From Zimbabwe #1--Sept. 2010

I arrived in Zimbabwe (after stops in Senegal and South Africa) on Sunday night. Monday I met with the organizers for the training trip here--Philip Mundzidzi, the director of the youth program for the Baptist Convention of Zimbabwe and C.H. Chiromo, a Baptist pastor and peace activist I first met in Nicaragua in 1992 at a global Baptist peace conference. Also, Lancelot Muteyo, a youth leader who was at the Rome conference last year with Chiromo, is involved in the leadership of this training program.

Already there have been major changes. Some of the resource people didn't come (one may join us later in another city), so basically I'm doing the major programming with some input at transitions and summaries with the rest of the leadership team. So on Tuesday and today (Wednesday) I've led intensive conflict transformation and nonviolence training. We have about 25 participants, including about half youth, about a quarter of the group are women. We have pastors and leaders from two of the four Baptist bodies in the country. For a special evening program on transformative leadership last night we had about 35 people including an Assembly of God pastor.

I'm loving working with the youth. That's the focus of the training, and we have some great young leaders in the group. At first they were a bit hesitant to jump into the participatory form of the training, but today the energy and creativity was incredible.

Zimbabwe has lots of political turmoil. There are also conflicts within the Baptist churches. So we're pursuing how to be engaged nonviolently in church and social transformation. One pastor told me, "This is electric!" Another said he was discovering things he had never thought about. During breaks and after sessions I can hear the conversations where people are processing the content with lots of excitement.

So it's going well. Tomorrow we wrap up here in the capital of Harare (in the north east). Then we travel south west to the city of Bulawayo to repeat the program. Philip and Lancelot will be the team with me. Along the way we're doing a lot of talking about facilitation as they want to continue doing this kind of work (actually, they are already working in teaching and training, but this training will help expand their tool box).

The weather is wonderful. It's spring here, so some of the trees are bursting out with blossoms. It's cool in the evening--sweater or jacket weather. In the day it's pleasantly warm but not hot. Not sure if it will be this way across the country or just here in Harare which they say is at a higher elevation than the other cities.

Thanks for your prayers. I'll share more if possible. Internet access is a challenge.

Peace,
Dan