Tecla Namachanja Wanjala MA ‘03 was honored as the 2019 Peacebuilder of the Year in May during the Summer Peacebuilding Institute. She accepted the award on behalf of her family, several of whom were present, but also “on behalf of Kenya, and not just Kenya, but Africa.”

“I don’t want to think that this is just my honor,” she said, adding thanks to EMU and to her fellow CJP alumni working together in Africa on peacebuilding initiatives.

Over nearly 30 years, Wanjala has worked in many countries, including Sri Lanka, Cambodia, South Sudan, Burundi, Ethiopia, Somalia and Rwanda, in various aspects of peacebuilding, from arbitration and mediation to reconciliation and trauma healing. Currently the board chair for the Green String Network, she has served as commissioner and acting chair of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission and in other roles with organizations such as PeaceNet and Pact International.

Wanjala’s peacebuilding work began with Somali refugees in 1991, encountering “trauma when we didn’t know what trauma was.”  She came to EMU after meeting Jan Jenner MA ‘99, then a co-country representative with Mennonite Central Committee in Kenya. (Jenner ultimately became the first director of CJP’s Practice and Training Institute and then of the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program.)

“Jan is the one who identified me in a small village and saw my potential,” said Wanjala, who was working with Catholic Relief Services on resettlement issues. “She brought me on the national level, encouraged me to come to EMU. I looked for funding and she said come by faith.”

At EMU, Wanjala took five courses in trauma, including Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) trainings. She created an independent study to synthesize concepts, “to think about how we do this in Africa.”

Later, she collaborated with colleagues from the Green String Network who also were familiar with STAR materials: “We communicate best through folklore, stories and images, and so we took the STAR material, translated it into Kiswahili and developed images for each session. This is how Kumekucha was born.”

The Kumekucha program – Kiswahili for “It’s a new dawn” – empowers local leaders to create “space for people to talk, to cry, to affirm each other” in dealing with the country’s historic and current trauma, Wanjala said. The social healing program has expanded from communities to police and prison wardens.

Wanjala was among six Kenyans and three internationals selected as commissioners to the Kenya Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission, established to investigate human rights violations and other historical injustices in Kenya between 1963 and 2008. She eventually became acting chair, leading efforts to record and witness testimony.

Though implementation of the commission’s recommendations has not been fulfilled, she says that is not a reason to give up on the hope of reconciliation and the creation of healing spaces in communities. It is important to be ready to see “windows of opportunity” and to gain supporters who agree in the approach and importance of the work.

“Start small, people will hear and join the river along the way,” she said.

In Kenya a new social healing and reconciliation program called Kumekucha – Kiswahili for “It’s a new dawn” – is empowering local leaders to create “sacred space” for people dealing with the country’s “massive” trauma, its director said.

Tecla Namachanja Wanjala MA ‘03 manages Kumekucha and is board chair for the program’s parent Green String Network (GSN).

A peacebuilder for nearly three decades, Wanjala came “face to face” with trauma in 1991 as a worker in a Somali refugee camp. She has served as commissioner and acting chairperson of Kenya’s Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission and in other roles with organizations such as PeaceNet and Pact International.

“Look at historic injustice and the trauma that it caused, the ethnic clashes and the trauma that it caused,” Wanjala said in a video about Kumekucha. “Everybody needs healing, everybody needs to be aware of what is trauma … in all the sectors in our country.”

The protracted violence faced by entire generations in Kenya has left people living in survival mode for decades, said GSN Executive Director Angi Yoder Maina. She attended the Summer Peacebuilding Institute in 2007 and 2009, and has worked to adapt STAR materials in her various professional contexts. She has worked for decades in peacebuilding, including with partners in Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Kenya, and as an advisor to the Wajir Peace University Trust.

GSN’s namesake green string represents the moment the cycle of violence is broken, and the organization’s logo, a mandala, represents wholeness. Founded last year, the organization has developed empirically validated materials and “low-resource methods” which have been adapted for use in Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya. It builds on local cultural practices and traditions to facilitate societal change for traumatized populations.

Kumekucha seeks to identify each village’s “Mama Anisa” – those individuals frequently called on to resolve local issues – and “support them in their own initiatives” using Kumekucha tools such as its facilitator handbook titled I refuse to be a victim. I am a resource for peace, said Yoder Maina.

Kumekucha’s Kenya-specific curriculum uses watercolor paintings by Kenyan artists whose paintings depict authentic experiences within the cycle of violence including options for victims to respond with nonviolent action.

Kumekucha “educates even the uneducated ones,” one participant said in the video about the program.

“A 60-year-old can understand it, and it can better his life,” he said. “This initiative has really helped our community and is life-changing. Those lucky enough to benefit from it have better lives than before.”

The education, said another, has “opened my eyes to the burden of over 10 years and helped reduce it.”

Kumekucha organizers hope the program’s grassroots results will eventually have national-level impact.