Palestinian nonviolent leaders Iyad Morrar (left) and Bassam Tamimi (right) address our group, Ramallah, 12/26/10

On Sunday morning we visited a cafe in Ramallah where we had meetings with a variety of Palestinian leaders. We gathered into the upstairs room of a coffee house and met first with an official from the Palestinian Authority. But the highlight of our meeting was as visit from two prominent Palestinian nonviolent leaders: Iyad Morrar from the West Bank village of Budrus and Bassam Tamimi from the village of Nabi Saleh.

Iyad’s leadership in Budrus has recently become the subject of a new documentary film, which powerfully demonstrates how he brought together a wide coalition of villagers and solidarity workers to successfully keep the construction of the Separation Barrier from destroying their village. When I saw the film, my first impression was that while it was undeniably inspiring, it didn’t explain that Budrus is largely one isolated success story – and that the IDF is going its level best to suppress the Palestinian nonviolent movement through brutality at demonstrations and the widespread imprisonment of their leaders.

When I mentioned this to Iyad and Bassam, they agreed without hesitation.  There are in fact numerous examples of Israeli soldiers firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets directly at protesters. Just a week before our visit, an international protester in Nabi Saleh was severely injured after directly hit in the back of the head with a canister as he was trying to take cover (see below).

Tear Gas in Nabi Saleh, Dec. 10, 2010 Photo: Joseph Dana

I’ve been trying my level best on this blog to highlight the growth of nonviolent popular committees in the West Bank, which are enormously important and eminently worthy of our support. It was deeply gratifying to bring congregants to meet leaders such as Iyad and Bassam, who are resisting daily oppression with principled, moral steadfastness. Where are the Palestinian Ghandis, asks the American Jewish community?  Well, we just met with two of them in a Ramallah coffee house.

From Ramallah we headed due north to Jenin. It took our bus driver several attempts to find the right route as it is never immediately clear which roads are open and which are closed. We did however, sail through a checkpoint, which had been eased in honor of the Christmas holiday.

After passing through Nablus, we arrived at the town of Jenin, and gathered in the main office of the Palestinian Fair Trade Association. JRC has been selling PFTA olive oil for years, thanks to the leadership of member Lynn Pollack. The PFTA is the largest fair trade producers’ union in Palestine, with over 1700 small Palestinian farmers joined in fair trade collectives and cooperatives across the country. They work with olive farmers’ cooperatives through the northern West Bank and women’s village cooperatives that produce cousous, za’atar, sun dried tomatoes, olive oil soap, etc.

We then visited the PFTA’s main exporter, Canaan Fair Trade and were given a tour of their impressive facility by Administrative Manager Ahmed Abufarha (below). This multi-level operation is where coop farmers bring their olives to be pressed, stored, packaged and shipped and where their other products are prepared for export as well.

Much like our visit with Iyad and Bassam, our visit the Jenin fair trade community is an important reminder that there is a West Bank reality beyond the headlines that we read every day. Our job, we now realize, is to bear witness to these realities – to cultivate these relationships, and to do our part to extend them to the world upon our return.

After touring the Canaan Fair Trade facility, we broke up into groups and went off to our home visits. I was in a group of four JRC men who stayed with a family in ‘Anin – a West Bank village 15 minutes west of Jenin, just east of the Green Line.

Just like in Deheishe, we hit it off immediately with our hosts. For several hours, we sat in the living room of Awad – an olive farmer and retired captain from the PA police. Awad has ten children and received us with incredible graciousness. That’s Awad and his youngest, below, flanked by JRC members Ray Grossman, left, and Danny Newman, right

During the course of the evening, several men from the village gathered in the living room to meet us. Between our mutual English, Hebrew, French and pigeon Arabic, we were able to communicate quite well. At one point, we mentioned that we were American Jews and that I was a rabbi – a revelation that stopped them in their tracks somewhat.  After the initial bewilderment, however, our freewheeling conversation continued on and on. At one point, they pulled out the nargila pipe and we puffed away, I confess, with a fair amount of abandon.

Danny Newman, who is a High School math teacher talked extensively with another young man from the village who teaches High School Physics, comparing notes. Michael Deheeger, who speaks fluent French, spoke with another man who studied engineering in Algeria. I talked politics with a young man who wanted to know what I thought of Obama and if I thought he would be able to broker a peace treaty.

