Catalyzing a Global Intention for Peace in Our Beloved Congo

Dear friends and true partners around the world who in love and commitment are supporting the Maman Shujaa of East Congo to liberate our country from the inside into its viable and vast potential as a nation of people contributing to the global health and wellbeing of our world.

We are so pleased that over 12,500 of you have expressed your support of our Petition for Peace in Congo. We are working hard to position ourselves to bring about the Congo we know is lying dormant in most everyone’s heart. It is very delicate work when fighting evil from inside these walls that hell has so cleverly and sturdily built. But Peace is on the horizon; we can sense it. We are already enjoying it on the inside in some measure, and that’s how we know it’s coming. For it’s this that’s on the inside that will become the Congo we have long envisioned.

And the validation is that it’s not just us, for in every encounter we are able to spark the same sense in another; there’s something really spectacular happening in our midst.

Perhaps you are aware that through World Pulse, we began an initiative in July for educated women to come together at a cyber café where we rented a room with 12 computers for 3 hours each afternoon. In the coming weeks we had introduced over 200 women to the computer, got them email addresses, and taught them a curriculum on how to tell their stories, including their acquired wisdoms through these troubling times. They named themselves, Maman Shujaa, which means Hero Women in Swahili. We had them join World Pulse’s Worldwide Digital Campaign to End Violence Against Women. World Pulse gave the Maman Shujaa their own page, assigned them volunteer editors who speak both French and English, and now hundreds of stories have been contributed from these Maman Shujaa who live in the trenches of the worst place in the world to be a woman.

This small beginning of gathering a couple hundred women together to tell our stories and support one another for not only Peace in Congo, but a whole new paradigm, has begun a movement. Yes, it’s a women’s movement, but it is more about women being moved; moved to demand Peace now, Rights now, CHANGE now.

But how do you fund a movement; this thing that builds inwardly and looks for expression outwardly? We need a place to meet and electricity for the space and furniture and supplies and phone credit and transportation money. But that’s just it; we have it. It’s this Women’s Media Training Program that has brought us all together, and from which all of this has come about. This movement has a vehicle for fueling Its intention. And many have come alongside to contribute their prayers and resources to fuel our journey into manifestation of the Congo we hold in our hearts.

Our gathering together has become the catalyst for what the Maman Shujaa are not embarrassed to call, A National Action Plan. The development of our intention has evolved to include a holistic objective to heal our hearts, our land, and our country. We’re organizing ourselves to become the Solutionists for our beloved Congo. And we’re starting with a demand for Peace! But we are daring to denounce every form of violence that would mount against us and the Congo we envision, including those well established and accepted institutions that govern the health, land, financial, and development programs of the industrial nations of the world. Our nation is virgin with regard to those steroid enhanced systems that rape all authenticity and integrity of life out of the original design. The bent of the Maman Shujaa is not only sustainability, but regeneration. After all, we are the mothers of this great nation.

And as the mothers, we know well that what's being talked about for next steps regarding Peace in East Congo has already proven NOT to work. And if you keep doing the same thing expecting a different result, well...

As stated in the Guardian a couple weeks ago:
\"Past truces have issued from internationally brokered negotiations that were in reality exchanges of franchises and benefits. None has lasted. On past performance, we're probably heading for yet another of these,\" said Willet Weeks, a Nairobi-based regional affairs consultant. By franchises and benefits, Weeks means a range of activities which have proved lucrative for unscrupulous armed groups, be they army officers, rebel commanders of foreign generals. These include control over the lucrative minerals industry, food staples and export crops, the development aid industry (including housing and feeding aid workers) and land titles.\"

We really can’t afford “another one of these” Peace talks. We need a willing team; a team that wills to gain a lasting solution for Peace in East Congo – in ALL of Congo. And what that will entail is adjusting the lens through which this process is viewed. Why is it that the only ones recognized as stakeholders in our country's future are those regimes and nations who war over it without any regard for who or what is left ravaged in their wake? We will no longer be relegated as just casualties of war. When the mothers of this nation finally get to reason out the future they have in Mind for their sons and daughters, all of the stakes the current forces are fighting for disappear. Prioritizing human rights, communities rights, rights of nature, and THE RIGHT TO A FUTURE FOR OUR NATION, over the greed of those who for decades have been trying to “get theirs”, doesn’t leave them a pie to slice.

We expect better. We want more. We want a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, because we know that a government of the people “shall not perish from the earth.” (Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg).

Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Noble Peace Prize winner has issued a statement of support in which she says:
\"If the international community is sincerely working for sustained peace in the DR Congo, it is time to “Trust Women”. I believe that trusting Congolese women will secure the future of that great nation.

I, Leymah Roberta Gbowee, stand firm with the women of the DR Congo.\"

As the women of Liberia stood together and made their wishes known before their government and the world, so are the women of Congo and the world standing together, making our wishes known, as evidenced by all the signatures from across the globe on our Petition. Abraham Lincoln fought for the rights of those who had been given no rights. We too are tired of being enslaved by the brutal and unbridled passions of unprincipled men and nations, and need the United nation that Abraham Lincoln fought to create, to unite with us, for Peace’ sake, for all of Congo’s sake, and for the sake of the entire world with which we are One.

In all sincerity,

Neema Namadamu, with the Maman Shujaa of Eastern Congo