#12 A Big Wind Blows
In the intense social change movement of my young adult years, we used to take breaks from long serious meetings by playing games together. One was a variant on musical chairs. Someone would stand in the middle and call out, "A big wind blows for everybody who... has an older brother", or anything that person might have in common with others in the group. All who fit the category would stand up and rush to find a different seat, leaving a new person in the middle. It was a simple game; it got people moving around and laughing and learning about ways they were the same.
I hadn't thought about it in years. Then I was leading a youth group at a church camp and one of my assistants, a man in his eighties, suggested that we play "A Big Wind Blows." The children loved it, and I learned that this man plays it regularly in a program he's been involved with in the prisons, one with roots in the same soil as my social change movement. Alternatives to Violence is a simple program, all volunteer, with emphasis on self worth, appreciation, respect and community building. I've often thought that I would like to participate in a prison workshop--what an opportunity to interact in such a community as a simple fellow human being. One of these days...
In the meantime, the wind keeps blowing. My thoughts turn to Africa, where they have turned often over the last five or ten years, largely through a close friendship with a woman who built and runs a school in northern Uganda. She is a remarkable woman, persevering in the face of challenges that I struggle to comprehend--not just greed, corruption and bureaucratic black holes, but pervasive poverty, a swelling tide of AIDS orphans, a brutal civil war that has civilians targeted and attacked by both sides and school children abducted into the rebel army. She has made Africa real to me. I know of the horrors that make the news (and some that don't). I also know that she is one of many Africans who are deeply committed to the welfare of their communities, loving and determined in the face of overwhelming odds. Knowing her has allowed me to care.
When I discovered that fellow Quakers were doing peace work in neighboring Rwanda and Burundi, I had to know more. I had heard of the genocide in both countries, but there seemed no possible way to relate to it--families and communities torn apart, unspeakable atrocities, millions dead. It was a tragedy too immense to take in. When these Americans made contact with their African co-religionists (whose roots were in missionary work of a branch of Quakerism that many of us know little about), there was eagerness on both sides to claim each other and work together. In response to the question of what they needed most, these Africans responded: "trauma healing."
So I now keep track of a little project in two tiny little countries that many people have never heard of, that others will easily forget. This has become my project, these my people.
In Rwanda, the Alternatives to Violence project has been working to train traditional court officials as they struggle to oversee the reentry of thousands of genocide prisoners back into civilian life. It is not sophisticated. It is not high tech. Groups of people get together to practice appreciation and listening and the basic skills of living together. To break up the intensity, get people moving around, and give them a precious opportunity to laugh, they play games. A favorite, as it turns out, is "A Big Wind Blows". In one workshop, a released prisoner recounted the impact of being thrown by a big wind to a seat next to a survivor, someone he would never have voluntarily gone near. Though it was hard, he felt new hope that they could find their way to healing.
This is a wind that brings hope. It helps people to care. May it blow steady and strong.
Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 7/03
I hadn't thought about it in years. Then I was leading a youth group at a church camp and one of my assistants, a man in his eighties, suggested that we play "A Big Wind Blows." The children loved it, and I learned that this man plays it regularly in a program he's been involved with in the prisons, one with roots in the same soil as my social change movement. Alternatives to Violence is a simple program, all volunteer, with emphasis on self worth, appreciation, respect and community building. I've often thought that I would like to participate in a prison workshop--what an opportunity to interact in such a community as a simple fellow human being. One of these days...
In the meantime, the wind keeps blowing. My thoughts turn to Africa, where they have turned often over the last five or ten years, largely through a close friendship with a woman who built and runs a school in northern Uganda. She is a remarkable woman, persevering in the face of challenges that I struggle to comprehend--not just greed, corruption and bureaucratic black holes, but pervasive poverty, a swelling tide of AIDS orphans, a brutal civil war that has civilians targeted and attacked by both sides and school children abducted into the rebel army. She has made Africa real to me. I know of the horrors that make the news (and some that don't). I also know that she is one of many Africans who are deeply committed to the welfare of their communities, loving and determined in the face of overwhelming odds. Knowing her has allowed me to care.
When I discovered that fellow Quakers were doing peace work in neighboring Rwanda and Burundi, I had to know more. I had heard of the genocide in both countries, but there seemed no possible way to relate to it--families and communities torn apart, unspeakable atrocities, millions dead. It was a tragedy too immense to take in. When these Americans made contact with their African co-religionists (whose roots were in missionary work of a branch of Quakerism that many of us know little about), there was eagerness on both sides to claim each other and work together. In response to the question of what they needed most, these Africans responded: "trauma healing."
So I now keep track of a little project in two tiny little countries that many people have never heard of, that others will easily forget. This has become my project, these my people.
In Rwanda, the Alternatives to Violence project has been working to train traditional court officials as they struggle to oversee the reentry of thousands of genocide prisoners back into civilian life. It is not sophisticated. It is not high tech. Groups of people get together to practice appreciation and listening and the basic skills of living together. To break up the intensity, get people moving around, and give them a precious opportunity to laugh, they play games. A favorite, as it turns out, is "A Big Wind Blows". In one workshop, a released prisoner recounted the impact of being thrown by a big wind to a seat next to a survivor, someone he would never have voluntarily gone near. Though it was hard, he felt new hope that they could find their way to healing.
This is a wind that brings hope. It helps people to care. May it blow steady and strong.
Pamela Haines
Philadelphia, 7/03
posted by Pamela Haines | 3:35 PM
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