The Centre & the workshop offer courses and seminars to Zanzibarians of every faith.  Examples include courses in English, computer, and sewing as well as sport clubs and life skill education.
ZIC works also with religious leaders at the national level, through a joint committee of religious leaders for peace in Zanzibar and through more than 300 local peace committees throughout Unguja and Pemba (the two largest islands of Zanzibar).  
The purpose is to build bridges between followers of different religions, address conflicts, and promote peace.
Source: Danida Open Aid Project: Support to ”Zanzibar Interfaith Centre” and “Upendo Means Love”  (webpage)



The general situation in Zanzibar
Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region in the Indian Ocean, a few hundred kilometers off the African coast. In 1964 Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika, and the united republic was named Tanzania.
Of the Zanzibar population of 1,2 million, 97 % are Muslim, 1 % Hindu, and 1 % Christian.
Although followers of these faiths have traditionally lived in peace, in recent years a rising group of young Muslims have developed aggressive actions towards Christians. They feel Christians hold disproportionate influence in Zanzibar - and in the state of Tanzania as a whole. In recent years, there have been cases of violence, arson, and the throwing of acid on Christian priests and Muslim leaders, who cooperate with Christians.
Though the radical elements, who turn to violence, are not the majority, the general situation is characterized increasingly by mutual distrust and suspicion between the followers of different faiths.



The basic ideas / the conceptual basis of actions in ZIC
ZIC´s strategy to change this situation is to start with joint activities where the participants get to know each other and experience what they have in common rather than what separates them.  The first step is called a Diapraxis, which is followed by dialogue.
The term “Diapraxis” originates from this text:
“ … While dialogue indicates a relationship in which talking together is central, Diapraxis indicates a relationship in which a common praxis is essential. Thus by Diapraxis I do not mean the actual application of dialogue but rather dialogue as action. We need a more anthropological contextual approach to dialogue where we see Diapraxis as a meeting between people who try to reveal and transform the reality they share.
From there, theological questions can be asked and dealt with. Out of a "diapraxis" may emerge a deeper meeting, a dialogue. Diapraxis is to question the status quo.”
Source: “From Diapraxis to Dialogue. Christian-Muslim Relations” by Lissi Rasmussen in "Dialogue in Action - in honor of Johannes Aagaard." eds. Lars Thunberg, Moti Lal Pandit, Carl Vilh. Fogh-Hansen, New Delhi 1988 (link)

Change of mindsets    
(“Mindset” in Danish: Tankegang, tænkemåde, mentalitet (Kilde: Gyldendals Røde Ordbøger: Engelsk-Dansk))
How mindsets change through a Diapraxis is illustrated in this quote from a former participant (now a seamstress in "Upendo’s" sewing course and production project):
“I did not really understand when I came here what Upendo was about, but I found out that Upendo wanted Christians and Muslims to be together. I met that reality here, but in the beginning I had the opinion that you should stay away from Muslims. They are dangerous people. It came for example from the experience, that when we Christians walk in the streets we may get yelled nicknames after us or other times churches are burned down, so we thought those people are our enemies.
But now it is different. The activities here at Upendo have made us equal towards each other, so now we have the understanding, that we all are human beings being together. We are able to sit together, to be near each other, to be together. I have now a good relation to Muslim women in the group here at Upendo, and I have my friends. They care for me and I also care for them. So my fear, that they might be my enemies, has disappeared. I see, that they are my friends.”
(My translation based on English subtitles translated in an oral Swahili video): (source)



Deepening potential:
- “Upendo means love – promo video”: (4min., YouTube)
- “Upendo Means Love”- “Empowering Women of different faiths”(website)
- Video from June 2013 on the situation between Muslims and Christians in Zanzibar. Especially interesting is a sequence near the end on “Why it is important to work with the youth” by Lusungu Mbilinyi, youth coordinator at Zanzibar Interfaith Center: (English speak, Danish subtitles, 5 min., video) (video, YouTube)