After a while, the young men asked us if we’d like to go for a walk through the village. While it had been a long day for us and it was starting to get pretty late, we all readily agreed. It was a mild evening with a dazzlingly clear night sky as we walked through the winding roads of ‘Anin. They showed us two of the natural springs of the village, which produce sweet, fresh water that runs off from a nearby mountain. We then stopped on the side of the road, built a campfire (which we were told was lit up there every evening) and sat around chatting, smoking locally made ‘Anin cigarettes.

'Anin by day

Like our experience in Deheishe, our visit was extraordinary for its simple ordinariness. For our part, we were taken by the humanity of our new friends, which is readily evident despite the obvious turmoil of their day to day existence. We were also moved by their genuine curiosity in us, their desire to get to know us better and host us in their village again. For me, and I think most of the members of our trip, this has been the most transformative experience: getting to know new friends and breaking down the politically-driven barriers that have long kept us from connecting in such a simple but immensely important way.

I do not hesitate to say we will continue to nurture these connections and will return to visit these new friends as soon as we can.

My next post will describe our final day in Jenin and offer some final thoughts. I’ll also post some thoughts from trip members, all of whom had been profoundly transformed by this journey.

Before Cotton left, I hooked him up with Rabbi Brian Walt, my other dear friend and colleague who happens to be sojourning in I/P. Here’s Cotton’s report of their experiences in Jenin a few days ago:

On Sunday I traveled to Jenin with Rabbi Brian Walt, the co-founder Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza, to visit the Palestinian Fair Trade Association and Canaan Fair Trade facility that produces the wonderful olive oils, Za’atar, olives and couscous now available in the US through Whole Foods. After a tour of the facility we visited one of the farmers who is a member of the cooperative. As we introduced ourselves our host said (through a translator) “I do not understand how a people who have suffered so much can turn around and inflict that same suffering on others.” Later, after coffee and apricot nectar had been served, Brian responded to our host. I’m sure I don’t have his exact words, but he told our host that he shares his sadness at the suffering of the Palestinian people and wants him to know there are other Jews who are deeply sorry for the suffering they experience. It was a privilege to be present at a moment of such honesty and compassion…

(Later) we were driven…to the Khalandia check point through which we would reenter Israel and catch a bus to Jerusalem. I had walked through this check point before so was accustomed to the routine. Brian, however, had not, and was stunned. At one point there is what can only be described as a cattle chute through which everyone must pass waiting to be admitted to the x ray machine and the soldier to whom permits and visas are presented. We passed without incident, but with a painful reminder of the humiliation Palestinians experience daily.

Brian and I talked the following day. We acknowledged the emotional impact the experience had on both of us and and our decision to give ourselves a day “off” to recover. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters never get a day off from an occupation that is now at 42 years and counting.

Thanksgiving Coffee staffer Jenais Zarlin broke the cool news on the Mirembe blog:

(JRC member and Fair Trade Coordinator Elaine Waxman) pointed out that they have been involved with the project for long enough now that it mostly carries itself. Folks that buy coffee just do it at the synagogue now instead of at the grocery store. It doesn’t require tremendous effort from anyone. They have integrated it  into their community so it isn’t actually a project. Mirembe Kawomera is just the coffee they all buy regularly.

Jenais went on to explain that the Peace Kawomera Co-op has tripled their coffee harvest in the last four years and the group of participating farmers has now grown to about 1,000, with more farmers on the waiting list. The only thing needed are more customers, so drink up!

Just in time for spring, some spiritual greening news for you:

The AP did up a nice piece about religious environmental efforts that featured JRC. It was picked up by a number of news outlets, inluding the Washington Post.

And check out this trailer for a documentary commissioned by Chicago magazine that spotlights six local green efforts, including – that’s right – our humble shul…

Check out their impressive new Jewish Guide to Fair Trade – it has to be the most comprehensive resource of its kind.  It’s even more remarkable when you consider that it is the product of a wide-ranging coalition that includes every major British-Jewish denomination.

This campaign is but one project of Tzedek, a British org that self-describes itself as

…a voluntarily led Non-Governmental Organisation that draws upon the skills and resources of the Jewish Community to better the lives of those less fortunate. Tzedek aims to nurture and empower open-minded Jewish community leaders to promote the fight against extreme poverty.

