Donna in Ghana 2008

Ghana But Not Forgotten

2008-06-06T04:55:00.000-07:00

I have so much I want to share with you now that I have returned from my adventure to Accra, Ghana to teach nonviolent communication with aspiring African peacemakers.

The trip was a success for me because I challenged my personal plague - inertia. The teaching I did empowered me, replacing despair with hope. The despair was a story about being too small (just one person) to take on larger-than-life afflictive institutions such as racism, privilege, poverty, and post-colonial good intentions and patronization.

The hope comes from faith that I contributed to change and to empowering others to foster more change. If I had any doubts that I created meaning for somebody, Michael Amoah Awuah of Ghana dispelled them.

In our closing circle, we took turns celebrating the gifts we experienced in this week together. Michael said I changed his life! Hearing that was astounding. It is helping me integrate the understanding that if I do work that is meaningful and fulfilling to me, there will be collateral gifts others and I can enjoy.

I was touched that Michael appreciated more than just my NVC teaching. My blogging and the empathy and encouragement we shared about his own fears about writing helped transform his writer’s block. I enjoy the domino effect that challenging my own writer's block (by blogging) has had. Michael, if you are reading this, I want to hear from you and still want to read some of your writing : )

When all the participants in the workshop expressed a desire to continue their NVC training in 2009 via the year-long North American Leadership Program that BayNVC offers, my cynicism gorge rose. How were these Africans going to participate in the leadership program? Some of them were refugees without a cent to their names. The four week-long retreats required of Leadership participants is sometimes a financial challenge for those already stateside and working. Were we just teasing these African people with a glimpse of what could be possible, then abandoning them?

Apparently not if Miki Kashtan has anything to do with it. (Read Miki’s experience as lead trainer at the Africa NVC intensive on the BayNVC web site.) Since the trip Miki has taken steps that assuage my cynicism and foster faith in continued support for NVC in Africa.

“I am aware of a deep passion for supporting NVC in Africa which lives in many individuals, and now in me, too,” said Miki, who implemented the following measures:

• Empathy buddies – establish pairs of participants who contact each other weekly to share empathy, role play, practice and coach each other in person or over the phone or Skype

• Mentoring program – create a list of available mentors in the USA, Africa and worldwide who can partner with participants from the African intensive

• Yahoo group - establish a Yahoo group (free online mailing lists, file sharing and group calendars) for trainers interested in offering training in Africa

• Fund raising – include in the Yahoo group those who have specific organizational and/or fund-raising expertise and energy to contribute to supporting NVC in Africa

• Conference call - arrange a conference call of the Yahoo group participants to begin conversations about how to coordinate training in Africa.

• How You Can Support NVC in Africa
If you envision yourself as part of an ongoing effort to support NVC in Africa (through mentoring, finances, organizational skills, etc.) please email dorrit@baynvc.org before June 18 to be added to Miki Kashtan’s Yahoo brainstorming group.

Data Points

Read All About NVC in Ghana on My Blog
I have added three new posts to my web log. Please share the blog with friends: http://www.donna-in-ghana.blogspot.com

Photo Gallery
Get the flavor of of Ghana through images. Visit my online photo album at Picasa.

Donations via PayPal
A few of you (some who live overseas) requested a PayPal link.

Comments
Share your impressions with me and everyone else using the comment links on the blog. It fosters dialog, creates community and lets everyone share in our collective wisdom.

Bottom Line
To date I have received donations from 32 people. The entire trip cost about $3,000 to cover vaccinations, prescriptions, airfare, visa application and photos, postage, retreat registration fee, hotel, food and transportation. Through the generosity of family, friends, colleagues, sangha and fellow NVC practitioners, I have received $2,555 as of this posting!

Gratitude
I know I am home because what preoccupies me now is a level of exhaustion - known as jet lag - that defies description. Mostly, I am so tired it physically hurts. There is a cotton ball behind my eyes, bleeding into my cognition. Everything is fuzzy. People’s lips move, but I am not much interested in or able to focus on what they are saying.

I check my stool and wonder when it will return to its customary and familiar solidity, which I would find comforting. I worry if the body aches I’m feeling are the early signs of malaria. I dutifully ingest my prescription Malarone (anti-malarial) tablet, which I am to take for the first seven days back in the USA. It’s not as much fun without my German traveling companion, Annett, who always pronounced it with heavily-accented German as Mall – ah – RRRWONE! And who, as she was taking it too, always reminded me to take mine.

I have arrived to a stack of envelopes full of well wishes, encouragement and checks from all who offered emotional and financial support to me for this trip. It is astounding. I open each letter like a child who delights more in the idea of a package than the actual content. I feel special. I feel an almost overwhelming sense of mattering that wells up as energy, coursing through my being from my belly to the back of my eyes, bringing tears of joy.

I’m left with a feeling of grace, humility and this expression, which seems too humble for the gift I have received: Thank you to all of you who shared yourselves with me on this journey.

I crossed a threshold. Between no and yes is a barrier. Until I said, "Yes!" the barrier looked like a brick wall of impossibility, fortified by fear. Looking back from Ghana, there is no wall, only a flimsy membrane of smoke through which I floated. Thank you for this gift of discovery that leaves me empowered to act on my ideas and inspires me to be the change I would like in the world.

My gratitude goes to all of you who sent your care, who read my blog, and who pledged financial support. I want to share my respect and gratitude to the workshop participants. I consider them visionaries, showing the foresight and courage to be catalysts for peace in their nations. Thanks to Michael Costuros and Kim Iglinsky my surrogate family who helped me do a pros and cons list that made it a no-brainer to go to Ghana! Thank you to Miki Kashtan, my NVC teacher for the past three years, who invited me on the trip. My gratitude to Sabine Geiger, my friend and fellow trainer, who helped keep me sane on the trip when I felt discord with Miki. Thank you to Annett Zupke, my roommate on the trip, for her companionship and impish wit. Thanks to my boss – Bonnie Loyd – at the Exploratorium; never have I had a boss who fostered such mutual respect, trust and support. My thanks to my sangha at San Francisco Zen Center for supporting me in my absence for two weeks and for nurturing the compassion that stood me so well on this venture. Thanks mom and dad. Thank you Gail Claspell - a sister in NVC and a rock of support – for your help with last-minute preparations, including making this blog possible. And my thanks and love to Siobhan Cassidy, for making my return to the USA a soft landing and for the gentleness that is helping me ease back into my life here.

Final Daze in Ghana

2008-06-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

Akwaaba - The African person is always welcoming
The first word to greet me at the Ghana airport was “akwaaba,” which means welcome. I found this concept of welcome alive and well through most of my trip in Ghana.

“You need to travel all around Africa to learn the cultural differences from place to place,” workshop participant Hawa Samai advised me. “The one thing that cuts through all is welcome. When we go to the first world we have to match our steps. When we come back home, then we have time torelax. We always have time to chat. Even if you see an older woman on the street you say, ‘Hello mama. How are you?’ ”

I have been pondering her words as I try to re-integrate myself into my “first world” life here in San Francisco, CA. I find myself confused. I don’t know which steps to match. Things are (and have been even before my trip to Ghana) moving faster than I am comfortable with. I’m wondering how to live a life where there is time to chat.

Caspar House and Gisela
Gisela, is the 60-something matriarch of the German expatriate community at Caspar House, our lodging for at least seven days.
That I would find sanctuary in a German guest house in the middle of Accra, Ghana is just bizarre. I am at a German guest house partly because two of my traveling companions – co-trainer Sabine Geiger and participant Annett Zupke – are German. The feeling of warmth and comfort comes from Gisela the manager whom some, Ghanaians included, affectionately call mutti – a German endearment and sweet acknowledgment of her mother hen qualities.

Caspar house proved a respite from the challenges of navigating Ghanaian cultural differences. The folks who gathered on the beautiful patio in cooling evenings to drink beer or locally-made iced pineapple juice really knew their way around. Some had married Ghanian men, lived in the country for years and considered it their home. All were colorful, from Jurgen – an airline engineer with handlebar mustache working in Ghana for the past year – to “Doro” – CEO of a German company with a local office. Nobody matched the lanky and elegant Gisela for flair and character.

Imagine the following with a German accent when Gisela says, “If I had stayed in my village as the daughter of the local veterinarian I could have married the richest farmer. But no, then I would be fat and useless and boring.” She has been anything but bored living in Ghana for 31 years.

Gisela was married to a Ghanian man who died last year. She lived separately from him the last 10 years in an amicable and distant friendship of sorts.

“He was a womanizer,” Gisela explained, simply. “I asked him if he wanted a second wife, which puzzled him, as he already had two girlfriends on the side – one 21 and one 23.” Why would he ruin that with a second wife?

