Mennonite Weekly Review

PIRANG, Gambia, and CATEL, Guinea Bissau — An old village chief told a visitor he had been waiting and looking for help all his life.

David Shunkur, standing, a Mennonite church leader from Kenya, guides a small group in Gambia in a problem-solving exercise. Shunkur and Clair Good, representative to Africa for Eastern Mennonite Missions, facilitated workshops in West Africa in an African-to-African initiative. — Photo by Clair Good/EMM

“I’ve not found it yet,” the chief said. “But when it comes, I’ll be OK.”

The chief was speaking to David Shunkur, a director for Compassion International and a Mennonite church leader from Olepolos, Kenya, during transformational community development seminars Nov. 15-26 in Gambia and Guinea-Bissau.

Shunkur and Clair Good, representative to Africa for Eastern Mennonite Missions, facilitated the workshops in West Africa in an African-to-African initiative.

“We, too, were hopeless and helpless — just like you feel,” Shunkur said to the workshop participants. “We were a community that had lost its way in poverty, corruption, immorality and drunkenness.”

Then Shunkur told the story of how Olepolos, his Maasai community in Kenya that once couldn’t feed itself, was now sharing food with others. He spoke of how they’ve founded the Village University in Olepolos and are planting churches and initiating community transformation in the surrounding regions.

As Shunkur shared the personal and communal transformation stories from Kenya with the West African community leaders, he asked, “Who is going to solve your problems — the mission, the witch doctor, the government? No! Only you can solve your problems.”

Shunkur taught from Ex. 4:1-2 on, “What is in your hand?” and 1 Peter 2:9-10 on, “Now you are a people.” Then Shunkur and Good broke the group of about 30 leaders into small working clusters.

The groups, composed of both Christians and followers of traditional African religions from among the Balanta and Jola peoples of Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, worked to identify local problems and assets — and planned how they could leverage the assets to solve their problems.

“Communities are transformed when people stop sitting around waiting for a windfall, discover their assets and use ‘what’s in their hands,’ ” Good said.