Their new guide is much more than just Jewish lip-service to Fair Trade. It’s filled with lots of substantive info, including Jewish sources and curricula.

Any chance that the large Jewish community on the other side of the pond might follow their lead?

It’s Mazel Tov time. This past Shabbat, our family celebrated our son Jonah’s Bar Mitzvah with our family, friends and incredible congregational community. A joyous kvell-o-rama!

As you may remember from earlier blog posts, Jonah attended JRC’s congregational trip to Rwanda/Uganda this past summer. In honor of his Bar Mitzvah, he’s been selling Mirembe Kawomera coffee every week at our congregation and he’s also raising money for our Fair Trade fund to help the Mirembe farmers with their capacity building. If you’d like to share in our naches, buy coffee!

Click below for some remarks from Jonah:

What I found interesting in my portion was that when Moses returns to Egypt, the Torah says that the Israelites would not listen to him at first. Maybe they didn’t listen because they were in such extreme circumstances that they didn’t know what to believe any more. Moses went to God and told God that the Israelites would not listen to him. So God instructed Moses and Aaron on how to deliver the Israelites from the land of Egypt.

The Torah never tells us what God actually said to Moses and Aaron. I think that God told them that they could tell the Israelites to work together for a common good to liberate themselves from the land of Egypt. They needed to understand that if they worked together with Moses and Aaron, they could create a better future for themselves outside of Egypt.

This is the main lesson I learned from my portion: that people living in hard circumstances, can work together to make a difference for the better in their lives.

This summer I went to Africa with JRC. We went to Rwanda and Uganda to volunteer with different organizations that provide help for people with HIV/AIDS and we also visited an interfaith fair trade coffee co-op called Mirembe Kowmara. Mirembe Kowamera is a group of Jewish, Muslim and Christian coffee farmers in Uganda who have come together to form a co-op.

In Uganda, we met with one of the coop’s founders – a Muslim man named Elias. One time when we met with him, he invited us to visit him at his house. So we went to his house for a short visit. While in his house we waited for him to return. We did not know what to do – whether we should leave or continue to wait for him. Soon he came back, and he started to talk about his house. He told us that he was able to build his house with the money he made from the coffee. He was very proud that he could show us his accomplishment.

Seeing this, I could really see where all the money was going. I saw the power of the co-op in action. I could see that, just like in my Torah portion, people can really make a difference if everyone works together for a common cause that will help change their lives.

I’ve always felt that one of the most valuable things about the New Year is the way it effectively shifts us into a different spiritual gear. Our lives and our world rush forward sometimes at warp speed, and then Rosh Hashanah comes to offer us a chance to slow down, take stock, and hopefully to recapture a sense of order and purpose before we begin again.

That’s not to say it’s easy to do.  Especially in a year such as this. It has been, needless to say, a profoundly eventful year for our country and for the world. It’s been a powerfully eventful year for JRC. And I will confess there have been times these past few weeks when I’ve done my share of time just gazing into my computer screen, unsure of just how or where to start.

Still. as difficult as this can sometimes be, I receive this opportunity as a gift.  I wanted so much tonight to talk about our pretty remarkable year at JRC – and yes, there was just so much to say. But in the end I appreciated the chance to sit back and think about how far we’ve come since we last gathered here together. And as I gave myself more time to put the year into context, little by little, I found myself inevitably returning to certain common denominators, certain common themes.  One word in particular seemed to present itself more than any other.  And that word is sustainability.

Now I know this word is bandied about a great deal these days, in a variety of different contexts. Some might even consider it to be something of a buzzword. But the thing about buzzwords?  Sometimes it’s true, they do reflect temporary fads or the concept du jour if you will. But in some instances the popularity of a particular word might just indicate an idea whose time has come.

So what does it mean when we say that something is “sustainable?” In the most basic formulation it simply means that something has the ability to live and thrive with permanence and continuity without exhausting limited resources. This is a fairly straightforward concept, but in the 21st century it appears to be increasingly difficult for us to grasp.  In the Western world we tend to take our sustainability for granted.  In our country in particular, I believe our power and privilege creates the illusion of permanence – we take for granted that our resources are somehow inexhaustible; that everything upon which we’ve come to depend will somehow be magically sustained on its own accord.