She raised a daughter and three sons, one a member of the Royal marine guard in Britain. She proudly displays their picture in the Caspar House office. Gisela stressed that she chose to raise her children in Ghana where they would experience thorough acceptance.

“I really wanted them to know that they are Ghanaian, that they know their roots and their roots are here, in Ghana,” she said, emphatically. “I didn’t want to raise them as second-class British citizens.”

In the evenings after a couple of beers, Mutti’s tongue flows freely. “I am afraid of love,” she said. “You give your heart and emotions, but men… There is a nice German man who is interested but I am afraid. Besides, I have cobwebs down there,” she said with good-natured self-deprecation.

She seemed vulnerable in the Ghana gloaming as she expressed hesitation about her approaching return to Germany for the first time in more than a decade. She gestured to her surroundings at Caspar House.

“This is my home,” she said.

Ghana Ambiance

Teddy Kwashie Market
Accra, Ghana is difficult for me to describe. In some ways it’s similar to New York’s Times Square in the way it overwhelms me with constant movement and color. It’s not a high-tech, neon cacophony. Its architecture is a hodge-podge ranging from finished modern structures to converted shipping containers to shacks. It is bright colors everywhere.
It is goats and chickens and cows and people milling in constant motion like ants pursuing a purpose known only to them. It is larger-than-life, vibrant-hued billboards featuring only Black smiling faces. It is cars with orange or yellow panels signifying their taxi status. It is a cultural dissonance that screams in my subconscious. My Western eyes can’t land on any one thing, and so they bounce from novelty to novelty.

My final day, with the NVC intensive completed, I intended to venture into this maelstrom to look for souvenirs. Thankfully, I had a savior – Dorothea “Doro” Hartmann. I met Doro one night relaxing on our hotel patio. In a stroke of good fortune Doro befriended me. Ultimately, she took me to Teddy Kwashie Market to shop for souvenirs.Without Doro I don’t know how I would have survived the expedition. My wallet certainly would have been quite a few cedis lighter. I never got the hang of bargaining, which is the custom in Ghana. Also, there are two economies – one for tourists and one for locals. When Ghanaians mark you as a tourist or Western, market prices double, triple or even quadruple.

Shopping with Doro was a blessing for me, if not for the vendors. Most of the sellers know her and consider her a local, if not by virtue of her marriage to a Ghanaian man, than by her shrewdness. Those who didn’t offer her local prices met with a bargaining buzz saw – an amazing balance of respectfulness, severe chiding and bluntness that left many chagrined. I could only stand back and watch with awe. I guess being CEO of your own company hones your communication skills. Doro also works with the Hanns Seidel Foundation – a German political organization promoting democracy, peace and development in 50 countries, including Ghana.

Teddy Kwashie Market seemed a bit off the beaten path, near the Polo Club – a vestige of the British and still in use. It is a series of stalls in a dirt area where textiles, carvings, jewelry, paintings, fine arts, glass, and all kinds of souvenirs vie for attention. There is a tendency for one shop to begin looking like the next. The sellers are incessant, insisting you visit their stall. They attempt to escort you via cajoling, encouragement and smiles. This happens non-stop.
It took me a while to get the hang of saying no. Here’s what finally did it. I would tell a vendor I needed something no bigger than my little finger because I had a single, very small, carry-on suitcase, no space in that suitcase, and no money. The vendor would guarantee me he had what I desired. I would walk to his stall only to find four-foot woodcarvings. The vendors were impervious to my dismay, offering me their carvings. This experience, after the fourth time, was the support I needed to be able to say no with some firmness and a bit more self-acceptance.

In the end, with Doro’s help I found a few knickknacks for affordable prices that seemed to satisfy all involved. In fact, one vendor gave Doro a freebie as a sort of sign of respect and good will.

A Nugget of NVC a Day

The Tree of Life and NVC Leprechauns
It sounds like magic and in some ways it is. We tackled the Tree of Life late in the retreat. We waited until after the participants had begun integrating core practices of empathic listening, summarizing the essence of what another has said, identifying feelings, culling the need - particularly from judgmental statements - and making do-able requests.

A diagram of a tree delineating the choices we have in any given moment constitutes The Tree of Life. I find it a fruitful learning tool because it supports cerebral learners as well as those who learn through movement. It is collaborative, building bonds and enhancing trust, to boot.

The diagram goes on the floor. Participant A is “working” with a hard to hear message that Participant B will repeat to A. The third member of the group, Participant C, will coach Participant A through her choices as A and B engage in a role-play.

In The Tree of Life as in NVC consciousness, an individual always has at least three choices:
• Self-empathy - Connect with one’s self: Am I feeling X, because I’m needing Y?
• Empathy - Connect with the other through empathic listening: Are you feeling X, because you are needing Y?
• Self-expression - Connect with the other through expression: I am feeling X, because I’m needing Y.

The tree is a matrix that enables participants to role-play dilemmas in their lives and to practice the skill of understanding their emotional inner landscape: Too triggered to give Participant B empathy? Physically move to self-connection – the base or trunk of the tree and the thickest part because self-connection is the anchor from which all else flows. Give myself empathy until I have clarity about what I want to do next. Decide if I want to empathize or self-express. Self-expression not land? Go to self-connection or maybe I want to go to empathy to insure the other feels heard enough that she then has space to hear me. Am I at all confused about what to do next? Go to self-connection.

This exercise proved lively and engaging. I most enjoyed Miki’s setup. She mused on how much more one would make decisions from a connected place if one had “a little person who walked around on your shoulder and occasionally asked, ‘Are you connected to your heart right now?’ ”

911
I had a constant discomfiting concern about getting malaria or Traveler’s diarrhea or worse. Each morning when I examined my new mosquito bites, I wondered if I were infected. When I sat around in the evenings, the idea of malaria-laden mosquitoes buzzed around the edges of my psyche, harassing my sense of well-being.

But it was Annett’s ailment that supplied us hours of preoccupation. A small wound on her foot, basically a scrape, seemed to be infected. Someone had the idea of treating it by rubbing garlic on it and the tiny wound transformed itself into huge, unsightly, scary blisters. Nobody could discern if the blisters were some mysterious, bizarre, harmful infection from the air in the near-tropics or a reaction from the garlic.

The blisters stayed puffy and full after minor surgery to drain them. In fact, they seemed to multiply. Annett pressed me into service a second time to drain them. This served only to deflate me (as I’m germ-o-phobic and squeamish sometimes). The blisters stayed fat and sinister.

Ultimately upon seeking medical attention back at her home in Germany, Annett learned the blisters were a reaction to the garlic. All’s well that ends well. But the pictures are great! : )

Taxis
We took taxis everywhere we went in Ghana. I had the good fortune of spending a day driving around various markets with Bernard Ackumey. He shared stories with me about evolving life in Ghana. He sees a decline of the Ghanaian custom of children leaving the city to visit their parents in their rural village home.

“Your parents take care of you until your teeth come in. You take care of them when their teeth fall out,” Bernard explained.

When a child returns to the village, he must bring money for his relatives. The journey to the village usually is a long drive, which also adds up in fuel costs. As more relatives in the village struggle to feed themselves through subsistence farming, the demand for support from the children in the city increases. I learned from two taxi drivers with whom I had extended conversations that young Ghanaians in the emerging Ghana are responding to the pressure by making the trip home less frequently.

The Caspar House Hen
I feel a certain heartbreak in Ghana when I feel the richness and vitality of spirit of its people juxtaposed with the poverty. The best way I can explain it is through my experience of The Caspar House Hen.

Everyday Hen visited Caspar House. Like her fellow Ghanaians, Hen was just trying to survive. Parrot’s feed of seeds and nuts set just outside the cage (but close enough for Parrot to eat) was a perfect supplement to Hen’s meager diet. And Parrot didn’t seem to mind. At least Parrot said, “Good Morning,” to Hen each day she visited.

Hen had a half-dozen fluffy yellow chicks smaller than baseballs. She shepherded them proudly around the lush green of the compound. We all delighted in Hen’s tiny companions and in watching her motherly attentiveness to her brood.

One day Hen seemed distressed, squawking and walking around the compound – with no chicks. We watched her, chick-less for a few days. We imagined the worst and felt sad for Hen. The chicks did not reappear.

I equated this heartbreak and helplessness with my experience in Africa, the sense of powerlessness I sometimes experienced when countless people entreated me to buy something from them (I assume so that they could eat).

But the Hen story doesn’t necessarily have the sad ending we imagined. It turns out one of the Germans guests at Caspar House had an explanation for the disappearance of the chicks. Hen's owners place chicks in a pen when chicks reach a certain age. This helps the chicks understand where they live.

I wish I could resolve all my heartbreaks so easily.

Cultural Differences

2008-06-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody! I have been away from the blog for a bit, but I'm back and picking up where I left off: in mid-retreat.