Example Two: “The Centre for Christian Muslim-Muslim Relations in Eastleigh” (CCMRE) Nairobi, Kenya
This center is situated in the so-called "Little Mogadishu" which is a sprawling suburb in Nairobi. Somali merchants have lived here for a long time, and since the start of civil war in Somalia in 1991, this part of Nairobi has been the main destination for a huge number of refugees from Somalia who are Muslims. However, there are also people from all over Africa (and beyond) living in every street, and the district is a commercial hub as well. 
“Amidst the uncollected roadside garbage, unfinished roads, glittering shopping bazaars, spicy aromas of the rival restaurants, competing calls for departure for buses, loud announcements for prayers and hustle and bustle of traders and customers for bargains, a diverse community of people of various origins, cultures and religions compete to live and give meaning to their life.”  Source: Page 24 in “Mapping Eastleigh for Christian-Muslim Relations”
 
Relations
The center is situated in a building in the middle of the suburb, and it is a meeting place for students from the Christian university “Sct. Paul’s University” (SPU) and inhabitants of Eastleigh. It was created by SPU in 2010 with the aim to provide a platform for academic and practical learning engagements between Christians, Muslims, and non- and other-believers.



A mapping project in “The Centre for Christian-Muslim Relations in Eastleigh”
An example of learning engagement is a mapping project that took place in Eastleigh during November 2012. The project is described and analyzed from different perspectives in this book: 
B. Peters, Joseph M. Wandera, and Willem J. E. Jansen (2013): “Mapping Eastleigh for Christian-Muslim Relations”, Zapf Chancery, Nairobi. (Bookseller’s webpage)

Twelve pairs of students, one a Christian from SPU and one a Muslim from Eastleigh, each mapped a street in Eastleigh. Each pair went from house to house and mapped what they saw along with the faiths the occupants reported. Afterwards, each pair summarized the information they had gathered as a map, before sharing it with the other mapmakers.



The resulting maps provided a much more diverse picture of the people in Eastleigh than they had before:
On each street, outdoors and indoors, distinct differences in wealth or poverty were indicated. Although all the streets were dirty and smelly because of poorly functioning public service, it was different inside the dwellings. Many were well kept, very clean, nice-smelling, and equipped with high-quality Internet and TV-connections.
When it came to faith, most of the inhabitants on each street were Muslims, but there were also Christians and believers of other faiths. Although there were tensions, there were also many good relations between peoples of different faiths. For example, on one street a Christian and a Muslim operate together a pharmacy. Many others work for an employer of a different faith.
At times, nonetheless, the project was close to collapsing because of inter-ethnic mistrust, which others may have wrongly understood as Christian-Muslim hostility. 

Instead, a new understanding was developed:
“The actual Muslim or the actual Christian exists only in theory. In reality, however, they both are conditioned by their spatiality” (page 65)
Another outcome, which was intended, was that most of the student pairs developed good working relationships although even though neither student had prior personal experience working with another of a different faith.

An example of how strong these new bonds were, took place in the last day of the project:
 “… after three days of hard work, Kaltuma and Susan hand certificates to each other. The certificates declare that in addition to theory, analysis and designing maps, they have gained practical experiences in establishing Christian-Muslim relationships. …



… a call comes from a student of Sct. Paul’s: “You must come at once, a bomb has exploded”. A hundred meters from where the students are waiting, at the other end of Eastleigh, somebody has thrown a grenade into an overcrowded matatu (minibus). At least 10 people are killed, and many wounded. Almost everybody assumes that Al-Shabaab must be behind it.
This is how a meaningful day comes to a bizarre ending …
… Kaltuma receives a text message that her live-in cousin Ibrahim has died in the grenade attack. Kaltuma was the last person who spoke to him before he got into the particular matatu. 




Various people offer to take Kaltuma home in a taxi. Kaltuma chooses Susan to accompany her to her family. … the mapping pair returns to Eastleigh, where Susan and Kaltuma find a family in grief. …
On the last training day … the group is forming a true peace caravan. “No more violence. Kenya is too beautiful for that”, sounds from a big sound truck, and “The evildoer is poverty”.
During the last few days, Susan has become friends with a Muslim, despite her hesitation at this prospect at the beginning. Today she has learnt to know and “love her neighbour as herself. “Know your neighbour” someone calls from the caravan. “That’s it”, she says.” Know your neighbour”.”
The conclusion in “Mapping Eastleigh for Christian-Muslim Relations” is: “The result of the mapping exercise was a radical transformation both in the mappers' own self-perceptions as well as their perceptions of Christian- Muslim relations.”

