Partera Blog
Springtime in Sudan
Apr 24, 2019
Dateline: Omdurman, Training in Conflict Transformation It’s 2010. Zafra explains her group’s role-play. Though she lives on Tutti Island, a delta created […]
A Woman’s Place is in the Revolution
Apr 13, 2019
Dateline: 13 April 2019 I think of that story today, as Sudanese activists succeed in their years-long campaign to oust Omar al-Bashir from […]
Postcard from Uganda #2: Playing for our Lives
Dec 9, 2015
The Big Wind Blows, if you watch it without sound, looks like a silly children’s game – the one-fewer-chair-than-kids kind. There’s a […]
Postcard from Uganda #3: Silly Games?
Dec 9, 2015
Then the Big Wind Blows for those who have ever participated in a demonstration. Those who have ever been arrested. For those […]
Partera in 2015: Turning Enemies into Neighbours and Friends
Feb 19, 2015
As part of its year-end reporting, the Washington Post listed seven situations in the world that had gone, in its view, under-reported. […]
More than the Sum of its Parts: Testimonies to Non-violence
Dec 9, 2012
In the morning rituals of greeting, Ferdinand responds with something other than the expected, ‘Tamaam! al humdillilah!’ I feel so tired. I forgot where I was – a training in non-violence – and what is the first thing I think of? A gun.
In the language appropriate to women-as-property, he explains: ‘My ten year-old cousin was “stolen” last night. About dinner time when all of the men in the family were in the market. Two men, both armed. They pistol-whipped my aunt and took my cousin. My aunt called us and we tried to find the traders in children but gave up some hours after midnight. And all I wanted was a gun.’ He drops his head.
‘What will happen to her?’ I ask. ‘She will be sold for cows to someone who has no wife. The thieves will then have cows.’
Holy Ground: Muslim-Christian relations in a context of civil war
Feb 14, 2011
The room is cacophonous with role-played debate and argument, hands gesticulating, brilliant clothing flying, faces wide open with passion and heat. Abruptly it all ceases with a signal from the trainer; laughter, some of it nervous, ensues. Two lines re-form to face one another. The trainer trawls up and down the corridor formed by bodies, probing, questioning, ‘So what happened? How did you feel? What worked? What didn’t?’
What You Honour Tonight
Nov 30, 2010
It is an honour to be the recipient of an award with such a rich history and to find myself in the company of some remarkable and passionate peacemakers. It can often be lonely work in a world in which there are endless resources available, it seems, to prepare for and make war and so little dedicated to the search for other ways to make our planet secure in the best sense of that word.
Postcards from Sudan #1
Sep 21, 2010
The website of the Sudanese Embassy in Ottawa features some beautiful ‘postcards’, many of them from either the Meröe pyramid fields at the sixth cataract of the Nile or the marine life of the Red Sea, with enticements to consider scuba diving while in Sudan.
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