Cultural differences – Sierra Leone style
There was a hunger to learn and an assumption of innocence participants extended to each other, which seemed to foster a sense of good will among participants and trainers. This proved supportive when dealing with cultural differences.

I found some situations downright comic while others left me more somber as when Fatmata Taranwalley of Sierra Leone shared an example I usually don’t hear in Bay Area role-plays. It highlighted that I live in a cosmopolitan city in a country – the USA – that has never really known war on its mainland shores.

Fatmata, discussing the idea of choice in NVC offered, “When the rebels were using the people as human shields and they were telling them to go out at gunpoint and dance, did they have choice? No. They were doing it out of fear. They did not feel they had a choice not to dance.”

Moriba Ben Swaray also of Sierra Leone protested that NVC might not work in his country. This initiated a sort of Laurel & Hardy dialogue I found both amusing and clarifying. Ben explained that the typical Sierra Leonean does not answer questions; so, asking, “Are you feeling?” could be problematic. A Sierra Leonean will answer a question with a question. He shared folklore on this tendency.

A queen from another country, hearing of the legendary refusal of Sierra Leoneans to answer questions, summoned one to an audience.

Queen: “I heard you Sierra Leoneans don’t answer questions. Is this true?”

Sierra Leonean: “Who told you?”

Moriba also offered these examples of typical conversation patterns in his country:
A Sierra Leonean will ask and answer: Where are you going? To town?

Or

Sierra Leonean 1: Did I get it right?

Sierra Leonean 2: Do you think so?

After wrestling with the issue, we found that one could make empathy guesses in the form of asking and answering: “How are you feeling? Tense?” And that there was a high likelihood that a Sierra Leonean would answer yes or no in the NVC format – as Moriba found he, himself, was doing at the training. Perhaps we’ll get a report in future from Moriba on how it’s working in his homeland as he and Fatmata intend to use NVC through their work as members of the West African Network for Peace Building (WANEP).

Ghana Ambiance

Still in Ghana

Nothing is still in Ghana to my foreign eyes

Always color and motion passing by

Goats, chickens and cows a constant roadside menagerie

Persistent in my vision, on the periphery

Sky-high billboards, products in roadside shacks and stalls

Or on passing heads, precariously balanced, though they never fall

Insistent hawkers threading traffic lanes

Imploring eyes voicing welcome and pain

Schoolgirls in uniforms that signify belonging and pride

For them just another day in their homeland,

for me a wild, confusing ride

Africans in all shades

A variety of factors led many in Ghana to peg me as Western (or at least not Ghanaian), even though I have black skin. Part of the reason is my coloring was lighter than the majority of Ghanaians who tended toward a uniform shade of deeper brown (to my eyes).

This question of skin color and identity arose for me in dealing with the White Africans at the training. What is a White African? Well, in this case, two of the participants from South Africa who consider Africa their homeland.

Karen Barensdie and Matthew Rich both participated in the retreat and shared a vision of bringing NVC to their home in South Africa, Karen through her work with the South African Peace Alliance.

A Nugget of NVC a Day
Requests
We progressively introduced core concepts of NVC over the six training days. We used a variety of teaching methods – theory, games, movement – to appeal to different learning styles, keep things fun and develop concepts organically.

A good example was the teaching of requests that included a game that may have puzzled anyone who wandered into the room when it was strewn with bodies on the floor in various poses. We were playing “What Not To Do,” to help with the teaching of “do-able” requests.

In What Not To Do Participant A attempts to get a group to assume the pose he is envisioning in his mind’s eye. Participant A cannot model the position for the group. He only can repeatedly instruct them on what position not to take, until they get into the position he desires.

For example, if Participant A wants people to lie on their backs, he could say, “Don’t stand up.” Of course, this could result in one group member lying down, another sitting down and a few lying down on their sides.

“It’s really difficult to follow instructions when you’re only given the negative, because it’s not specific. It could be so many things,” offered one participant after the hilarity subsided. Miki augmented this game with the following lecture on the three key elements in making requests:

1. Use Positive Language
When we tell people what not to do, people don’t know what we do want. When I tell somebody don’t smoke what do I want him or her to do? Drink? Smoke farther away from me where the smoke isn’t in the air that I breathe?

If you say don’t smoke to a teenager, what gets communicated is that the teenager’s needs don’t matter. If you have a sense of what needs smoking meets for the teen, maybe you could ask the teen to pursue other activities that would meet those needs.

[The group brainstormed to identify some of the needs a teen might be meeting by smoking and came up with acceptance, inclusion and companionship among others.]

2. Use Specific Action Words
If I tell you I would like you to treat me with respect, I don’t think you know what I want you to do. It’s very different if I say, “I would like you to check with me before you make decisions that affect me.” Then, I’ve given you a very specific action.

Sometimes we get into trouble because we communicate what we want without sharing the specificity of what we want. This leaves so much room for interpretation.

Miki resurrected this familiar dialog:

A: I want you to listen to me.

B: But I am listening to you.

A: No you are not.

B: Yes I am.

[We took examples from the group and Michael Amoah Awuah of Ghana tried several iterations of his request seeking respect, getting more and more specific:

Please respect my opinion…
When I say something I want you to value it…
When I express my opinion, show approval or disapproval but be honest...]

“It’s a problem we all have that we communicate in this vague language prone to misunderstanding,” Miki said. With the help of the group, Michael eventually crafted the following, positive language, specific, do-able request:

I want you to respect my opinion by verbally acknowledging that you heard me by giving me verbal feedback.

3. Think Present Moment
Often we can tell others what we wanted them to do yesterday and what we want them to do tomorrow, but it works far better if we make requests in the present moment. This is because we can’t change the past and we don’t know the future. For example, if the request is, “I’d like you to always greet me in the morning when you enter the room.” The other can’t say yes because it’s in the future.

Converting it to the present moment looks like this: “Do you like the idea of us greeting each other in the morning?” Then, the other can say yes or no in the present moment. We can complete the transaction in the present moment.

[A group exercise to form dyads to practice making requests helped elucidate the principle that when one has the verb “to be” in a request, the request is not do-able. One even could interpret it as a demand. For example: “Please be comfortable asking me for a chair.” We translated that request to “Please check with me about chairs,” or “Please ask me for chairs.”]

Two Types of Requests – Solution and Connection
The lecture resolved with focus on the difference between solution and connection requests. A solution request attempts to solve a dilemma, whereas a connection request is trying to address the feeling between two individuals sharing a dilemma, their quality of connection.

We have the choice whether to try to solve a problem or further connection. “I decide very simply,” Miki said. “Before I make a request, I ask myself do I trust that there is sufficient connection between us for you and me both to trust both our needs matter?”

This includes knowing the following: Do I trust that I understand your needs? Do I trust you understand my needs? Do I trust that I care about your needs and you know it? Do I trust you care about my needs?

“There is a lot going on,” Mike said. “If all of these things are not in place, then you are so likely to say yes or no to my request without full choice if I focus directly on the solution. When all these conditions are in place there is a flow between these two people that allows solutions to happen.”

Cooperative Musical Chairs
This exercise was for the kid in everyone and proved to me that fun transcends all cultural differences. The participants – whether in slacks and running shoes, beautiful full-length African dresses and heels or suit and tie – linked arms in groups of three.

Each group had a number. There are chairs arranged around the room in groups of three, but there is one less chair group than people group. So, the game begins with one group of three standing because it doesn’t have seats.

When the trainer calls out several numbers, those groups called rise and find a new seat – while they are linked together.

The chaos, laughter, toppled chairs and general rugby atmosphere that ensued was great fun. It was a sort of mass, cooperative game of musical chairs with lots of laughter, exuberance and enough good sense to stop before anybody got hurt. And now, I will do the same with today’s blogging. Good night!

NVC in Ghana - Amos D. Wright

2008-05-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

He talks with a syncopated yet measured, rich baritone. The very rhythm of Amos Deeahn Wright’s careful speech mirrors the consideration he brings, not only to each word, but also to each person he encounters in his mission – to use mediation and nonviolent communication to build a foundation of peace in Liberia.

I wanted you to meet some of the Africans I’m sharing NVC with here in Accra, Ghana as part of the 2008 African Alliance for Peace.

The ready smile that seizes Amos’ entire face at any moment delights me and belies the challenges this man has experienced after escaping from war in his home country of Liberia when he was 25. He has lived as a refugee ever since, almost two decades.

Amos was with the Liberian security forces escort for President Samuel Doe on the day rebels captured Doe in 1990 during guerrilla warfare. Rebels eventually tortured and assassinated Doe, cutting off his ear in a video aired on television.

“I saw no safety in going back to Liberia,” said Amos, now 45. He sneaked aboard a Ghanaian cargo ship and escaped to Ghana. There, he found himself in a refugee camp, young, without a country, and without financial means.

