by Daniel Hunter, TFC Program Director (October 26, 2004)

• What challenges will I face in West Africa when I bring TFC's direct education approach? What can I learn from the specialness of the struggle in West Africa?

• The rest of the world clearly needs the leadership Africans are providing in fighting for justice and peace. Do Africans need what Training for Change can offer from its years of experiential-based nonviolent action training?

• With the dramatic conflicts Africans are facing, will they find useful the tools of third party nonviolent intervention such as human shields/protective accompaniment?

I left for Ghana and Sierra Leone with these questions, some hopes, and a grounded training approach. My exploratory trip was the second trip in TFC's expanding Africa Project, to develop connections and learn how TFC can be most useful to folks across the continent.

During this trip I trained pastors and other religious leaders from across Sierra Leone, met with activists from almost all West African countries, and consulted with movement leaders in Ghana about ways to support their activist struggles.

Through this trip, I found the answers to my questions.

TACKLING DEPENDENCY WITH EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: a success in Sierra Leone

Africa has a long history of being thought of by the Global North lastly and leastly. Sierra Leone is no exception. Because TFC believes growth happens on the margins, it was all the more reason to visit Sierra Leone.

When I arrived, I quickly picked up a lot of fear and anxiety from the people I worked with. Fear rules many people's hearts, in a way that in all my travels I've never seen before. People were fearful of a return to the civil war, which only ended a few years ago. Some were scared of their corrupt government, others of rebels from the war who are now being integrated back into society.

Fear makes a lot of sense in a country that breaks all records by having the lowest human development index for 5 years running (an index of education, poverty, and child mortality rates). Its poverty arises out of its international debt, rich locals sending their money overseas and a history of colonialization that shows up everywhere.

Given all of this, the country's economy has become very dependent on outside support. One official told me that 60% of all development in the country is funded by internationals (people outside of Sierra Leone). Much of that are humanitarian organizations; others are companies and governments, with their own interests.

So when a group of sixty religious leaders show up to a training on peacebuilding, it only made sense that they expected lectures and to be told answers. Lectures are, afterall, the dominant mode of teaching in Sierra Leone -- and that attitude of "the teachers knows all" supports people to accept dependency on outsiders. Participants expected us to tell them how to do peacebuilding, kept calling us "experts," and setting us up to fill that role of outside know-it-alls.

My co-facilitator and I refused to play the dependency game. We stuck with our experiential approach.

During the first day, the contrasting expectations placed by participants on us and our experiential approach came to a conflict. It was after a group challenge where the group was given a task and as facilitators we stepped back and become silent. After much work they achieved the task and we began debriefing.

I asked: "So what did you do that enabled you to succeed in the task?"

They began responding: You gave us the goal. You told us it was possible. You stuck by us even when we didn't think we could make it.

"What did YOU do?"

They thought. Well you made it possible. You encouraged us. You, you...

They placed the responsibility for their success squarely on the facilitators. In fact, after I pointed out that dynamic, they began to name a leader within their group and tell him that it was completely his responsibility for their success, too!

The group stayed with this issue, because they could tell it was important ("No, we're not ready for a break," they cried at one point). Finally a leader in the group -- the one who was told he was the reason they succeeded -- forcefully pushed back: "It was EACH OF US who gave motivation and succeeded it the task. Not me. Not them (pointing at us)."

It took over an hour debriefing, but people slowly realized that they were placing full responsibility on their success on "the leader." I talked about how that dynamic showed up in the Civil Rights Movement and how disempowerment keeps people blaming leadership and stuck in a cycle of dependency. One of them exclaimed: "That's exactly what happens to us in Sierra Leone!"

During the next two days of the workshop, we challenged participants to claim their leadership initiatives more. And they responded tremendously -- owning more and more of the workshop! Less and less did they expect us to answer their questions, and instead began answering their own questions.

A principal closed the workshop with thanks on behalf of the participants. He said: "When I first came to this workshop, I expected to be brilliantly lectured. But you didn't lecture. Instead, you asked questions of us, provoking questions. And we expected you to answer them. But you didn't. Instead, you helped us find out that WE had the answers -- and that WE were brilliant. Thanks for your good work."

So can TFC's approach assist folks in West Africa to fight against dependency and support people's empowerment? A resounding yes!

ACCOMPANIMENT IN WEST AFRICA: Ghana as bastion of peacekeeping

The second half of my trip was spent listening and learning from folks about how TFC's experience in third-party nonviolent intervention (human bodyguards / unarmed accompaniment) might be applicable in West Africa. As of yet, we only know one African trainer who can teach the techniques of third-party nonviolent intervention. Rather than keep this a Global North-dominated field, we wanted to open it up to others.

For this work, I traveled to Ghana. Ghana is known as the most economically and politically stable country in West Africa. Its owes much of that stability to its history. Unlike some countries, Ghana fought for its independence through a major nonviolent movement. Kwame Nkrumah, a colleague of African-Americans leaders Malcolm X, Dr. King and Bill Sutherland, headed the movement in Ghana. Ghana became the first West African nation to gain independence in 1957.