But of course it isn’t so. The earth’s natural resources are not inexhaustible. Nor are the human resources of our communities. Nor are the economic resources of our nation. And if we continue to plunder or exploit any of these impermanent commodities, our wells will eventually run dry. This may seem patently obvious, but if it is, we certainly don’t seem to be getting it. The only way we will sustain the precious but limited resources of our world is if we ourselves take responsibility for their sustenance.  If we understand that their care and maintenance are up to us and only us. If we live mindful disciplined lives, taking care at every turn not to squander our blessings. Indeed, only when we see ourselves as primary agents of sustainability will we truly ensure the future viability of our lives and our world.

This is, in fact, a primary teaching of Jewish tradition.  It’s actually the very first teaching in the Torah. In the first chapter of Genesis, we read that God creates an ordered and orderly world – and along with it, God creates the means for its ongoing sustenance. The earth, in turn brings forth “seed-bearing plants…each true to its type, with its seed in it.” (1:2) God also creates the various species of the animal world each with the power to procreate and commands them to be fruitful and multiply. When God creates man and woman, God also commands them to be fruitful and multiply but then God goes one step further. God puts the ongoing care and sustenance of the earth in their hands.

For whatever reason, God doesn’t just take care of the world alone, nor does God create a world that will simply take care of itself. This sacred job is given to humanity just as creation is barely out of the starting gate. A famous Midrash – one I know I’ve shared with you before – makes this point radically clear for us:

When God created the first human beings, God showed them around the Garden of Eden and said to them, ‘Look at my handiwork, my creation, how beautiful and balanced it is. Be careful not to ruin or destroy my world, for if you do, there will be no one to repair it after you.

The point here, I think, is clear. The world was designed to be sustained, but it is not self-sustaining. The future of the world, quite simply, is up to us.

We are now all too familiar with the environmental implications of this teaching. And I am immensely proud that as a religious community, JRC is not just talking the talk. By now you all should know the recent happy news: JRC has officially attained LEED certification at the Platinum Level by the US Green Building Council, which makes our synagogue building the highest-rated green house of worship in the world.

By all means, we should take profound pride in what we have accomplished.   But for me at least, my pride comes not from the certification itself, but largely from how we managed to accomplish this.  People are often surprised to learn that before we began our building process, JRC was not particularly known as a leader in the environmental movement. When we considered building green, most of our members were not all that knowledgeable about sustainable technology or energy efficiency or the science of carbon footprints. But what did excite us and eventually commit us to this project were the spiritual values underlying it. Once we grasped the religious imperative of living sustainably, we quickly found folks became invested in this project in a much deeper way.

Now that we’ve become ambassadors of this issue in the religious community, this is my primary message: it’s not as difficult as it looks.  You don’t have to a scientist or an engineer or a lifelong environmental activist. Like anything else, all you need to be is someone who cares about the future of our world, who is willing to learn what you need to know and who is ready to live a more mindful way of life.

In the end, as wonderful as it is to be honored in this way, I think the biggest honor will be when we see other houses of worship seeing what we’ve done and following suit.  Then we can take real pride in the fact that what we did truly made a difference. That we, in our way, helped to contribute to a new movement of spiritual sustainability in the religious community.   And by the same token, I hope what we’ve accomplished will continue to be a source of inspiration to us – to compel each and every one of us to take stock and to think more deeply how we can live sustainable lives.  In our homes and as advocates in our communities, our nation and the world. So yes, Mazel Tov to us all. We send out our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all of the members who contributed to this amazing, humbling accomplishment. And now the real work truly begins for us.

By the way, while we are talking about our new building, we also shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is facilitating sustainability in another way: it is enabling our JRC community itself to be sustained into its future. After all, before we ever heard of LEED certification, we decided to build a new home for JRC to ensure its viability for future generations of Jews. It was a leap of faith for many reasons, but in the end it was a leap we felt we needed to take. In an age in which many synagogues are shrinking or merging or disappearing completely, we believed in what JRC stood for and felt it was a religious vision worth preserving. That we were able to accomplish this – and in such a way that further invested our members in JRC’s future – should be an important and hopeful sign for us all.