“There is no money there,” he said. “Basically you are a volunteer. You have your family to sustain. We work and we call on the mercy of God and goodwill from family who manage to resettle in the United States and Europe and send some remittance.”

Money is limited; however, Amos has an abundance of guile, perseverance and enthusiasm. He saw himself at a crossroads. He opted to change his direction in life from soldier to peace-builder.

“When I got here I thought on the moment of transformation that the war was a result of the failure of the generation before me to accept a platform that we would enjoy as Liberian youth,” he said. “On the contrary, we experienced war at the time we were supposed to be decision-makers of the country. So I can use my stay in Ghana to change the future of Liberia by going into peace-making activities.”

In the refugee camp he became a classroom teacher, which each month pays 15 cedis, the equivalent of $15 U.S. dollars. The West Africa Dispute Resolution Center (WADREC) trained him as a mediator. He began volunteering as a mediator in the Ghanian courts.

Always thinking about how to foster growth and peace for his return to Liberia, Amos realized incorporating mediation training in his refugee classroom wasn’t enough.

“We have the work of teaching the academic lessons and at the same time de-traumatizing the students,” he said. “We have a double assignment. We have to incorporate the Liberian culture, too, so the children don’t lose their cultural identity.”

He established a peer mediation program, training students to resolve their conflicts together. In 2005 he began working successfully in his refugee camp with Mediators Beyond Borders. “This is why people have built that trust to bring sensitive conflicts to me. They believe when they get to me, their problem will be solved, which makes the work easier,” he said.

Through Mediators Beyond Borders, he heard about this week’s NVC training.

The name of the training - African Alliance for Peace and Nonviolent Communication - drew his interest. Within the week he had used NVC in a real life dilemma with a husband, wife and pregnant second woman (see transcript below).

The success of this first foray leaves him inspired about what may be possible. “I think my peace-building desire to see Liberia be a peaceful country in the next 20 years is really bearing fruit,” he said.

There is an agreement with the Ghanaian government that refugees, after more than a decade in Ghana, will return to Liberia within the next six month. Amos can’t wait. He will return within two months. He’s not just going as a mediator, Amos said. “I am going with a change and as change.”

His imminent return to his country after a two-decade absence brings a range of feelings.

“It’s a pity,” he said. “It’s a pity that I spend the better part of my age outside of my country against my will. I’m going back with a reconciled mind that whatever may have been the cause of anything, I’m happy that I am going to build a generation that will speak for our children’s children and our children’s children to come. I’m overwhelmed.”

The concepts of mediation and nonviolent communication are key supports for him in building peace in a country like Liberia that is emerging from war. His intention is to enlist the support of the government to introduce these two tools into the educational curriculum of Liberia.

Conditions in Liberia are uncertain. The president for whom Amos was a security escort – Doe – originally gained power through a coup in 1980. In 1985 when Doe won an election that foreign observers declared fraudulent, tensions mounted. Doe remained in power, nonetheless. Some who were disenchanted, viewing his behavior as tyrannical, began the fighting that led to Amos spending his young adult life as a refugee.

“I think I have respect for the lady who is the president now – Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf,” Amos said. “She is a highly educated woman, who knows the country well, has the country at heart and has that motherly compassion.”

He's adding his own compassionate heart to hers as well as a vow.

“I promise that Liberia will go a very long way in peace.”

NVC in Action
At the NVC intensive we taught an exercise in how to identify the needs of all parties to a dilemma. Amos volunteered a challenge he was facing at his refugee camp. To protect the privacy of the parties, he used no names, but described a wife and her husband who had 4 miscarriages during 18 years of marriage. The husband then impregnated another woman. The couple came to Amos in crises.

The group did an exploration of the needs each of the three people (husband, wife and pregnant woman) was trying to meet.

The group discovered that the three parties had some core needs in common: support, security, love, and companionship. The husband’s needs for continuity, dignity, respect, and self-esteem helped some people shift from judging the husband as disrespectful to having empathy for him.

“If you map out all the parties to a conflict and what all their needs are, you usually will discover many of the needs are common to all parties and as you do it your heart opens,” said lead Trainer Miki Kashtan of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication.

Amos expressed a growing confidence in his NVC skills but asked for the group's help: “If you were at the center of this conflict, what would you do?” he asked.

The NVC training group did a role play to help Amos identify the needs of the people in conflict. Below is an edited transcript of Amos sharing the result of working with the people in the camp in the wake of the NVC role play.

Amos in Action
Amos: I made significant headway. I applied the role-play we did here. I gathered the wife was not willing to leave the relationship no matter what.

I discovered there is something more than the pregnancy. The man has an older sister who is very influential with him as far as womanizing is concerned.

After empathizing with the wife, I asked if it was fine to bring the man in. He did not have interest in defending. He let the wife know what he did was wrong and appealed to her for forgiveness.

She agreed if he supports the pregnant woman through the wife that will help [the wife] feel secure that she still is in charge. She will return home. She has forgiven him. The problem now is she wants the two of them to go to the hospital to learn why she is not getting pregnant for him.

They got to a point where the two of them were talking. I created an atmosphere where he was talking to her and I could see from her body expression the words were sinking into her. She is still feeling hurt about his sister telling people that her brother went and impregnated another woman because his wife could not give him a child.

I left her with an assignment: In as much as you are thinking of what you are going through, also think about what your husband is going through and if you were him, what you would have done. And I kept reminding them that they were finding the solution. I was just helping them by facilitating the process.

Kuju: Does this conform to your culture about first wives and second wives?

Amos: I am not thinking of it in those terms. This woman is the legal wife of the man and the man has agreed he made a mistake from going out of the relationship and whatever it takes to regain the trust he is willing to do.

The wife says she doesn’t want him to continue the relationship with the woman and to convince him that the [communication] should go through [the wife] and [the wife] can be secure that she [the wife] is in charge.

Miki: I am an advocate for both sides and for the process of connection, so I don’t embrace trying to be neutral. I advocate for all the needs.

Moriba: Is the third person comfortable with this arrangement?

Amos: I have not talked with the pregnant woman but they all attend the same church and they have talked and agree that the woman was in the wrong.

Miki: She is “out of the picture” – that’s you deciding for her that her needs don’t matter. When you say she is “wrong” that implies that her needs don’t matter. This doesn’t include concern for her needs being addressed.

Amos: I was focused on the two people who came to me and how those two can rebuild their trust one for the other and return to their relationship to nurture and protect one for the other. I really did not talk with the other woman. Due to this interacting right now, I will explore avenues to working with this woman. I have not yet given a verdict with her that “you are wrong” or “right.”

Miki: Being present may change the needs but doesn’t change the fact that she matters. I’m concerned with the statement: She and everybody in the church agreed she is wrong.

Amos: She has been an outcast.

Miki: If you are going along with the idea that everybody thinks she is wrong than her needs are not mattering.

Amos: I did not take that decision to make her wrong. I did not say so. I’m only telling you info concerning her that I gathered. As a result of the pregnancy the church has put her in front of the congregation and “labeled” her.

Miki: The biggest question for me is how do all three of them get re-integrated in the community.

Kuju: The marriage in Africa is between family and family. There is a fourth party involved, which is the child. The mother of the woman giving birth will want to be involved with the child.

Amos: It’s a problem that has taken off. I don’t know if I will have all of the time. Everywhere they go the problem will follow them. I am not going to follow them.

George: I’m personally proud of Amos and seeing the difference between when Amos came with this trouble on his mind and what we see now.

Kelly: I heard Miki’s philosophy of advocating for everyone’s needs versus neutrality and then I saw it immediately modeled here in our discussion of who were all the parties to this dilemma and what their needs might be. I found it amazing.

Restorative Circles
In the end, the discussion resulted in a realization that there were more people whose needs mattered in this process than just the husband, wife and pregnant woman. There also was the unborn child, the grandparents, the families of the husband wife and pregnant woman, and the sister who shares her opinions with her brother (the husband).

Miki offered a pointer to another tool that could support this breadth and depth of inclusion – Restorative Justice Circles. This is a strategy to include everyone applicable who could be party to the dilemma.

A key component is asking: Who else needs to be here in order to resolve the conflict? Each time one asks this question it adds more people to the circle. In this case, the influential sister likely would be invited. One of the benefits of this level of inclusion is that we avoid the risk of the circle devises an action plan that doesn’t include them. If that happens, the excluded people might be at odds with the plan, because their needs were not considered in developing the plan.

