Harford Friends School Hosts African Peacemaker

David Zarembka of the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) to visit in March

Darlington, MD-February 27, 2007 - Harford Friends School announced today that well-known Quaker peacemaker David Zarembka will meet with students March 12 as a follow-up to a recent unit on Africa and conflict resolution. See the Baltimore Sun article on their peaceful negotiation experience here.

Zarembka is the founding coordinator for the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams. AGLI is a program created by the Friends Peace Teams, an organization consisting of sixteen Quaker Yearly Meetings in the United States who have united to support the traditional emphasis of Quakers in promoting a more peaceful world. In April, 1998, the Friends Peace Teams realized that Quakers in the Great Lakes region of Africa, numbering almost half of the Quakers in the world, were in countries with a great deal of violence, social unrest, genocide, and civil war. Consequently in January 1999, an international delegation of seven team members visited Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. From this visit and subsequent discussions, the Friends Peace Teams decided to create the African Great Lakes Initiative to support peacemaking activities at the grassroots level.

Zarembka first went to the region in 1964 when he taught Rwandan refugees in Tanzania for a year. He lived in the region for five plus years in the 1960's and early 1970's including two years with the Peace Corps in Tanzania and Kenya. He started a secondary school called Mua Hills High School in 1969 which is still operating. The African Great Lakes Initiative began in 1998 when he suggested that Quakers ought to be involved in the healing from the conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya. His wife, Gladys Kamonya, is a Kenyan Quaker. They have two children, Joy and Tommy; one adopted son, Douglas; and two step-children, Douglas and Beverly. Zarembka began attending Friends Meeting at Cambridge in 1961 and joined Pittsburgh Meeting in 1971. Currently he is a member of Bethesda (MD) Meeting, but is sojourning at St Louis (MO) Meeting.