Now I’d like to share with you yet another example of how JRC learned important first-hand lessons about sustainability in the past year. It occurred this past July, when twenty-five of us participated in JRC’s second service delegation to Africa.  We traveled first to Rwanda, where we were hosted by WE-ACTx, an NGO that seeks to serves Rwandan women and children affected by HIV. A primary focus of WE-ACTx is serving the numerous women who were infected with HIV through rape during the 1994 genocide. During our stay, we also toured genocide sites, spoke with citizens and witnessed Rwanda’s courageous attempts to sustain the soul of their nation in the wake of that terrible trauma.

In Uganda we visited our old friends in the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities, the NGO who hosted us during our first service delegation three years ago. As many of you know, FDNC promotes grassroots sustainable development in Eastern Uganda through a number of wonderful initiatives, including community health projects, a vocational school, music education, capacity building, among many more examples.

We also spent a great deal of time with the members of the Mirembe Kawomera Fair Trade coffee cooperative.  JRC has long been a supporter of this project and I know many of you have bought Mirembe Coffee at JRC over the years. For those of you who are not familiar, Mirembe Kawomera is an interfaith effort of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim coffee farmers who have founded a coop to get a fairer price for their product, to create better future for their communities, and to make a provide a real, living example of inter-religious cooperation. During our visit, we got to meet with the leadership of the coop, attend Muslim, Jewish and Christian services, and even had the opportunity to participate in the coffee harvest.

There is a great deal to say about our experiences in Rwanda and Uganda.  I think there are easily at least two dozen sermons that could come out of this one trip alone. For now, however, I want to return to my theme of sustainability. For primary among the lessons we learned was this eternal, sacred truth: communities can only be sustained when individuals take responsibility for their sustenance.   The developing world provides us with the most powerful examples of this fact.  Indeed, every day of our trip we came face to face with this reality: over and over we met with individuals who didn’t take the future of their lives or their communities for granted for one second.

As it turns out, the Torah also has a great deal to say about socio-economic sustainability. Over and over again God tells the Israelites they are about to enter a land flowing with milk and honey – a land that contains all they will ever need. But God also says it will all be lost to them in a second if they do not uphold the covenant and create the kind of holy community they have pledged to create.

God commands the Israelites repeatedly that they will have a future on the land only if they ensure the sustenance of all their citizens. And even though there is bounty in the land, they’re told that they cannot merely assume the equitable distribution of resources. In Deuteronomy we find this famous passage: “For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and the needy kinsman in your land.” (Deuteronomy 15:11)

Jewish tradition has expanded considerably upon these laws from Torah.  While we must never shirk our responsibility to sustain the needy among us, the ideal form of tzedakah, as Moses Maimonidies famously taught, is to enable others to become self-sustaining. In Jewish tradition, we are commanded to sustain others, but ensuring their future sustainability is among our most sacrosanct commandments. Why? Because on a purely human level, it breaks down the unequal power dynamic between giver and recipient. It views human dignity and self-sufficiency as our highest aspiration – in a sense even higher than charity itself.

I believe what Maimonidies suggested so long ago is still powerfully relevant to the work of global sustainable development: the highest and most effect form of global action is the kind that will help a community to sustain itself. This is why I am so proud that JRC has forged such deep relationships with NGOs such as WE-ACTx and FDNC and a cooperative like Mirembe Kawomera. Because these organizations represent real members of real communities on the ground who are working every day to create sustainable development for themselves and their communities. Here again, I am so proud to be part of a congregation that gets it. That nurturing sustainability is an important part of the congregational work we do.

I mentioned earlier that those with power and privilege – those blessed with abundant resources – tend to take their sustainability for granted. Our country in particular has been particularly adept at living under an illusion of self-sustainability and invulnerability. But those days, it seems, are fast coming to an end. Our nation’s financial meltdown hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. It’s not a current event. We might well put it this way: our country has been living in a decidedly unsustainable way for far too long and now we’re finally seeing our chickens are coming home to roost. This, however, is a sermon for another day – tomorrow, as a matter of fact – so if you want to hear that one, you’ll have to come back in the morning.

I’d actually like to conclude by addressing a different form of sustenance – one that is particularly relevant to our season. After all, why do we gather here year after year? Why do we come back here if not our desire for sustenance? To give thanks for the blessings of the past year, to mourn its losses, and to pray that we and those we love will be sustained for just one more.