Amos Deeahn Wright
contactadw@yahoo.com
Mediators Beyond Borders
c/o Liberian Refugee Settlement
State House, Buduburam
PO Box 46, Accra, Ghana
West Africa

West African Dispute Resolution Centre (WADREC)
http://www.wadrec.com/home.htm
P. O. BOX CT 486, CANTONMENTS, ACCRA
Tel: 021 – 227173 /224330
Fax: 021 – 227082
Email: wadrec2004@yahoo.com

Mediators Beyond Borders (MBB)
http://www.mediatorswithoutborders.org/pg24.cfm
1807 Jancey Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15206-1065
Phone: 412-441-1151
Fax: 412-441-1152
E-mail: mediatorsbeyondborders@gmail.com

Centre for Justice and Reconciliation (for some info on restorative circles)

http://www.pficjr.org

Everyone Matters

2008-05-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

The NVC Intensive Workshop portion of the 2008 African Regional Summit finally is underway! This morning about 20 enthusiastic faces greeted us for what I found a rich exploration of nonviolent communication (NVC) across cultural difference and similarities. The results were sometimes comical, always thought-provoking and edifying.

I am excited about our ability to convey the ideas that are dear to us, particularly the principle that everyone matters. This philosophy underscores all we do and share.

Already I feel vibrancy in meeting people from countries that previously were simply exotic names on a map – Sierra Leone, Cameroon, South Africa, Liberia and Ghana, as well as a Swiss-Canadian who lives in Kenya, and an American intern working with the event sponsor, ICCHRA, The International Center for Conflict and Human Rights Analysis.

So much happened this first day of training that it’s challenging to give you the full flavor I want to share, so I’m picking vignettes from the first two days of training that have most touched me:

Kids at Heart
There was sort of a bumpy start to the morning for me. Fortunately we broke early for lunch, which gave the training team (Miki Kashtan, Sabine Geiger and me) a chance to discuss how dissatisfied we were about the level of engagement our teaching was inviting. We opted to brainstorm remedies and came up with a game, which as far as I’m concerned saved the day!

We played a version of musical chairs in which a person stands in the middle of a circle and names something about herself that is true of her but not visible. For example: “I would like to trade places with someone who… loves to dance.” Everyone for whom this sentence applies has to get out of her chair around the circle and find a new chair. Some people will get up, some will remain seated because the sentence isn’t true for them. But there always is one less chair than participant, so someone always ends up in the middle, revealing something new.

I was delighted by "adults" playing the game, whether they were wearing fine traditional dresses with heels, suits and ties or sandals and jeans. Not only did this introduce all kinds of fun, it simultaneously allowed us to reveal ourselves to one another and to notice similarities and difference one couldn’t discern from visual cues such as gender or skin color.

Nyande and Kwame (Aunt Millie and Uncle Joe, African style)
By far the biggest hit and one of the most effective exercises in teaching the participants how to translate a judgment into a need was Aunt Millie and Uncle Joe. The participants, to give the game an African flavor, changed the names to Nyande (the long-suffering wife) and Kwame the husband who is not as aware of household responsibilities and order as Nyande would like.

The game calls for a single-file line of Nyande’s to face a single-file line of Kwames. Each representative has a judgment or grievance. First, all the Nyande and Kwame judgments shout their grievances at once, illustrating how hard it is to hear one another through all the judgments. Then, one at a time, the Kwame/Nyande pair at the front of the line will face-off and share a judgment (while in character – which makes for a lot of fun). If a Nyande is judging, then a Kwame) tries to come up with a guess as to what need the Nyande has.

Many of the grievances transcended cultural differences; but the expression of these judgments was different and for me – a lover of words – compelling and entertaining. For example:

Kwame’s judgments

“Two captains can’t steer one boat.”
“We cannot have another man in the house.” (Similar to, “Who wears the pants in this house?”)
“Damn it Nyande, you are always yelling at me. Will you just shut up and fetch me my fufu?”

Nyande’s judgments

“I would not have come your way if I knew this was your attitude.”

Once each Kwame/Nyande pair has judged and received an empathy/needs guess that lands, it sits down. Eventually, everyone but one Kwame/Nyande is seated. This illustrates how, when all the judgments are out of the way it is much easier to see each other.

Each member of the last Kwame/Nyande pair (the "real" Kwame/Nyande) chooses three of the primary needs previously identified. They sit down to talk and share empathy (with some coaching from trainers and participants).

Hawa Samai of Sierra Leone played the "real" Nyande to Michael Amoah Awuah’s "real" Kwame. (Michael is with the sponsor organization ICCHRA.) Hawa expressed wonder and gratitude at the depth of discovery for her in this exercise, particularly learning to reflect another’s experience rather than instantly reacting or expressing one’s own needs.

“In our every day life in the home, office and street these things pop up all the time and we don’t reflect back,” she said. “The area I loved most was the area where Kwame wanted to fight back instead of trying to reflect back. He was trying to defend himself. I like that because it happens all the time.

“It’s a lesson that it is normal to get to that point easily. I loved seeing it could be the other way around. It was magical the moment he could reflect instead of going the other way around. It teaches me in life that there is that peak where you could make it or break it with just a single statement, and we always have to be careful when we get to that height to reflect instead of defend.”

At the end of the day, Hawa said she now feels more empowered to return to Sierra Leone and talk with her government representatives. She works for Advocacy Movement Network (AMNET), a budding organization working on behalf of women, young adults, children and peace builders in Sierra Leone.

Cell Phone Madness
Very quickly we learned of the similarities and differences through the Keystone Cops flavor of comings, goings and cell phones. The African participants kept their cell phones on ring and prioritized their need to answer calls.

The most amusing result of this was sometimes a participant asked a question. In the midst of receiving an answer from Miki, he or she might rise and leave the room (cell phone call or no cell phone call) to attend to something.

The first few hours the first day was a revolving door of entries and exits with Miki opting to honor cultural differences with a look of amusement and incredulity. The group brought more attention to the phenomenon, engaging in a discourse on setting rules versus arriving at shared agreements.

After initially wanting to establish shared agreements around punctuality, cell phone use whether to support side conversations while Miki was teaching, the group ultimately discovered it had no need for these agreements.

The cell phone departures seemed to fade into the background for me or maybe I simply acclimated to the cell phone culture here.

A Nugget of NVC a Day

Decision-making Based on Needs and Thresholds of Willingness
(This arose in connection with creating guidelines about what to do when people wish to have conversations on the side while Miki was teaching.)

There is no punishment and no reward for altering agreements or guidelines. There are agreements. If the agreements are broken we use dialog, not enforcement to revisit them.

Enforcement – suggests somebody’s idea is more important than someone else’s
Dialog – creates an opportunity to arrive at a shared understanding

“It’s never about what we should do, but what we are willing to do!” Miki said. “Should is imposed on us externally, while willingness comes from within and includes my choice to do it.”

The process is always to look for the willingness to shift. Also, going to the people or person least willing to shift to find the needs can result in the greatest movement in a group. We get new information and create shifts moment-by-moment as we work toward integrating the needs that arise.

Ghana Ambiance
While I focus on NVC, I still want to try to share the sights and sounds of Ghana. The city of Accra is ripe with taxicabs. Everywhere you go, a driver is trying to wave you into his cab. The locals often take something called the Tro-Tro – a sort of van or bus that will pick you up along the road and pack you in (although not as tightly as often is the case in India).

We were so used to seeing cabs everywhere, that when we went out Sunday night in the rain, we were shocked to find no cabs. Apparently, cabbies take Sunday night off. After 15 minutes of walking along the streets with umbrellas, we finally got a cab.

The custom in Ghana is to eat with ones hands, even though many of the home cooking includes soups and sauces. Each time we went to a restaurant, we received a silver bowl of water and soap at our table for washing and rinsing our hands. To handle soup, the diet includes rice balls, which one breaks off into little clumps and dips into the soup like a spoon of sorts. Also there is banku, a fermented grain that also can be used for dipping up soups and sauces.

In the outlying areas of Accra we frequently see goats, chickens, lizards and cats strolling the streets and alleys. Unperturbed by people or taxis, they contribute to the sense of bustle. In suburbs and cities street vendors often hawk goods carried on their heads between lines of stopped traffic.

On the Horizon
I’m hoping to put a face on the participants by sharing with you the story of Amos D. Wright, a Liberian refugee who has big plans for taking the teachings from the workshop back to his country where he intends to be instrumental in establishing a foundation of peace in the wake of war in his country.

BLOG Business – Please Contribute COMMENTS on the Blog
I still need your support – financial and emotional. I would really love it if you would use the comment links (below each posting) on the blog to share your thoughts, responses, impressions and your own experiences that are relevant. I so enjoy the co-created dialogs that result and the richness and depth when more voices join the conversation.

Blog address: http://www.donna-in-ghana.blogspot.com

Also, I’m still accepting donations for the $3,000 I need to raise to cover the cost of agreeing to support this trip as a volunteer. If anyone can email me with directions or help me put a PayPal link on this blog, I would appreciate it.

