A conversation with James Offuh, Euphrates Chapter leader and United for Peace Against Conflicts International
We often talk about “turning the Other into a brother” but a lot of us struggle with just how to do that. We had the opportunity to hear the example of an extraordinary peacebuilder. James Offuh has dedicated his life to bringing heart to heart listening and dialogue to communities in his home country of Cote d’Ivoire.
Our conversation was just a glimpse of all the lessons James has for us. We asked James to speak to the following questions:
How do you get folks to even come into the room together?
Once they are there, how do you lay the foundation/create the space for people to humanize the other side?
When do you see the turning point/transformation in the group? What is the catalyst?
Here is some of what James had to share...
“When you learn so much and feel inside that you are filled with skills and experience, you seek opportunity to flow into situations where your skills and experience can help. This is how this work found me.”
I can’t talk about my story without talking about my source, my mentors. When you see a child, you want to know who are the parents or teacher of that child? Len Traubman brought me into the social dialogue experience. For seven years he and Libby helped me learn this very important work and I feel so blessed to have known Len and now will stay connected to Libby in the work.
The world is plagued with a culture of bad communication and discrimination. The root cause of discrimintation and hate today is nothing but fear and ignorance of the other. I have found many tools to share with individuals and communities to help create unity out of separation and cooperation out of discrimination. Intercultural civil dialogue is the basis of my training.
In the process of civic dialogue communication, we discover how we can create or discover peace. In the midst of violence, how do we find peace? Peace is a manifestation of compassion. It must start with empathy and listening...listening to the other without discrimination. We are striving to touch the humanity of the other.
How do I expect people to come to the table of reconciliation? It is a very difficult process. We take sides. We are individualists and so avoid the other. The only way out of this is to manifest compassion. The cure for this relationship deficiency is to choose compassion and see the humanity in the other.
My most recent training opportunity was in Lakota, a community plagued with interethnic violence. Here we brought sides together for the first time. We first listened the groups separately. We traveled into this community 5 times to listen to the groups separately. We worked to understand the context of the conflict - who are the actors/players; what are their goals, ethnic rules and structures; what values did they represent. We always find fear and ignorance of the other strengthens the discrimincation and we always see that both groups want peace.
The army, the police, and the government could not facilitate this reconciliation. It’s our work - you and I need to facilitate. In this work we see that humanity comes together to see and experience our oneness. But you first need to have love and compassion in yourself. What you carry in you is what you distribute in the world. This is what we practice and this is what we do!
In order to set the tone of the space, we see hospitality is crucial. We provide refreshments and space for friendly conversation. Then as we begin the work we ask everyone to find someone they don’t know and move to sit with them. We all stand and say aloud a purpose statement of what it means to be human in this place and space right now.
As we moved into exercises and activities, they feel joy, fun and connection...then they want to participate. This fun helps deflect tension and unveil connection and oneness. They begin to forget who they were before they walked into the room.
Story sharing is so powerful. When you learn that dialogue is about listening, you see that it’s not about you, it’s the other’s narrative. By being patient and listening deeply, without interruption, blame, etc., their story touches you and you find the human. To turn the other into a brother is to offer mindful listening to the enemy/other.
When there is no listening, there is no understanding and, therefore, no compassion.
We have a mask exercise we ask everyone to do in order to see how culture, attitude, and behavior affects relationships. On their masks, they write values they hold that cannot be compromised - Muslim, Christian, ethnicity, etc. Then we explain that while you stay true to your values, it’s important to remove the mask in order to connect to the other. This is how you turn the other into the brother...you remove the differences and find your shared humanity.