In Sierra Leone, post-civil war, you might live next to your amputator. Family talk (fambul tok) was a community resource for peace. It’s a lesson to our polarised societies

From “Catalyst For Peace”

Some serious wisdom here about how to “activate the resource of community” under the toughest circumstances (the aftermath of civil war in Sierra Leone), from peace activist Libby Hoffman, talking to Kinship Hub.

The link to the show here, and you can play and download the file below. After that is a short extract from the transcript, fully available at the show link:

Libby Hoffman: I run a foundation called Catalyst for Peace. Our focus has been to create the space where the people most impacted by war, get to be the ones who lead in the rebuilding after war. And about 15 years ago, I met a Sierra Leonean human rights advocate named John Caulker, who had been leading calls for human rights during the 11-year civil war in his country. He was leading efforts to end the war and then to build a just peace process.

When we met, Sierra Leone had been devastated by this civil war. They had had a special court, a tribunal, that had prosecuted 13 men at the cost of $500 million. They had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission modeled after South Africa’s, in part. But the people most impacted by the war weren’t able to participate in either one of those, and didn’t feel impacted by them.

So, you had people living next door to somebody who might have amputated their arm or killed their mother, or forced them to harm a family member or burn down their house or a community center. They had never talked about what happened. The country simply couldn’t move forward without addressing some of those and John knew it.

He had a vision for a process that instead of being modeled after international justice mechanisms, would draw from Sierra Leone’s culture and tradition. He wanted to have a process of truth telling and apology and forgiveness that draws on Sierra Leone culture of family talk, fambul tok in Krio, which is this process of solving problems through conversation oftentimes around a bonfire.

He and I met around our common commitment to create a space together, where the people most impacted by war could be the ones who get to lead in doing that work. We came together to build a process and ultimately an organization that would be designed to do that: to center a justice and reconciliation process in Sierra Leone and culture and tradition, and to create the space where the people most impacted by the war could be the ones to lead in the process.

The heart of the fambul tok process was bonfire ceremonies at the village level, where people would come together and tell the stories in front of their community of what they had done during the war, or what had happened to them.

If the person who had done that was there, they would come forward and acknowledge what they had done and apologize. They were given an opportunity to forgive. These bonfire ceremonies took several months of work to plan. That consultative process was also the heart of the fambul tok process. That’s what I want to tell a little bit of a story about.

Beth Tener: Before we get into that story, I’d love to just to translate this to those listeners, many of whom might be living in America. Part of what I think is so powerful in the way that you and John approached this work was this idea of creating a space for something that was needed. They needed reconciliation at the local level after the war.

In the US, a lot of things are broken and there have been harms done. We haven’t found a way to come together and move forward so that we can come together as one. As  people listen, think about this story, not only in how it applies to those affected by the war, but those on the frontlines of teaching, or being a nurse, or the people in communities.

How do we center those closest to the work? How can they have a voice and a space to take leadership on what’s needed?

Fambul Tok in action

Libby Hoffman: Another dynamic that resonates in domestic contexts is that the people most impacted by the war didn’t have a voice. Their ideas of what justice would look like or what reconciliation look like weren’t even invited.

They didn’t have any space where it was assumed that they might have an understanding of what justice would look like for them or a space where they would be asked: “What do you think it would look like? and how would we go about doing it?”

The fundamental impulse, behind the fambul tok process was to look for the resources, even in the places most decimated by war, by the legacies of colonialism, corruption and these forces that had been at work in that region for so long.

Even in those places, they have resources, cultural, individual, and physical, to address the problems that they face and to step into their own leadership. What happens when you ask people what they want, and how they want to achieve it – that was the core behind the work that we were committed to.

The Fambul Tok staff would go into a region. Before they started working, they would they bring together all of the leaders representing all the different groups: victims and perpetrators from the war, elders and young people, Muslims and Christians, men and women, and ask them what they wanted to do.

Did they want to reconcile? If they wanted to reconcile, how did they want to do it? What resources did they already have in their community? What help would they need from others to move forward with this work? As I say it, it sounds simple. But the reality of it is that it was so fundamentally new to people in that context, so fundamentally different.

One example on my first visit to Sierra Leone. John and I had already been working together for a few months. They had been preparing the ground for the first of these bonfire ceremonies. I went over for the first ceremony. They were getting ready to start working in another community. I accompanied the staff, as they went to do the consultation in that community before they started working together.

They brought together all these leaders sitting around an open air community center. They asked people: did they want to reconcile? How did they want to do it? What resources did they have? What helped do they need from the outside?

There was such a lively conversation that was sparked by that. At first the energy was subdued. Here it was seven years after the war, and they hadn’t had any kind of a reconciliation process. They were assuming that it wasn’t possible. And being asked if they want it, it awakened in them this possibility. There was lively conversation about it.

And then what resources did they have? Well, then that awakened to them, oh, we have all of these and we have this tradition. It has been dormant but we want to reawaken it anyway, the conversation and the energy level was palpable.

After an hour or so of this conversation, a gentleman who had been sitting on the edges stood up. He was a tall gentleman dressed all in white. He had kind of the air of a school teacher. He said, “You are the first people to ever come here and ask us what we want.”

He recited this litany: “first, the Christians came, and they told us, no, your culture is bad. You need Christianity. And then the Muslims came, and they said, no, no, no, that’s haram, you need Islam. And then the British came in, they said, no, no, no, no, your culture is backward, you need our civilization. And then the war came, and that destroyed everything anyway. And then the aid organizations,” (another in a long number in a long series.)  And he said, “You were the first people to come here and ask us what we want, and to see our culture as a resource.”

I was stunned when he said that. It matched everything that I was hearing. But both the rarity of it shocked me. And the power that it unleashed, to go in to a community and see the potential that’s there, see the resources that are there, see the people, not just as victims, but as leaders. And as leaders of their own process. The power in that invitation unleashes incredible energy to work together on its behalf.

More from the transcript here (scroll down).

Resources and links: 

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: This is Beth Tener’s current initiative. These Ways of Kinship videos highlight some of the themes of this podcast conversation.

Libby Hoffman’s website featuring her book The Answers Are There

Catalyst for Peace - A peace and development foundation that Libby founded and directs.

Fambul Tok - The Sierra Leone organization, led by John Caulker, that works with post-conflict countries to create community-led reconciliation that leads to peace.

Fambul Tok documentary - This award-winning film tells the story of the community-based approach to reconciliation in Sierra Leone. It is free to watch online.

Inviting Leadership - This inspiring short video is about  inviting and encouraging leadership of local people, featuring Lilliam and Fatim, who Libby mentioned.

The Community Cup - In this video, Libby does a live demonstration of  the metaphor of the community as a cup that is broken and can be healed.

Mending the Community Cup - In this blog, Beth Tener shares learnings from her trip to Sierra Leone, with links to more articles and resources. 

Click here for a transcript of this episode.