BayNVC is now supporting tax-deductible donations on my behalf. If you want your donation to be tax deductible:

Make donations payable to Donna Carter
Make checks payable to BayNVC for tax-deductible donation
Write Donna in Ghana in the memo line
Send the checks to me:

Donna Carter
c/o San Francisco Zen Center
300 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Those of you who have sent me emails of well wishes, comments on my writing, emotional and financial support have lifted my spirits and brought repeated smiles of joy to my face. I feel such great gratitude and a sense of care. Please keep me in your thoughts.

Sowing the Seeds of Peace

2008-05-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

It’s almost time to officially begin working with the Africans attending the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) Intensive Workshop. We start tomorrow and I’m so excited! Organizers have offered this workshop intensive in conjunction with the three-day 2008 African Peace Summit, which finishes tonight (Friday).

Fellow assistant trainer Sabine Geiger and I are meeting with lead trainer Miki Kashtan of BayArea NVC to create a teaching plan for our first day of training tomorrow. When we find Miki at the Regency Hotel in Accra, the exhaustion of facilitating the first African Regional Summit for three days isn’t able to diminish her glow of accomplishment.

“In three days people formed a sense of ‘we’ from having been disparate country campaigns,” said Miki, who measured the success of the summit by the depth of togetherness the participants created. As an example of the unity, she cited one participant’s comment, “I came to this Summit a Sierra Leonean and I’m leaving an African.”

Some 15 representatives from five African nations and three powerful organizations, including sponsor The International Center for Human Rights and Conflict Analysis (ICCHRA), attended the Summit to support each other in sowing seeds of peace in Africa.

Peace Partnership International (based in San Mateo, California, USA) also supported the summit, which aligned with its own mission to forge alliances to co-create a culture of peace.

All the participants are members of The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace, which works with a worldwide network of concerned citizens, organizations, elected and appointed government officials to establish (in governments) ministries and departments of peace* that support the emergence of a global culture of peace and nonviolence. Roughly 30 countries have peace movements and many of the African countries with movements were represented at the Summit, including Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Africa. The United States of America has a department of peace movement, too.

When I consider what the gathering accomplished in just three days, I can understand Miki’s exhaustion. According to her the summit participants:
• Created a vision and mission statement aligned with everyone’s needs
• Created operating principles aligned with everyone’s needs
• Began work on organizational structure and a budget
• Created a list of objectives and next steps for 2008
• Made significant dents in planning the 2009 Summit
• Created a press release

The triumph for Miki was that the group accomplished these feats using dialog and consensus rather than making decisions autocratically or by majority rule.

“I really left the summit with a total sense of integrity that I didn’t make decisions for them, and that I supported them in reaching the decisions that were theirs,” Miki said. “It’s about supporting self-empowerment and ownership and doing what I can to subvert the dynamic of the outside White Western expert.”

I'm looking forward to kicking off nonviolent communication training tomorrow!

International Center for Conflict Resolution and Human Rights Analysis
www.icchra.org
ICCHRA – International
P O BOX DC 824, Dansoman-Community
Accra Ghana
West Africa
Tel: +233(0)276-010-992
Cell: +233(0) 244-666-045
Email: info@icchra.org

The Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace
http://www.mfp-dop.org
*So far two countries actually have established departments of peace in their governments – Nepal and the Solomon Islands. The next meeting of the global alliance, called the Global Summit, is slated for September in Australia.

Peace Partnership International
Forging Alliances to Co-Create a Culture of Peace
http://www.peacepartintl.org
935 South B Street
San Mateo, CA 94401
USA
Phone: 650 525-1297

Ban Has a Plan

2008-05-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

Today we leave the Akwaaba Beach Guest House on the coast and head inland into the metropolis that is Accra. There, tonight we will meet with Miki Kashtan, the leader for this Nonviolent Communication Intensive, and we will plan the schedule for the kickoff of the NVC Intensive Training Saturday.

My travel mates want to get a leisurely start to the day, while I - a morning person - am thoroughly bored. (Annett – wants to point out that it was “only” 8am here. ☺) As I stood out on the beach behind the hotel, a young Ghanian man approached me and struck up a conversation. His name was Frank Ban Adonaba, but he went by “Ban,” and Ban had a plan.

In Ghana, though they love their country, many want to leave the poverty to experience greater opportunity in Europe or the United States. Europe and the U.S; however, are not always so eager to take them and there are financial challenges to achieving this goal, as well.

Some Ghanaians have a plan that I imagine is successful so infrequently that it is tantamount to a dream or winning the lottery. That dream is to meet a woman from Europe or the United States who will marry them and take them out of Ghana.

Our hostess at the Akwaaba resort – Helene Jâger – has lived in the country for at least 10 years, long enough to build a tuition-free school for children in the town of Kokobrite and to build the charming guesthouse at which we are lodged.

When I asked the Swiss native about finding romance as an older White European in Ghana she looked at me quizzically. I repeated the word romance twice before she understood what I was saying. The confusion was not due solely to her first language being Swiss-German. The idea of romance is so far out of her personal consciousness, she couldn’t conceive of the word.

In Ghana, she said, if a Ghanaian believes you can take them to Europe or America (often by virtue of having white skin) they will enter a “romantic” partnership with you. “If you are old, they will take you,” she said. “They don’t care.” That is no good for romance in her book. And there are not many eligible white men who come here, she added. She has been content with the richness of the country, her projects and her friendships.

Though my skin is brown, culturally the people from Ghana (at least in the rural where there is more homogeneity) readily recognize that I am from a different country. Apparently part of the tip off is my shade of brown (many of the Ghanaians I met share a brown coloring that is richer than mine). My dress, my dreadlocks, my speech and my companions (two European White women) also mark me as different.

Aside from a culture of welcome, Helene’s story helped me understand another motivation for men approaching me, even men young enough to be my son, like Ban.

As I drifted around the beach, waiting for my companions to stop relaxing and shift gears to expedition mode, Ban found me in my beach boredom and greeted me. He was polite, personable and welcoming. He was mildly complimentary. He immediately began trying to establish some longevity to our meeting, inviting me to come to a dance and drumming display in about two weeks. I explained I wouldn’t be in the country. He shook his head and cast his eyes downward with a great deal of pathos and for the rest of the morning would revisit the subject of my departure and lament that I was not going to see the concert. I got the impression he believed I could or would alter my travel plans.

Ban has good reason to believe in “The American Dream” Ghanaian style. His older brother, an accomplished drummer and dancer, met a Norwegian woman in Ghana. They married, have two children and live in Norway where Ban receives reports of how cold it is. Ban also receives money from his brother, enough money to pay Ban’s school tuition and put food on the table - most days.

There has been money to begin construction on the Nazuri Guest House. With pride, Ban showed me the family’s construction project that is at least half complete. The dream is to build a resort and cultural center for African drumming and dance! It’s about two doors down from the Akwaaba resort, very near but not right on the beach. Nazuri, as best I could determine, is a sort of tribal or village name for Ban’s family who are of the Ga tribe. Their music is known as adowa (culture music). They have a style of drumming called kpanlogo, pronounced, “PAN – lo – go.” In addition to Ga other prominent tribes in Ghana are Housa and Asanti.

Ban asked me if I were married. I was straightforward with him about not being married and having no interest in marrying a man from Ghana. He seemed to accept and appreciate my frankness. He says some visiting women won’t even stop to talk. He asked me why this was so. I said it’s possible that they are not interested in marriage and see his intent to recruit them for marriage as his reason for talking with them.

I enjoyed meeting Ban and still have a mildly unsettled feeling. I have so much more than he does in terms of material wealth. How does such a pronounced imbalance happen in this world and how do I continue without feeling so complicit in it? He never asked me for money. He was a gracious and serendipitous host. He offered me a window into his culture. I felt welcomed and engaged. And, I was very aware that he might not have enough to eat that evening.

Each day, he pays 1 cedi (the equivalent of $1) to go to school. I don’t know if he’s paying a daily tuition or paying for transportation. I gave him the 4 cedis I had because he told me he was not in school this day because he had no money.

He saw us to our taxi and waved good-bye as if he were a cousin or a member of the family. I feel a little powerless. I wish him well. I provide his mailing address below for anyone who would like to send him well wishes. I know he would enjoy it.

Frank Ban Adonaba
Teshie St. John School
PO Box 291
Ghana
0244647918 mobile

Akwaaba Beach Guest House
c/o Helene Jâger
Beach Road 28
PO Box 1387
Teshie-Nungua Estates
Accra, Ghana
++233(0)244 28 00 28 cell
++233(0)21 71 77 42
www.akwaaba-beach.de
akwaaba21@hotmail.com

Healing Time

2008-05-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Ghana,

I mentioned I would write more about a "healing" ritual of which I was part. Yesterday, I ventured out of my hotel along Nungua Road (which is a dirt road off the one, main paved road). The road is bordered by businesses housed in shacks, the proprietors sitting outside on crates or chairs, selling things such as cold drinks, food, electronics, refrigerators, phone cards, arts and crafts and all manner of things. Each shack is like it's own mini open-air market.