I do believe with all my heart that everything I’ve been talking about: environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, it all applies to the human condition as well. There is such a thing as spiritual sustenance. That is to say, our inner lives – our souls, if you will – are also designed to be sustainable, but again, they are not self-sustaining. At the end of the day, each and every one of us must take responsibility for our own spiritual sustenance.

Again, this sounds like an obvious claim, but if it is, then why do we have such a difficult time doing it? Too often we treat our emotional resources, our spiritual resource,s as endless springs that have power of eternal self-renewal. The truth is, our inner resources more accurately resemble a well. We need to be actively involved in replenishing the water in the wells of our souls or else we will surely run dry.

On this I speak from personal experience, trust me. Like most of you, I have come to learn that it’s all well and good to preach and promote the sustenance of our world – but if we cannot commit to sustaining our own lives, our own souls, then in the end, we will not really be any good to ourselves or to anyone else.

So how do we do this? How do we find the kind of spiritual sustenance that lasts; that truly makes a difference for us? This may sound like a cop-out for a spiritual leader, but in the end I’m afraid each of us needs to answer this question for ourselves. Each of us needs to ask ourselves seriously: What are the things that cause my spiritual well to run dry?  Then in turn, what are the things that truly sustain my soul?  What are the things I need to do to fill my well back up? And finally, what am I going to do about it? How am I going to change the way I live so that I can indeed live a sustainable life?

As I say, each of us must to answer these questions ourselves. Believe me, I’m asking myself these questions and I struggle with these issues just like everyone else. But I would be doing this for a living if I thought that the spiritual traditions of Judaism didn’t have a great deal to offer us by way of spiritual sustenance.

And I will say this: although I might not believe in God in the traditional manner, I fervently believe that our searches for sustenance do bear fruit. That beyond all the exhaustible resources of our lives and our world, there is a Source of Permanence. Of Eternity. Where wells never run dry and blessings flow freely and in abundance. And however we choose to believe, whatever our theologies, I hope we can all find, connect with and hold on to this place of permanence, because I don’t think we’ll ultimately be able to sustain ourselves any other way.

Rosh Hashanah comes to remind us of this every New Year. Traditionally speaking, this is the time in which we acknowledge Malchuyot – we enthrone God’s rule over the world. I choose to understand this as the sacred recognition of a power ultimately beyond our own; and acknowledgment of that which truly lasts. During the course of the year too many of us we enthrone impermanence, we ascribe ultimate meaning to that which is only temporary, to that which will ultimately pass away. On Rosh Hashanah, however, we affirm something else: we celebrate staying power, we open ourselves up to a source of endless sustenance.

Tomorrow, before the shofar is sounded, we will proclaim, “adonai, melech, adonai malach, adonai yimloch, l’olam va’ed!” “God reigns, God has reigned, God will reign forever and ever!” Yes, these are heady and difficult words to say out loud – especially for us ornery Reconstructionists. But maybe we might view this statement as our way of affirming permanence and sustenance in a world that too often feels unsustainable. This Rosh Hashanah it’s my hope and prayer that we will find the strength to connect to this place. May it renew our thirsting spirits, may sustain our world, may it give us life as we enter this new year.

And as we are truly blessed to have been sustained long enough to reach this place once more, let’s say the blessing together:

Holy One of Blessing, your presence fills creation. You have given us life, you have sustained us, and you have brought us all to this sacred season together.

Amen.

Shortly before we left Uganda we learned that the August issue of Oprah Magazine would feature an article about Mirembe Kawomera coffee! It’s a wonderful, informative piece – so great to see the efforts of the coop spotlighted in such a major way.

Holly Moskowitz writes in the Mirembe blog that the new crop has just been released and sales so far have somewhat slow. Hopefully the Oprah article will help to give the coffee a boost. Forward it to your friends – and encourage them to stock up on the new batch.

(Please pardon me for the shameless posting of the pic above: my son Jonah picking Mirembe coffee on JJ Keki’s farm two weeks ago…)

On our final day in Africa, we visited the Nankusi and Namanyonyi primary schools, both of which are supported by the Peace Kawomera’s fair trade social premiums. Both schools are engaged in building projects to create more classrooms and more essential educational resources. In each school we saw overcrowded classes (many cramming in over 100 students) and most classrooms are not even equipped with a chalkboard. Similarly, in both schools these important construction projects are currently stalled out due to lack of funding, materials and workers. At Namanyonyi, we were told that they needed the equivalent of $2,000.00 to finish the project.