Mapping is therefore a good tool for personal development of mindsets.

Deepening potential:
- Book preview of “Mapping Eastleigh for Christian-Muslim Relations” (page 1-19): (preview)
- Academic deepening of the Foucault-concept of spatial dimensions being more important today than historical dimensions: Crampton & Elden (2007): Space, Knowledge and Power. Foucault and Geography. Ashgate. (390 pages, pdf)



 The general situation in Kenya and specifically in Eastleigh/ “Little Mogadishu”
While the majority of the inhabitants in Eastleigh are Muslims, only 15 % of the general population in Kenya is Muslims. The general situation is characterized by …“An apparently peaceful co-existence on the one hand and an underlying mutual suspicion and hostility on the other".  (Source: Page 44-45 in “Mapping Eastleigh for Christian-Muslim Relations”)
The suspicion has grown tremendously in recent years where the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab has carried out terrorist actions in Kenya where many have been killed.
The country of Kenya as well as most of East Africa is a context in which religious communities have lived side by side for centuries. 

One of the founders of the center in Eastleigh, Joseph Wandera, describes in an article what this means:
''My own experience (was) of growing up as a young boy in a rural part of Mumias, Western Kenya, where traditional African religion was practiced as a daily routine alongside Islam and Christianity...
Mumias had one of the earliest contacts with Islam during the 20th century as a result of trade between Nabongo Mumia (a traditional monarch) and the Arab traders. I grew up among Muslims neighbors, friends, and relatives. I still remember vividly one of my childhood friends, Abdullah, who I played with at about the age of nine. I watched closely as Abdullah excused himself from play to go and conduct the ritual act of ablution before salah (prayer). Abdullah invited me to his home on many occasions where we shared meals and also went hunting for birds in the wild. I, in turn, invited him to our home for all sorts of games.”
“My present engagements working with Muslims and Christians at the Centre for Christian Muslim Relations (CCMRE) of St Paul’s University, in Eastleigh, Kenya, has widened my appreciation of religious diversity, and the challenges and opportunities it provides for mission..."
"Therefore, although I had an upbringing that exposed me to both African traditional religion and Islam, the evangelical form of Christianity with which I had a longer exposure through a lengthy period of formal schooling and subsequently theological education, had the most influence on me in the construction of my Christian identity and practice. This inevitably left me torn between the demands of my Christian identity and the plural religious context under which I was nurtured.
Despite my strong exclusivist evangelical ethos, my pluralistic religious context constantly demanded building positive and respectful relationships. These religious others were, and still are, my neighbors, coworkers, and sometimes relatives with whom I share a common social space."
Joseph Wandera concludes in his article: "... living together as religious communities is a human necessity that presupposes and imposes mutuality" (in Danish: "en menneskelig nødvendighed, der forudsætter og kræver gensidighed"). Source: (article on website)

Deepening potential:
- History, mission, vision & objectives of CCMRE: (webpage)
-  “Praxis: Beyond textual and discursive dialogue in Eastleigh, Nairobi” (source)
- ”Images in a cracked mirror: Muslim and Christian perceptions of each other in Kenya” (link))



Final words
Change of mindsets is a central outcome in both examples above. A typical definition of a person’s mindset is “A habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations”. The noun mindset was first used in the 1930ties to mean “habits of mind formed by previous experience”. (source)
As we see in both examples, and as we all know from our own experiences, new experience may provide proof to oneself that one’s former mindset was wrong, and one’s mindset can change based on new experiences.
We have to be very careful, therefore, not to define people´s mindsets as the root of problems.
Historically, border-crossers, mediators, & go-betweens are all descriptions of persons who bridge the gap of understanding between different cultural & ethnic groups. They have been viewed in many ways: With suspicion (also by their own), with trust, with distrust and sometimes as leaders through difficult times. 