We stopped at one for some refreshment. Amelia sold us an orange Fanta and introduced us to her beautiful daughter – Anita – who sported rubber-band dreadlocks and was a year and 3 months old. In some ways I found it surreal as they served us refrigerated pop in a shack with electricity and a TV showing the theatrical release version of Pride and Prejudice with Kyra Knightly of the soccer movie Bend It Like Beckham fame. I promised Amelia to email her the picture I took of her and her daughter.

Back on the dirt road goats, taxis, chickens and children mill among the adults, each enjoying his own sense of belonging and entitlement. Annett and I still were feeling a bit daunted with the unfamiliar surroundings, as we walked. We were taking in the visual cacophony and the sound of the occasional radio or CD playing music, when we heard voices lifted in song. The singing was not coming from a radio. This was live music.

We followed our ears and arrived at a sort of pink, wooden building with a lone tree beside it displaying a compelling orange bud against its green leaves. Two men sitting beneath the tree smiled at us - one of the first signs of encouragement I had received, and a welcome one. All the guide books were writing how friendly the Ghanaian people are. I guess I thought they naturally would just smile at me all the time. What I find more true is if I smile and say hello, I am greeted in turn with warmth, a smile, greeting and often a conversation. If I do not smile, frequently I and the Ghanaian I am passing each go on about our business, unless he is trying to sell me something.

So, with the non-verbal encouragement of these two men beneath the pretty tree who shared head-nodding and hand gestures, we discerned that it was fine for us to enter this structure to hear the singing. This is when I learned, I was in the house of the lord - the Christ Deliverance Church Mission International, in fact.

We stood on the outskirts of a circle of people of all genders and ages who were singing in the shadowy, dim light of day that filtered in through the front entrance. Inside the circle people took turns receiving a blessing and a healing from 2 -3 men who spoke words over them. This healing also included intermittent singing.

I tried to be inconspicuous - never having been much of a Christian myself. But the lord is nothing if not hospitable and very quickly his emissary, Christiana, approached us to make us welcome and to translate the ceremony, which was not in English.

What I understood mostly is that people gather here to worship together and receive blessings and healings and to celebrate life and their good fortune. There is poverty all around (by my own Western, middle-class standard of living) and still, there is this celebration. I don't know enough about this country or culture to speak intelligently about this reality. I know that people are dressed in clean clothing, respectful, well-spoken and friendly. I didn't exactly feel comfortable in church; however, I did feel the warmth of the people gathered there, and I noticed an easing of my discomfort with being in unfamiliar surroundings.

After listening quietly for a while to the voices lifted in song and watching a pregnant woman on the verge of giving birth receive a healing, we left. We did not get very far out the door before Christiana and Frances Adjei caught up with us. They wanted to invite us to receive a healing!

I was quite reluctant, wrestling with my need to be authentic in my atheism and to be respectful of their worship. I viewed participating in a healing in which I didn't believe as perhaps hypocritical, inauthentic and disrespectful.

When Annett said she was interested, I set aside my stories and misgivings and opted to have a new experience. Now, I don't want you thinking I had some miraculous, transcendent experience. I did not.

What I did feel, though, was the warmth of the people in this church and their sincere joy in meeting me, blessing me, and sharing life with me. I found that a precious, unexpected gift that lifted my spirits.

For the record, I have a place for atheism and spirituality in my life. For the past three years I have been living at the San Francisco Zen Center in California. It is an intentional community of Japanese (Soto) Zen practitioners where I follow a schedule of early morning (5:20 - 7am) meditation six days a week.

I contribute my time to the community by cooking breakfast Tuesday mornings and fulfilling various agreements such as sitting in silent meditation with the community one Saturday a month (from 5:30am - 9pm); sitting in silent meditation for a 5- to 7-day stretch (called a sesshin) once a year; and generally performing chores around the temple. Sitting and chores occupy about 20 hours/week.

I have found the marriage of non-violent communication and Zen Buddhism a fruitful alliance yielding richness, understanding and compassion in my life. Each supports the other seamlessly for me as I share compassion in this world and in my teaching and learning. I am looking forward to the start of my participation in NVC training here in Ghana, beginning tomorrow night when we meet up with Miki Kashtan - the lead trainer, my teacher and the co-founder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC).

Until then, I return to my very humid room and mosquito net for some rest.

PS - I love reading comments all of you post about these blogs, so keep your thoughts and encouragement coming. Also, several people have asked me if it is too late to give financial support. No, most definitely not. I only began fund raising the day before my departure. I will be raising funds all while I am here to try to underwrite the cost of this trip. I am still far short of my financial goal. The good news is BayNVC informed me today that it will accept tax-deductible donations on my behalf! I will explain more and provide details in a later blog.

PPS - Francis (I provide his email below) would be overjoyed to receive email from anybody from the US who wants to greet him. Mention my name if you say hello.

In gratitude from Ghana,
Donna : )

Christ Deliverance Church Mission International (accepting donations)
Francis Adjei and Christiana
PO Box TN992
Teshine – Nungua Estate
Accra, Ghana
West Africa
Feelingbrother230@yahoo.com (Francis' email)

Storms in Africa

2008-05-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

A deafening fury wakes me at 4am

The sibilant sound of rain dropping so incessantly

I swear it is impenetrable

Sound so thick I think I can touch it

So dense there is no room even for the humid air,

to insinuate itself between each drop

A wall of shushing susserance like a Niagara

It’s the scale I cannot conceive

An aural assault of mountainous majesty

Crescendos of crashing thunder creating chaotic punctuation

Like each of my ribs cracking all at once in my ears

Like the gods striking repeatedly a cacophony of timpani

Ten pins breaking on my head in some out sized bowling alley

Tossing my heart into my throat with each rumbling roll

A primal exhilaration drumming deep in the pitch black of the night and my belly

Streaked with occasional white lightning

I can’t wait to touch this day!

3am in the darkness of my resort room
I was so enthralled by this storm that lasted at least an hour that I had to rouse myself fully and write these words. I used to love listening to Enya’s “Storms in Africa.” This song, particularly the timpani at the beginning and end, really captures this mood and experience of this storm I find myself sitting in. I am awed!

8pm in the dark of the evening garden
This morning’s storm seems like a distant memory as I sit here in the garden patio of my hotel, the moonlight silhouetting the palm trees, the ocean murmuring just yards away and the humidity hovering like a moist blanket.

I am incredulous tonight as my roommate, Annett, has shared with me that she managed to sleep completely through this morning’s storm. We have had a very full day out and about Ghana for the first time, having recovered from our jet lag.

I am awake and aware enough now to correct the information I shared with you earlier about my surroundings. I am not in a place called Akwaaba. Akwaaba is a word that means “welcome” in the local language. I am staying at the Akwaaba Beach Resort in Nungua, which is a suburb of Accra, Ghana.

A visit to the beach this morning in the light of day revealed a lot of garbage on the shore, no bathers and a few boats I assume to be fishing vessels. The hotel itself is spare, clean and comfortable enough, if you don’t hold them responsible for the humidity.

My new nemesis – cultural discomfort. It took Annett and me a long time to venture away from the resort. We spent the morning talking with Natalia, a 25-year-old, from Zug, Switzerland working an internship at the Swiss Embassy in Ghana.

As I wrestled with my paralysis and subtle intimidation about venturing out into this unknown culture, I found it comforting to hear her stories about where to go and what to do. Natalia has been here for three months of her five-month internship, though she is cutting short her visit. She contracted an intestinal bacterial infection of some sort, which put her in the hospital for a week. The infection and a subsequent bout with malaria led her doctor to require she live in a room with air conditioning, not travel and monitor her diet. This forced her out of home of the Ghanaian family hosting her and back into the sterile studio apartment the embassy provided. So, she is returning home to Switzerland, though her heart remains in Ghana.

Fortunately for me, she was still at the hotel this morning to share all her tips. Natalia recommended several excursions most involving dancing – from salsa to reggae – at local watering holes. She also recommended a visit and bike ride through the Botanic Gardens. We opted to try what for me would be my first taste of Ghanaian food. We took a taxi to a village called Osu where we ate at Asanka Locals, which translates to local food.

I found my first taste a treat. I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try the snail soup. Annett and I tried red-red with fish and plantain – a kind of black-eyed pea looking concoction with a bit of spice and heat. We also had fried fish (tilapia), spinach stew and banku – a paste like 3-inch round white cake of fermented cassava and/or maize with a very tart flavor reminiscent of Ethiopian injera bread in some ways. We thoroughly agreed that we would visit Asanka Locals again and order the red-red, for sure! And we might get the chance, as there is a franchise in Accra where the nonviolent communication intensive will be.

