These stories introduce you to the true heroes and heroines of Africa. Your heart will be broken open by amazing tales of everyday courage and compassion. These stories are all based on real people and real situations. Each one provides a model for grassroots peacebuilding from personal to international. You will meet "Zuze," a man who came to the refugee camp as a teenager and now heads a family with teenage children. They are still confined to the prison without walls which is the refugee camp. He agonizes at the thought of still more generations of his family separated from their homeland. Yet he turns his frustration into leadership, teaching students of many ages how to resolve conflicts. The story of "Selline" takes us to Kenya and details the struggle of brave women to change traditional practices of Female Genital Mutilation. Selline and networks of women's groups rescue fleeing "FGM refugees" and work to reconcile families and replace repressive practices with healthy initiation rituals. "Leon" is a courageous Congolese government official who risked his life to escape from an oppressive regime. He and his family left a life of luxury and privilege to live in a snake-infested grain warehouse in a refugee camp because his conscience would no longer let him serve an unjust leader. "Novas" is a child in Zambia. African children, like novas in the night sky, go from being hardly visible to amazing us with their brightness. Novas gets caught up in the collision of cultural expectations and the AIDS epidemic. In the same way "Eddie" finds himself entangled in ethnic clashes between Tutsis and Hutus that stretch far beyond national borders. A Congolese young man who flees the civil war in his country finds himself the enemy in a refugee camp because he is half-Tutsi and half-Hutu. He learns that fighting back doesn't solve the problem but peacebuilding does. "Françoise" is an attractive young woman caught up in ethnic conflicts within her own country, as well as changing gender expectations. She finds surprising allies and unexpected strategies for making peace in her city. A Muslim man in an overwhelmingly Christian refugee camp, "Issa" overcomes personal struggles to build peace in his settlement and nationwide. He uses the lessons he learns from his ordeal to teach others to resolve conflicts. "Patience," a young Zambian woman who has seen the world outside her home village, struggles with emerging roles for women in her country. Her strife spreads as she becomes one of millions of young African women who find themselves widowed by the AIDS epidemic. The final chapter gives a glimpse of how the Messengers of Peace program was born and developed in communities and refugee camps in Zambia. It describes the pioneering path that is still followed by Meheba Messengers of Peace, a non-profit organization developed and sustained by the refugees of Meheba Refugee Settlement.
About the Author: DeEtte Beghtol Waleed says that Africa changed her life. Her six years teaching peacebuilding in Zambia created new lenses for her to see the world. She experienced the many cultures of Africa through her students from many war-torn countries who came to Zambia to learn how to lead their communities to peace. Messengers of Peace, her first book of creative nonfiction, contains a few of the stories of collaborators in peacebuilding, ordinary individuals working in diverse ways to make the world more peaceful. Waleed has been a peace activist and community organizer for more than 20 years. She believes that we learn best by sharing our personal journeys with each other. She teaches at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her partner.