We’ve heard these kinds of appeals several times on our trip and they are challenging to the core. On the one hand, in the face of such direct need, it’s all you can do to not take out the money and just donate it on the spot. On the other hand, this would clearly raise more questions than it would solve: why is this school more deserving than the one down the road? What kinds of social tensions would you be exacerbating by privileging one one school over another? How would we ensure that the money would be used in the way we were told? What kind of unhealthy power dynamic are we reinforcing when we throw money around in this way? We’ve discussed these kinds of questions a great deal as a group and in the end we’ve resolved to live with the difficulties and complexities that attend the phenomenon of world poverty, arguably the most intractable issue facing the world today.

One important thing we do take away from these experiences is the resolve to support NGOs on the ground that we know are making a real difference in the lives of real people. We have been transformed by our relationships with organizations like WE-ACTx, the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities and Peace Kawomera, who are leading the charge to create better futures for the communities they serve.

If we have learned anything on this trip, it is that we much redouble our resolve to support their efforts and to encourage others to do so as well. In a world that is so desperately in need of heroes and role models, these are the ones who truly inspire: people like Dr. Mardge Cohen, Samuel Watalatsu, JJ Keki, and so many, many others who work largely off the PR radar screen, but whose vision and drive are bringing hope and change in the areas of the world that need it most.

We’re coming home now, but our work is really just getting started…

We’ve learned a great deal about how coffee is grown and processed on this trip and one of the most indelible lessons we’ve taken away is how interconnected and interdependent each step is to the next. Unlike the major commercial producers, rural coffee farmers like those of the Peace Kawomera coop must depend upon one another to succeed. In other words (to adapt an oft-repeated axiom) it really does take a community to produce a cup of coffee. As I wrote in my earlier post, we did a bit of harvesting at JJ Keki’s coffee farm this past Sunday. We subsequently learned about the complex journey taken by the coffee berries once there are picked.

The first step – and in some ways the most crucial – is called “pulping.” This refers to the husking of the outer red shell of the coffee berry. For quality purposes, pulping must take place 24 hours or less after the coffee is picked. Like most rural farmers, the members of Peace Kawomera have been pulping their coffee by hand, with a manual turn-crank machine.

The pix below were taken at the farm of a coop member named Mohammed – the harvested berries are poured in the top, the crank is turned, and the inner white beans come out the bottom. The leftover red husks are then taken and mixed with manure to be used as organic fertilizer.

I mentioned in my earlier post that Peace Kawomera has recently been able to obtain a large, motorized machine to serve as the central pulper for the entire coop. Since every individual farmer does not own a own hand pulper, the coop leadership hopes that this acquisition will help the farmers expedite this critical initial process. The new pulper is an impressive and complex piece of machinery and has the capability of pulping 5000 five kilos a day. It runs on diesel fuel and requires water is pumped in from a nearby stream. It coop farmers will begin using the central pulper in August, as the coffee harvest goes into full swing

After pulping, the coffee beans are fermented and dried by the farmers themselves. They are then transported to Gumutindo, the location of a larger coop to which ten other farming coops also belong. This is where the coffee is warehoused and eventually inspected with the defective beans sorted out. The remaining beans are then milled in a huge machine (a process in which the thin inner skin is husked from the beans) before they are sampled for final quality control. The pix below show the various step of this process, from warehousing and milling to sample roasting and tasting.

After lunch we attended a gathering of Peace Kawomera farmers who were attending a tutorial on organic farming by agriculturist John Bosco (pix below). The interplay was fascinating and impressive. The level of commitment of the farmers to their work – as well as their desire to learn and succeed – runs quite deep.

For our final meeting of the day, we met with the board of Peace Kawomera (below). If we learned annything with our soujourn with the coop, it was how deeply these farmers are committed to one another and their community. Coffee farming can only succeed with in a powerful subsystem of relationships and social connections. For the members of Peace Kawomera, their devotion to interfaith cooperation and sustainable development is no less powerful. We are bringing home so many profound lessons as a result of our soujourn in Uganda.

One more post to go. I’ll report on a visit to two primary schools supported by the coop and offer some final thoughts.