“Peace can only come when there is love. If you cannot love,
there will be no peace.”
– Believe, a five year
old refugee boy from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Last Saturday SWB Uganda celebrated the 12th
edition of the Global Peace Games for Children and Youth. The Global Peace
Games are an annual event held each year on or around the United Nations
International Day of Peace, September 21st. Like thousands of others
around the world, we used the sport of soccer and its values to celebrate a
culture of peace and nonviolence.
We expected 150 participants for the festival and exactly
150 registered, ranging from the ages of 4 years to 20 years. We split up the
participants into six different groups and began the day by reading letters
from Wilfried Lemke (United Nations) and Sepp Blatter (Fifa) about the Global
Peace Games for Children and Youth. Then, each group had a discussion about
peace and signed a manifesto stating that they pledge to respect all life,
reject all violence, share with others, listen to understand, preserve the
planet, and to contribute to the development of community. After discussing in
their groups, each group presented what they discussed in front of everyone and
shared their ideas on what peace means to them, what it looks like, how it can
be achieved, what they can do to achieve it, etc. These presentations were 9
days ago, yet somehow I still find myself thinking about what was said by some
of these children. At one point, I vividly remember thinking to myself how sophisticated
our participants’ statements sounded in the discussions and presentations, and I couldn't (and still cannot) get over the fact that they are so young. One
example of many is the quote in the beginning of this blog and it’s even better
because the individual who said it is named Believe and is only 5 years old. I’ll
let you think about that quote and its context for yourself. After the
presentations, we played soccer for an hour and then headed back to the center
for some good old rice and beans. It was a pretty chaotic and exhausting day,
but I truly enjoyed every minute of it.
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| Participants with their certificates. |
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| No need for a caption. |
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| My group. Believe in the front throwing up double peace signs. |
The Peace Games Celebration also fell perfectly around the
same time as the culmination of a unit on the history of East African
countries. Over the past 4 weeks, we have been teaching the history of Uganda,
DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Tanzania during our Life Skills classes and
our participants seemed to truly enjoy the lessons. I’m not certain, but it may
be because a majority of them are refugees from these neighboring countries.
Or, it may be the fact that Katy, Jean-Christophe, and I are very engaging
teachers. Either way (pretty sure it’s the latter), it was a pretty successful
Life Skills month. We ended the unit on Thursday by outlining Africa on the
back wall of the classroom and having the children place a hand print or two throughout
the continent in paint.
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| Showing the little guy how to make a hand print. He ended up just rubbing his hand on the wall. A for effort. |
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| The end result! |
Okay, now I’m off to start packing for my trip to Kigali,
Rwanda tomorrow morning for a four-day conference on antiviolence and soccer
held by Street Football World, one of the leading organizations in soccer for
development networking. The conference is the second of its kind in East Africa
and I’m really looking forward to be a part of it!
Peace and love, mukwanos*
*mukwano is Luganda for friend. Yup, I’ve also started to
use friend everywhere I go here with my broken Luganda. Old habits never die.
