Intro
A little background…
When I helped some friends start the non-profit Global Citizen Journey, I embarked on the adventure of a lifetime. Among the many unique aspects of GCJ, people who go on the trips make a commitment to share their stories with a wide circle of people. This creates a ripple effect that extends the journeys beyond our personal learning and experiences. So, with this little blog, I invite you to be my ripples. This is powerful, exciting stuff — and every listening ear holds the potential to change the world in big and small ways.
In case this is the first time you’ve heard about GCJ, you can get some background by visiting our web site. The vision combines citizen diplomacy, community service and leadership development, bringing people together in little-known parts of the world to live, learn, witness and work in community. In November 2005, 19 Americans joined 21 Nigerians in the Niger Delta village of Oporoza to build the first library in the entire region. I was among them.
My journey so far…
Just about a year ago, I jumped into the dream Susan Partnow had been carrying around for five years — the seed of GCJ. It seemed to me in the aftermath of September 11th and then the Bush election that the single most hopeful thing we could do in our fragmented world was to understand each other. Reach out, sit down, listen, learn. One conversation at a time. And, as often happens, no sooner had I thought the thought, than an opportunity to put it into action appeared. The GCJ idea that peace could be built on the grassroots cross-cultural connections of ordinary people really resonated.
Before long, I found myself packing for Nigeria. Going to a place that’s off the power grid, accessible only by boat. Where people once fished in plentiful waters and farmed on fertile ground and now can hardly scratch out a living amidst environmental ruin. The great irony? The Niger Delta is the world’s seventh largest producer of oil and the main source of Nigeria’s wealth, yet the local people see none of the benefits. When oil is discovered in this country, title to the land automatically transfers to the central government. Profits are split with the oil companies and the Delta gets none of the revenue and all of the pollution. Companies like Shell and Chevron operate virtually unhampered by environmental regulations. In some villages, gas flaring is so close by that it never gets dark.
There are barely any schools in this region and literacy is around 30 or 40 percent. There were no libraries — until now. Part of the GCJ model is to partner with an organization already working in the host country, and to have the host community determine the project we do during our stay. The people of Oporoza wanted a library. They put up the money for an architect to draw the plans. And alongside a crew put together by our host organization NIDPRODEV, did much of the construction work before we got there. Our delegation of Americans and Nigerians stayed with families in the village and worked together with the community to finish out the interior, get the books shelved and catalogued, and our donated computers up and running.
A few weeks before we left the U.S., a Deltan who’s getting his PhD at UW spent an evening with our Seattle group. He was telling us about discovering books when he was a kid and what a powerful effect reading adventure stories had on his vision of himself and the possibilities for his life. There’s been a fair share of violence in the Delta, much of it due to frustration at the unfair situation and lack of resources. Dokubo’s brother, in fact, is a militant activist leader currently in prison. Dokubo has chosen a different path. He is a poet. That night he told us that building a library is a profoundly hopeful thing that will “give our boys books to carry instead of guns.”
Besides working on the library, there was time spent in more structured conversation designed to build leadership, compassionate listening and conflict mediation skills. And of course, the constant sharing of stories and cultures — heartfelt connections that will last a lifetime and perhaps result in more projects together. Before and after our time in the village, we met with government officials, tribal leaders and representatives from the Chevron installation not far from Oporoza. Chevron in fact made a major financial contribution to our project and early on in our discussions with them, we discovered, despite how easy it is to judge, that they too have a side of the story to tell. And that’s a lot of what GCJ is about — really listening, even when it’s not easy, and with no agenda but to understand and share what we learn.
So there you have it — the tip of my journey’s iceberg. The photos are posted and I’ll be putting up some more stories over the next weeks. So if you like what you see, come back.
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