Liberia PeaceBuilding Project
“We will create a space where the truth is sacred, and renew our peacebuilding efforts to heal fractured communities. I am prepared to be the first to appear before it, to say what I have already said, to challenge untruths, to say what I have done and what I have not done and to demonstrate that no one is above this process of healing and truth telling.”
— President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The first Palava Hut constructed through Alliance for the Earth’s Liberia Peacebuilding Project can be found in Telewoyan Village, Lofa County, Voinjama
Contents:
Liberia’s Women End the Civil War
The Palava Peace Hut Tradition
Tending the Seeds of Peace: The Peace Hut Project
The Origins of the Liberia Peacebuilding Project
Mindfulness in PeaceBuilding
Get Involved
Our Liberia Partners
Dedication of the Ganta, Nimba County, Peace Hut
Liberia’s Women End the Civil War
The second Liberian Civil War ended in 2003 when the women — Christian and Muslim alike — came together in prayer and nonviolent resistance to end the conflict that had shattered the nation. They founded a movement for peace and reconciliation, grounded in their moral conviction and courage, that continues today. In 2005, Liberia held its first democratic election, resulting in the presidency of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first female head of state in Africa. Sirleaf was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakel Karman of Yemen. The women were recognized “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
The Palava Peace Hut Tradition
The government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has recognized that after nearly 14 years of destructive and divisive civil war, reconciliation remains one of its main challenges. In its final report, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia recommends, among other strategies, the “palava hut peacebuilding mechanism.” The aim of this is to foster peace and dialogue and rebuild broken relationships, fostering national reconciliation and healing, beginning at the grassroots.
The palava peace hut is a traditional building that has been part of Liberian culture for many generations. Although these huts can still be seen around the countryside, during the war its significance was lost and its presence ignored even though everyone knows its purpose is to serve as a place to resolve conflict and come together in peace.
The huts draw upon a generations-old means to reconcile the wounds of war and solve conflicts independently of the courts. These structures are literally open to all sides equally and provide a neutral meeting place where members of a community can hear and impart justice. In this context, the win-lose rulings of corrupt courts can transform into win-win solutions for many civil cases.
Tending the Seeds of Peace: The Peace Hut Project
Alliance for the Earth is now offering a unique and important program to support the creation of peace from the ground up, rebuild lives, and enhance youth and ex-combatant participation in reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts in Liberia. With our Liberian project coordinators, William “Uncle Jake” Jacobs and Christian Wolo Bethelson, we will work with community leaders in all 15 counties (states) to construct palava peace huts all across the country. These Peace Huts will be used as regular community gathering places for dialogue, conflict resolution, storytelling, education and sports.
Women were the driving force in bringing the Liberian civil war to an end. A regional chapter of women in the peace movement are shown here as they continue to meet on a regular basis in one of the palava peace huts.
It is our intention that over the next four years, Peace Huts will be constructed in every county in Liberia. Every hut will include toilets and a hand pump well to provide much needed safe drinking water. Water and sanitation are essential for good health and, after many years of civil conflict, Liberians have yet to see pipe-borne water even in the cities. Each community will provide the land, design and labor for their own peace hut and well.
Dedication of the Telewoyan Village peace hut, March 2011
The Liberia PeaceBuilding Project provides former combatants with the opportunity to “come home” and integrate back into their community with dignity. As our field coordinators report, each brick and nail in the construction of a Palava Peace Hut takes away another piece of the shame and horror of war, transforming former combatants into messengers for peace.
The Origins of the Liberia Peacebuilding Project
William “Uncle Jake” Jacobs (L) and Christian Wolo Bethelson (R) with Dharmacharya Cynthia Jurs
In December 2009, Alliance for the Earth carried an Earth Treasure Vase to the hardest fought region of the country through the auspices of everyday gandhis, an organization working with ex-combatants, child soldiers, women and indigenous elders to bring healing and build peace.
Click here to learn more about the Earth Treasure Vase practice:
An Earth Treasure Vase was buried in the roots of a sacred kola nut tree in Telewoyan Village, Lofa County, outside of Voinjama, in a community-wide ceremony on the winter solstice.
We invite you to enjoy our video journal of this remarkable healing ceremony:
Through the generous support of the Frost Foundation, the ETV Project journeyed to Liberia in March 2011 to tend these prayers and seeds of peace. Joyfully, we returned to participate in the community dedication of a Peace Hut constructed at the site where the ETV is buried. This hut was so well received that it was selected by the elders of Voinjama, during Liberia`s 164th Independence Day ceremony in July 2011, as the primary center for settling any future disputes amongst the citizens of Lofa County.
