Council Training in Kigali, Rwanda by Jared Seide

At the invitation of Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers, I travelled to Kigali to work with a group of peaceworkers committed to healing their country.  The lead NGO, Memos, had assembled a group of fourteen participants for an Introduction to Council training workshop, culled from 10 local NGOs.  These fourteen were to participate in […]

Report from Rwanda: Loving Action Arising

Report by Jared Seide, Director, Center for Council, on leaving Rwanda after training Rwandans to be Council Facilitators for the upcoming Rwandan Bearing Witness Retreat in April 2014. This journey has been amazing, emotional, powerful, heartbreaking, connected, overwhelming, impossible, beautiful. I will detail the events in a more comprehensive report; for now I want to […]

Personal Relections on Bearing Witness in Rwanda by Roshi Eve Myonen Marko

People often don’t understand such a bearing witness trip. I have been asked why anyone would travel a long way to East Africa to listen to people describe a genocide perpetrated on them close to 20 years ago. Someone asked me candidly if I felt a peculiar attraction to terrible suffering. I can only speak […]

BEARING WITNESS IN RWANDA

BEARING WITNESS IN RWANDA by Eve Myonen Marko Bernie, Roshi Eve Myonen Marko and Sensei Francisco “Paco” Lugoviña were hosted by Dora Urujeni and Issa Higiro. Eve wrote the following report of the journey.     BEARING WITNESS IN RWANDA By Eve Marko Kigali at noon in mid-September has blue, hot skies draped by rain […]

Bearing Witness in Rwanda April 2011 by Kamanzi

Call me Kamanzi.   On our final night in Rwanda before returning home, Issa Higiro gave Fleet Maull and I new Kinyarwanda names.  Fleet became Mugabo (Man) and I became Kamanzi, which can either mean hero or beautiful…….or … The land of the thousand hills welcomed us back in late March with flowering trees and smiling […]

Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat: Day Five

Retreat Day Five. By Acharya Fleet Shunryu Maull, Roshi.  Today was quite different than the preceding three days of visiting genocide memorial sites.  This morning we visited a TIG prison farm and camp in the Bugesera district about an hour outside of Kigali.   Faced with prosecuting and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of accused genocide perpetrators, […]

Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat: Day Four

  Retreat Day Four. By Acharya Fleet Shunryu Maull, Roshi.  Dignitaries and victims families laying wreaths at the graves of fallen political leaders at Rebero (above). Inspiring morning at the Closing Ceremonies of the National Week of Mourning at the Rebero Genocide Memorial, just outside of Kigali. In the early hours of the genocide on […]

Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat: Day Three

  Retreat: Day Three. By Acharya Fleet Shunryu Maull, Roshi.  Genocide victims remains on display at Murambi. There are no words for Murambi.  Our group of 40 Rwandans and internationals spent the day at Murambi today.  It was a rough day for all of us, especially for the genocide survivors in our group.   Neither my […]

Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat Day Two

  Retreat Day Two. By Acharya Fleet Shunryu Maull, Roshi.  Rwanda Bearing Witness Retreat: Day Two Retreat opening orientation session (above) This will be short posting.  It’s already 12:20 am and we have an early departure in the morning. We spend the morning at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, the principal genocide museum in Rwanda, […]

Second Report from Rwanda: Peacemaker Bearing Witness Retreat begins tomorow.

  Rwanda Bearing Witness: Second Report By Acharya Fleet Shunryu Maull, Roshi.  Peacemaker Institute staff attended the opening ceremonies of the National Week of Commemoration and Mourning, honoring the victims and survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis.   Four Peacemaker Institute staff were seated in the VIP section just five rows behind the […]