The most challenging and paradoxically the most comforting experience of the day was a misunderstanding about race that Annett and I had with a local man in Osu on our way to the restaurant. The interaction provided me my first opportunity to share NVC in Ghana!

We got out of our taxi on a bustling city street and immediately a slew of street sellers with goods from musical instruments to socks and bras appealed to us literally almost each step we took. I felt quite overwhelmed and opted for honesty in my answers: “No thank you brother. I don’t need a musical instrument right now.”

We were tired and quite hungry. We ducked into a bank, to escape the onslaught, enjoy the air-conditioning and to change some dollars and euros into the local currency – the cedi – which is roughly equivalent in value to the American dollar.

Back out on the street a young man engaged me in a greeting. I returned his smile and greeting and he came closer, shook my hand and asked where we were going. Annett took me by the arm and gently tugged me forward saying we were going to get something to eat. The young man, who later we learned is a fine artist named Black Africa, seemed agitated.

The gist of his complaint seemed to be that Annett and I were not exhibiting the kind of patience and respect he would enjoy. He seemed to want us to slow down and enjoy his country and his desire to reach out to us.

The situation grew heated as he explained to me that Annett (a woman with white skin from East Berlin) took me from this country in chains and that I should not be so quick to “side with her.” I think at some point he and a friend yelled what I believe they intended as an insult: “Are you lesbians? Is that it?”

While the interaction had some tension, and a bit of edginess to it for me, I never felt fully threatened. It was not quite mean-spirited nor did it devolve to the level of taunting. But I did not feel as safe as I would enjoy.

Black Africa wasn’t alone in his agitation. Annett - who has a long history of solidarity with disenfranchised people and who describes herself as not seeing race or color - seemed to be stimulated by not being seen for who she understood herself to be.

She stood there silently like a self-described pillar of salt. When this did not get results, she attempted to state her case. I was in the crossfire (standing between them as we walked on the crowded street side) wondering what to do. I had a bit of time, as Black Africa's attention and ill will no longer were focused on me; they were directed at Annett. Suddenly the little non-violent communication fairy in my head began whispering, “Empathy, give him empathy.”

I began imagining what this young man really wanted from Annett and me. I asked him directly what he wanted me to understand. “Is it that you want consideration and respect and would really like us to have an open heart in visiting with you in your country?”

He paused – a sure sign that my empathy guess aligned with his internal experience. “Yes.” He said simply.

This gave him the space to hear that Annett was not a colonial, power disregarding him and his country and culture. She simply was a hungry, weary traveler unfamiliar with the customs of this new place and eager to get out of the heat, hustle and bustle and into a restaurant.

Black Africa began apologizing for his own impatience. He showed us a bit of his artwork, gave us direction to our restaurant and wished us well. I felt a sense of relief and more importantly a sense that the three of us had shared a moment of understanding. For me, this moment of understanding brought me the most comfort in the day and in this land that is so foreign to me.

I will have to wait until another time to share with you the healing Annett and I received at the local, Christian church. I think I safely can say it was my first healing, having spent most of my life as an atheist… more on that later.

PS - Sabine - a trainer who made all the travel arrangements and got bumped from her flight yesterday, finally arrived tonight. Yay!

Asanka Locals
Ghana’s No. 1 International Chop Bar
P.O. Box LG.634
Legon Accra-Ghana
Osu Branch
www.asankaghana.com
786329 local number
020-81 52796 mobile

Akwaaba Beach Resort

2008-05-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Accra, Ghana!

This is a picture of me and my friend and fellow NVC participant Annett Zupke hiding under a mosquito net in our room in Ghana.

I finally have arrived, after 10 hours on a flight from San Francisco to Amsterdam, a 3-hour layover and another 5.5 hours on a flight from Amsterdam to Accra. Right now I'm not feeling the blush of excitement and anticipation I expected.

There is a gecko (I think) outside our room. At least Annett thinks its a gecko. It sounds like an alligator with a loud tree-limb cracking croak. I'm a bit daunted by this new country, the heat, the 17 kilometer car ride that took 1-hour in the dark and the accompanying motion sickness. Oh yes, and the mosquitoes which generally are threatening because who knows which one is carrying malaria?

Sabine (another friend and co-facilitator from the East Bay) was supposed to meet me on the flight from Amsterdam to Accra. She never made the plane and she had made all our hotel arrangements. I got a message in flight from the stewardess saying simply: Awkaaba Hotel. I didn't get the message that the hotel had sent a driver for me, so I took the scary, in-the-dark cab ride instead, with a friendly guy named Maxwell. Sabine is fine and should show up today. She was delayed due to computer problems at the airport.

When my taxi finally made it to the Akwaaba Beach Resort, I met one of my roommates - Annett - which buoyed my spirits. Now I understand why backpackers in foreign countries tend to stick like glue to fellow countrywomen.

Annett is protesting that she's not a fellow country woman as she is German. That just goes to show how desperate I am for a friendly face. Annett is scheduled to co-facilitating the 2008 Regional Peace Summit and Intensive NVC Training this week, too. Annett (who traveled from Berlin via Dubai) is exhausted enough that she has been braving dozing on her bed without the protection of her mosquito net. Gasp! She says, "Gute Nacht sis."

For a taste of the country so far:
The ride to the hotel was along a narrow paved road of stop-and-go traffic. Lining the street were ramshackle structures housing various businesses. Peddlers walked between the cars hawking sugar cane, limes, apples, and carrying big tubs on their heads filled with packets of water and other things I couldn't see.

Miki Kashtan - lead trainer and cofounder of Bay Area Nonviolent Communicaiton - apparently went swimming in the ocean earlier today and found the water inviting. I'm looking forward to that and to the start of the non-violent communication work.

I look forward to seeing more and sharing more with you in the light of day. Thank you to all of you who have contributed your supportive thoughts and financial support. I will be accepting whatever you can offer during and after the trip to help me fund this work.

I spent some time reading the dozens of emails I already have received and it has been a comfort to me. Now, I'm ready for bed. I've been up an entire day and night and it's midnight here in Ghana.

With gratitude, warmth and tenderness
Donna

I'm Going to Ghana!

2008-05-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I am embarking on what for me is a momentous journey - a trip to Africa to teach non-violent communication. I will be grateful and joyous for your companionship in just reading this post. It gives me a chance to share my story with many of you whom I haven't talked with in a while. So, if you are willing, please read on:

I am traveling to Accra, Ghana in West Africa where I will be sharing and teaching non-violent communication as part of the inaugural African Alliance for Peace Regional 2008 Summi and seven-day Nonviolent Communication Training to follow, May 14-22. The International Centre for Conflict & Human Rights Analysis has organized this summit to mobilize countries to establish Departments and Ministries of Peace and to explore partnering with the United Nations in establishing the Department of Peace.

Non-violent communication (NVC for short) is also known as the language of compassion. It has been my passion and main study for the past four years. It nourishes my spirit by providing tools to help me understand myself and others. It has taught me how to ask for the things I need to make life more wonderful. NVC has supported me in co-creating peaceful, rich, interdependent relationships with my friends, my partner, intimates and strangers. It is a language; a philosophy - even a spiritual practice - that says everyone's needs matter. Its cornerstone is the practice of empathy.

Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC) is the local chapter of this international movement. Its co-founder, Miki Kashtan, has invited me to teach at this summit. I am grateful and honored by the opportunity; however, finances are a challenge for me.

Ghana is a developing nation with limited funds to support my participation. BayNVC provides workshops in the Bay Area and around the world, in schools, in prisons, in churches. It offers sliding scales and scholarships and never turns anyone away for lack of funds. It is a non-profit, also with limited funds.

With that in mind, I hope to fund my expedition to Ghana, Africa. My goal is to raise the $3,000 in donations from friends and supporters like you to cover expenses (airfare, hotel, visa and passport, and vaccinations). The support I desire is both emotional and financial. So if you have read this far and are willing, it would buoy my spirits and give me great encouragement just to hear from you by phone, email or letter. I welcome your thoughts, questions, well wishes, what you are doing, if you think I'm crazy : )

If you are moved to donate money to support my endeavor, I welcome and appreciate any financial support. I wish you to give only if it is not a hardship to you and only an amount that leaves you feeling satisfied. No donation is too small. Most importantly, if you are not donating money, please do not let that stop you from donating your encouragement and emotional support. I would love to hear from you!

I intend to chronicle my journey here - my first blog! So check back here to join me in this journey, read my thoughts and see lots of pictures.

To donate write checks payable to me, Donna Carter, with NVC Ghana Trip in the memo. Mail them to me at:

Donna Carter
San Francisco Zen Center
300 Page Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

With your check, I would enjoy receiving your name, address and or email so I can thank you.

Please share the link to this blog, http://www.donna-in-ghana.blogspot.com, with others who you think would be interested in hearing about my trip.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

In gratitude,
Donna