By Nancy Myers
What
happens when you take a concept like future guardianship to a country
with a devastated past, a dreary present, and at best a highly
uncertain future?
At
the Science and Environmental Health Network our work is US-based and
US-focused. I have sometimes wondered how relevant ideas like the
precautionary
principle
and future
guardianship
are to the majority of the world's population who are struggling to
survive. Is caring about the future a luxury available only to
comfortable Westerners?
I
had a chance to carry that question to West Africa last month as I
observed and participated in the work of a small peacebuilding NGO
called the everyday
gandhis project
or egp (they keep themselves deliberately lower case and low
profile.) Egp is a US-Liberian organization that until recently has
worked exclusively in one small section of Liberia, the northern tip,
in and around a city called Voinjama, which was at the heart of the
long, vicious civil war that ended in 2003.
Egp's
directors, Cyndie Travis and Bill Saa, had learned about future
guardianship from SEHN and were eager to bring it in some form to
Liberia. They, like others, are taking this idea and running with it.
But
what would it look like in Liberia? Egp does not operate from grand
plans. Instead, it carefully takes the pulse of the community,
building on impulses and resources for peacebuilding that come from
the ground up. This yields a much richer, more deeply rooted
transformation than what might come from Western minds.
Barely
a year after the idea of future guardianship was seeded in Liberia,
two dynamic developments have emerged from it. One involves child
soldiers and one involves the land and forest. They are related.
Future
Guardians of Peace
A
handful of former child soldiers and other war-affected youths in
Voinjama proudly call themselves "Future Guardians of Peace."
Now in their late teens and early twenties, these kids have resumed
their interrupted schooling, extricated themselves from the
drug-and-alcohol culture of their war buddies, and are working hard
to earn the respect of a suspicious community. Egp and other mentors
have lent a helping hand.
The
transformation of gaunt, hardened, physically and mentally wounded
children into radiant, kind, generous, and responsible young people
has been remarkable--miraculous, even. Those who have observed and
helped in the transformation are mystified by it but at least four
factors have been important.
The
opportunity to tell their war stories--what they did, what was done
to them--fully and repeatedly to trusted listeners. The stories
emerge over time.
The
liberal application of love and advice from mentors. Father and
mother figures, aunty and uncle figures abound in African society,
even though these youths' families have been blasted apart by war.
Security
in life's essentials--food, clothes, school fees, and the prospect
of a university education--have relieved the hard-scrabble stress of
life before the youths encountered egp. They are working hard to
merit these privileges and are effusively grateful to benefactors
who make them possible.
Finally,
there is the all-important opportunity to be of service to the
community. This is where the Future Guardians of Peace role comes
in.
The
young people are devoting considerable energy to community
involvement, acting as big brothers and sisters to their younger
classmates in school, reconnecting to scattered family members,
sharing their tiny allowances with former war buddies and listening
to their stories. They relish the confident title of "guardian"
and rise to the role almost instinctively.
During
a stroll through the market, one of our Future Guardians of Peace
intervened in a dispute between a young boy and his little sister,
calming them with a hand on each child's shoulder and a few quiet
questions. Another day the same young man took time to listen to the
tale of a weeping market vendor who had just been swindled out of a
large sum of money. Another Guardian paused to listen to two women
screaming at each other and then passed on with a grin. "Man
problems," he said. Not much he could do about that.
While
I was in Liberia, Andre Lambertson, a gifted photography teacher from
New York City, was coaching seven of these war-affected youths in
photography. Not only did they immediately begin taking stunning
photos; they also began using the cameras to build relationships in
the community. Cyndie Travis and I interviewed these Future Guardians
of Peace about their photos. For some stories and photos, go to
http://guardiansofthefuture.org/projects/Liberiaguardians.
There
is nothing abstract about the future for these young people--they are
their country's future, and they are determined to get as much
education as possible to take their place as nation builders. But
they are not waiting. These young war veterans are cultivating a
culture of peace right now. One outlet for their energy is restoring
connections with the natural world.
Permaculture
Liberia's
precious forests are being decimated not only by commercial logging
but also by slash-and-burn subsistence agriculture. Nowhere is this
more evident than around the city of Voinjama. March is the end of
dry season and that is burning season. At the egp compound on the
edge of town we drank afternoon tea to the sound of chainsaws felling
tall, gorgeous trees and went to sleep with smoke in our eyes. It was
almost more than we could bear.
But
this city, which was nearly emptied out during the war as inhabitants
fled to Guinea and Sierra Leone, is now home again to upwards of
100,000 people and they must feed themselves. As in much of Africa,
that means slash and burn--a practice introduced in colonial times.
Small patches of forest are razed for farms; crops like rice,
peanuts, and cassava are planted for a few years; and when the thin
forest soil is depleted the patches are abandoned and new patches are
cleared.
In
sparsely populated areas the forest may regenerate in these patches
but as the population grows, slash and burn becomes clearcutting.
This is happening in Liberia.
Enter
permaculture,
an intensive form of agriculture aimed at creating ecologically
complete and sustainable food systems. In Voinjama in March,
instructor Warren Brush was completing Liberia's first permaculture
training for 30-some men and women. The class was demanding, covering
complex and artful methods of design, cultivation, water management,
and soil-building as well as big-picture information on global
warming, water issues, and toxic chemicals.
The
students--some of them college graduates and some totally
unlettered--listened attentively for hour after hour in the hot,
crowded egp guest house living room. They all understood what
permaculture was about. It was about saving the forests, about not
having to move the farm every two years. They understood, too, that
permaculture is not a quick fix. This was about investing hard work
and creativity now to assure a healthy forest as well as a
sustainable food supply for the future.
Our
corps of young photographers, who were on an unexpected school
holiday related to a national census, followed the permaculture
trainees into the forest one day, listened to traditional healers
explain the uses of native plants, and picked up a quick sense of
sustainable design. Then they photographed the burning landscape and
respectfully tried to explain to farmers why the burning had to stop.
Everywhere
I traveled with egp, from the neighboring county to Vice President
Boakai's office in Monrovia, news of the permaculture training
created a buzz. When was the next training? Could egp do a training
in this county, that county? Warren was interviewed repeatedly on
UNMIL (UN Mission in Liberia) radio, Liberia's only national
communication network.
Permaculture
and the peace guardians are the precautionary principle and future
guardianship in action, on the ground, in a country that is starting
from less than scratch. Liberians are eager to learn new ways for the
sake of the recovery and long-term survival of their beautiful
country. Are we Americans willing to do the same?
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