VAN BUREN, MAINE | More than 20 adult delegates and staff from Seeds of Peace traveled to Van Buren this month in order to gain a better perspective of Maine and each other.
Seeds of Peace brings together teenagers from opposing sides of conflict zones around the world. The visiting adult delegates, who traveled from places such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, are part of the Seeds of Peace program in their respective countries and help select and prepare teens for participation in the Seeds of Peace camp programs.
In order to better understand the program and see what camp life is like for students, Seeds of Peace also invites delegates to travel to Maine.
The adult delegates are dealing with the same cultural and political conflicts as the teen participants. Seeds of Peace programs are intended to get participants from opposing sides of conflicts all over the world to meet each other and get past their differences, prejudices and mistrust. The program began hosting international campers for three weeks each summer in Otisfield, Maine, in 1993, and started integrating Maine students in 2000.
On July 18, the group of delegates arrived at the home of John and Amy Hebert for a night of food, music and camping. The couple also invited many people from Van Buren and the surrounding community to meet and greet their guests.
“Coming to a community like Van Buren and spending time just socializing with people allows them to open up informally,” Daniel Noah Moses, who is the Jerusalem-based Director of Educator Programs for Seeds of Peace, said.
Moses said some delegates often enter into the interaction with strongly held beliefs about their particular conflict. “The students and adults are both asking, ‘Can we live together?’” Moses said. “Each person brings a radically different perspective.”
However, driving for hours on a school bus packed with camping gear, through thunderstorms and endless miles of Maine forests is a good start to understanding one another.
The delegates arrived in Maine just days before from their respective countries. Moses said some had not yet found much common ground in their efforts to understand one another. As time goes on during their trip to Maine, he explained, most will have opened up and come to better understand the “other side.”
Food and music around a campfire seemed a good way to start that process. There were conversations and laughs among delegates and St. John Valley residents.
“This is great,” 24-year-old Sarah Nino, a counselor at King’s Academy in Amman, Jordan, said. “It’s great meeting different people and getting along with people we don’t know.”
Nino works at one of the premier schools in Jordan, but she also has worked at a refugee camp of 1.7 million people on the border with Syria. Like all delegates visiting Maine, she has seen conflict firsthand.
The delegates are never far from one another during the trip, including at night. The group set up three large camping tents in the Heberts’ back yard. Moses said this type of experience is part of what creates opportunities for dialogue, and it is the main focus of what the Maine camp offers teenagers who participate.
Deb Bicknell, a Portland consultant who works with Seeds of Peace, approached the Heberts after a mutual friend mentioned having visited the family on a recent cycling trip in the St. John valley.
“She said there were people gathered at the Herberts’ and children playing games in the yard, and it was a regular thing,” Bicknell said. “I thought the Heberts sounded perfect.”
“I was surprised,” John Hebert said, in between talking with the dozens of people gathered at his home. “This is so great.”
The delegates enjoyed a traditional Acadian breakfast Tuesday, took tours of the Acadian Village, a local potato farm and the Musee culturel du Mont-Carmel in neighboring Lille before heading back to Otisfield.
Don Levesque, Roger Damboise and Charles Stewart, members of Les Chanteurs Acadiens, also were on hand Monday night to play music for the gathering. Several delegates took up instruments and played traditional songs from their countries.
Several Palestinian delegates began dancing the Dabke, a traditional Arab folk dance performed at weddings and other happy occasions. At one point, one was teaching the dance to an enthusiastic delegate from Israel.
“You would never see that in the Middle East,” Bicknell said. “It just isn’t allowed.”
Nino, who also is a singer back in Jordan, played guitar and sang several traditional songs. “This is going to help me,” she said. “We need to be part of the solution. We need to be compassionate.”
Storm clouds, which carried a tornado to the Limestone area, passed just to the south of Van Buren on Monday evening. The act of Mother Nature was perhaps symbolic of the good will fostered at the Hebert’s home, where people from different sides of conflict were taking steps to calm the storm clouds in their own parts of the world.
For more information about Seeds of Peace, visit their website at seedsofpeace.org.
Read Don Eno’s story at the Bangor Daily News »