Our second Peace Hut is to soon be built in Ganta, Nimba County, on land given by the Mayor and City Councilors in the Gbartu Quarter.
Mindfulness in PeaceBuilding
“When people I work with — former child soldiers and ex-combatants — hear the bell, it gives them a moment of mercy, a moment of freedom from the mental and emotional anguish they are living with.”
— Christian Bethelson, Liberia PeaceBuilding Project
A key aspect of the Liberia Peacebuilding Project is ongoing training in mindfulness.
Working for social change requires an ability to respond to whatever arises. So much of the work “out there” causes us to forget and override “in here.” The Peacebuilding Project includes a yearly retreat, Peace in the Making, with Alliance for the Earth director Cynthia Jurs, as a part of our ongoing work of sacred activism. Cynthia has been ordained by Thich Nhat Hanh, and teaches and practices in his tradition of “engaged Buddhism.”
Peace in the Making takes place each year at the time of Jake and Bethelson’s annual visit to New Mexico, home of Alliance for the Earth. Jake and Bethelson have found that mindfulness and meditation is a powerful peacemaking tool. It allows activists to refuel their passion, connect with a source of peace within, and become more effective in their work. At the intersection of our concerns for peace and social justice and the ecological crisis, we meet to engage in discourse and support each other in a practice of cultivating awareness.
In the late summer of 2011, Jake and Bethelson met with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who was nominated by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Much was learned about sangha building and how we might translate this important aspect of dharma practice into our expanding community peace-building efforts in Liberia.
Training continues throughout the year in various ways and settings to come to terms with our own suffering, the suffering of the collective, and with how we each have been complicit in the suffering of others. Through deep, quiet meditation and ceremony we practice to release ourselves from the past and extend our commitment in service to the larger world.
Jake and Bethelson with Sister Peace, a nun in the Order of Interbeing founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, at Deer Park Monastery, Summer 2011
Get Involved
This humble, grassroots effort clearly can make a difference in the lives of many communities throughout Liberia, with each community providing the land, design and labor for their own Peace Hut and well. Our coordinators will bring people together on a regular basis to dialogue, tell stories, meditate, pray, eat, dance, and play soccer, thus laying a strong foundation for peace to take root in Liberia. With each brick of every hut, we hope and pray that peace becomes stable and this program becomes self-sustaining over the next four years.
A little goes a long ways in Liberia:
$3000 builds a Peace Hut
$5000 builds a village well
$250 contributes to the education of one young person for a year
Tend the seeds of peace in Liberia today by supporting the Peacebuilding Project with your most generous contribution here. Thank you! (When making your donation, please specify that it is for Liberia.) For more information, please contact Alliance for the Earth at info@earthtreasurevase.org.
Our Liberia Partners
William G, Jacobs (“Uncle Jake”), Project Coordinator, grew up in rural Liberia on the Firestone Plantation in a poor, uneducated family. He worked hard to go to school and was on his way to college when the civil war forced him into exile in Ghana where he lived in a refugee camp for 18 years. After losing way to addiction and depression, he gradually turned his life around and became an advocate for orphaned children and youth. He received a diploma in journalism and public relations and worked as a newspaper reporter. He then chose to serve the refugee community’s orphaned and impoverished children and their single mothers, becoming the Executive Director of the Liberian Dance Troupe and developing innovative programs, including a trauma recovery and cultural awareness program. In 2004, he was recruited by the NGO everyday gandhis to serve as their Acting Coordinator in Liberia and returned to his home country. “Uncle Jake,” as he is affectionately called by children everywhere, currently works with ex-child soldiers to facilitate healing and recovery that draws on storytelling and soccer to build team spirit, heal the wounds of war and teach young people the ways of peace.
Christian Wolo Bethelson, Field Coordinator, spent 27 years in the Liberian National Army, was trained in Libya, Israel and Romania, and served as one of President Samuel Doe’s personal bodyguards. When Charles Taylor took power, Bethelson was imprisoned and tortured. After 3 years, he was released and joined the rebel forces, fighting under the name “General Leopard.” Out of work after the 14-year civil war ended, he decided to fight in the Ivory Coast, but through a series of unexpected events that changed the course of his life, he became a man of peace. He now works to mentor former child soldiers and other ex-combatants, inspiring them to turn away from war and build peace. Bethelson speaks numerous languages and tribal dialects and enjoys drumming, dancing and singing. He lives with his wife Rebecca and four children in Monrovia, Liberia.
A wonderful account of Bethelson’s story can be found here at Yes! Magazine.
“The next Buddha will be a sangha.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