I went to Ghana because of its commitment to its neighbors. The night of Ghana's independence, Nkrumah said that while any African country is shackled by colonialization, Ghana can never be free. And the Ghanaian government remains committed to its neighboring countries and a Pan-African analysis -- despite its own struggles with neocolonialization in the form of massive debt and IMF/World Bank imposed restrictions. Ghana is still fighting, such as working towards an regional African equivalent of the Euro (the "ECO").

And, relevant to my interests, it sends the most number of people doing United Nations peacekeeping work throughout West Africa. Given Ghana's role in providing military peacekeeping to West Africa, would there be interest in a grassroots, civilian form of peacekeeping? Could TFC assist in developing third-party nonviolent intervention in West Africa -- offering new nonviolent skills and training capacity?

While in Ghana, I met with dozens of peacebuilders across West Africa. Training for Change's host was a key woman named Levinia Addae-Mensah, the active nonviolence training director for the West African Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). I had met her earlier when working with Nonviolent Peaceforce (WANEP and TFC are both member organizations).

WANEP is the largest West African peacebuilding organization, with a grassroots network and peace & justice program in every West African country, and has its international headquarters based in Accra, Ghana.

I shared with Levinia lessons we've learned about TPNI (including sharing our 600-page training manual!) and we discussed for hours, along with other WANEP staff and contacts from across West Africa, methods of application. We tested different ideas, got creative, and worked our imagination.

And did they think it might be a possibility? Absolutely.

For example, Togo is currently experiencing a military dictatorship. Activists that challenge the government are routinely killed. In fact, there is often particular pattern: the government will call an activist up "to discuss the situation." A few weeks after the meeting takes place, the military will kill them.

Could activists who get that call from the government, turn to WANEP and its network and ask for TPNI support? A trained group of accompaniers with WANEP and governmental support could be sent in to provide unarmed protection. With WANEP's connections and government-endorsed pressure (which they thought they could get), the activist might be able to have human bodyguards to support them to stay alive -- and continue their justice work.

With more political space and freedom, activists can step out more to be more bold and effective in their work for social justice.

Since WANEP already has the network set-up, and even an Early Warning System to watch for hot political situations, they're in a perfect place to consider this work. TFC and WANEP are now in discussions about future training work, including developing a team of TPNI trainers and accompaniers in West Africa.

LEARNING FROM THE MOTHER LAND

While I was in Ghana, I attended WANEP's major peace education seminar, called WAPI (West African Peacebuilding Institute). At the WAPI were dozens of participants from across West Africa. While there, I attended trainings led by African trainers, for example on Women & Peacebuilding. For me, it was an honor to learn from my fellow trainers.

One role-play continues to stand out to me because of how it taught me about my own bias towards individualism, even though I pride myself on being less individualistic than mainstream US society.

In the role-play scenario a man was abusing his wife. One day he got extremely drunk and accidentally killed her. The tribal council listened to the man, family, and other members of the community and then made a recommendation about what should be done. In the role-play, the tribal council decided they would place the man in jail for 20 years, plus some random fines.

When the verdict came down, the woman next to me gave a silent signal of disagreement. She was a Nigerian trainer whose main work was dealing with domestic violence.

"That's not the best solution," she whispered to me. I agreed. We began to talk about what we thought should happen instead, and were mostly on the same page (take a clear stance against domestic abuse even before someone gets killed, get psychological support to him and his friends who abused their wives, have him engage in labor to "pay off" his debt to his wife's family and the community, etc).

But when we discussed the reasons why, they were very different.

I told her that jail would likely embitter him. He would likely come out more angry, since prisons are places of abuse by design. Jail would hardly teach him not to abuse his wife, and would probably end up teaching him worse lessons.

Her reasons differed and were all about the relationships. His daughter would become more angry at him: not only did he kill her mother, but now he abandoned her, too. The man's mother, who was already very frail, would be losing her only child. She would suffer greatly and possibly lose her will to live. The man's friends might become bitter at the tribal council for sentencing their friend to jail and possibly lose respect for the council. And so on.

For me, it was a huge moment at looking at how my individualistic ideas show up and how communitarian thinking focuses on relationships. The communitarian thinking showed up so often in my trip and was a great teacher to me. What a great teacher it would be to our own culture, if we were willing to listen.

SO WHAT'S NEXT FOR THE AFRICA PROJECT?

Plans are being made for training in nonviolent action in Ghana and follow-up training with WANEP. We're continuing to accept applications for the Super-T from Africans. We are also planning on a third-party nonviolent intervention training of trainers in Zimbabwe. We hope to have trainers from across Southern Africa and some representatives from West, East and Central Africa attend.

(And a personal note: Daniel very much looks forward to returning to the motherland.)