Deepening potential:
- Academic study by Jebs & Mackentuhn, eds. (2013): “Agents of Transculturation. Border-Crossers, Mediators, Go-Betweens”, Waxmann



 Teaching resources

“MAKING SENSE OF WORLD CONFLICTS. Lesson plans to help learners understand the changing face of conflict.”
Eight lesson plans for students 14-17 by Oxfam.org.uk. (Probably more time & instruction needed for students with English as a foreign language)
“Teach about war and conflict using this free resource for teachers. Drawing on vast amounts of source material, case studies, and country information, this resource helps investigate the complex subject of conflict, and builds strength in enquiry, discussion skills, high level reasoning and creative thinking.
Lessons look at key issues in today's world including:
                              conflicts currently taking place
                              connections between conflict and poverty
                              how the arms trade works
                              When is conflict a war”
                               
Download all “MAKING SENSE OF WORLD CONFLICTS”- resources: (click)
These lesson-plans and materials may also be used as separate topics. The following two are especially recommendable concerning the topic of this newsletter:

“Futures” (Lesson 4) (for students 14-17, and beyond) (click)
How positive change happens is explored by use of cases from the real world.

“Corneille – the music of life” (Lesson 8) (for students 14-17 and beyond)  (click)
This lesson uses the positive moves that the singer Corneille has made to overcome his terrible childhood experiences through the genocide period in 1994 in Rwanda, his country of birth. He is now a Canadian citizen, and he has created his own English & French Rhythm’n’Blues style. His songs show it is possible to move on – and also celebrate life! – even after such tragedies without forgetting about the past. You may find his music on YouTube.
- One Example: “Sur la tombe de mes gens” (In English: “On the grave of my people”) (beware of photos in the music video from the Rwandan genocide that are not suitable for viewing by younger kids) (click)

“WE WORK TOGETHER. CAN YOU? Teaching ideas to help develop cooperation and thinking about peace and conflict on a global scale.”
“The Interfaith Education Group” developed this resource pack, which is a British partnership between 9 charities with the aim “to help teachers deal with the impact of international interfaith and intercultural conflicts on their school.”
The resource pack includes activities for all ages. The focus is on why working together is important, and the idea is to link working together on a small scale to large scales conflicts around the world. In this way ideas about different cultures and beliefs are explored.
The resource pack contains a poster, descriptions of 11 activities to choose from, and information on “The Interfaith Education Group” and the members.
The titles of the activities are:
- “Working together. A look at the poster”
- “We´re working together”
- “Same but different”
- “People matter – a web search activity”
- “Words matter”
- “Solving conflict”
- “Caught up in conflict”
- “In the news”
- “Stop and talk”
- “Born equal?”
- “Taking action”
Download all “WE WORK TOGETHER. CAN YOU?”- resources here: (Click)

 
All links were retrieved April 2016



Teach GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP network newsletter no. 20

To read any of the previous 19 newsletters simply visit the blog (link). The content are thematic introductions & curated teaching resources & learning possibilities.

April 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark

Egon Hedegaard




Everyone, who is engaged in developing global citizenship, is welcome to receive these newsletters/ teaching resources. Please request via email, and network by forwarding me questions, inspiring links, and texts to use in future newsletters. 


Overview of all “Teach Global Citizenship” Thematic Introductions & Curated Learning Possibilities:  

No. 19: ”I am your friend” project: An inspiring example of welcoming refugee children (click)

No. 18: Three Pillars of Success in a Democratic Society: click

No. 17: How Many Slaves Work for You? click

No. 16: Who Makes our Clothes so Inexpensive? click

No. 15: A Language Dies Every 14 Days click

No. 14: On Life in Slums click

No. 13: Up-to-date African Perspectives click

No. 12: See “Where Children Sleep”, What´s Your Thoughts? click

No. 11: What is Good “Citizenship Education” Today? click

No 10: Place-Based Education Projects as Part of Global Engagement click

No. 9: ‘The third Planet from the Sun’ – a Global Dimension Case click

No. 8: Use School Partnerships to enhance ELL, IT-learning & ... Intercultural Citizenship click

No. 7: “You´re Either Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem” (On genocide / folkedrab) click

No. 6: Teach about Indigenous Peoples of the World (In Danish: Oprindelige folk) click

No. 5: Human Rights Education click

No. 4: Practicing Global Citizenship Education for Students Aged 3 to 19  click

No. 3: Global Perspectives in Challenging Ways of Learning from Kindergarten to High School click

No. 2: Why Poverty? click

No. 1: Introduction & How to Play an Active Role in Local & Global Society click

I offer lectures and half-day professional development courses on all of these themes in English as well as Danish


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