In spring 2023, Jennifer Murch joined a United States Civil Rights Just Peace Pilgrimage. In fall 2024, she spent two weeks on a Racial Justice Just Peace Pilgrimage to South Africa and blogged about her experience. This is her first blog from her pilgrimage, edited for length. You can find the original post on her blog. We will publish her blog series weekly for several weeks, so be sure to check back for more.
Just Peace Pilgrimage is a program of Mennonite Mission Network. To learn more, including how you can join in a pilgrimage yourself or with a group, click here.
September 24, 2024
Remember last spring our family went on a United States Civil Rights Just Peace Pilgrimage in the South? Well, a few months later the trip leaders sent an email saying there would be a second learning tour the following year — to South Africa. And now, in two weeks, I’ll be joining that trip, and writing about it.
We’ll be in Johannesburg for the first week and then we fly to Cape Town for another six days, and then a bunch of us are heading to Kruger National Park for several days of safari. It sounds exciting, and it is, but it’s not going to be an easy trip. If I learned anything from the trip to the South, it’s that these trips are work. They are physically exhausting and emotionally draining, and this trip (in particular) requires a lot of preparation.
When I signed up for this trip, I knew next to nothing about South Africa. Thankfully, Iziko Lamaqabane, the South Africa organization that is hosting our group, provided us with an extensive reading list, and then a few weeks ago they gave us a stack of core readings. Thus far, I’ve read Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like, The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots From A Hidden War, I’m currently in the middle of My Traitor’s Heart, a friend’s recommendation, and I already read Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime. There’s also a movie list; some other locals who will be going on the trip have been getting together Friday nights to watch Cry, The Beloved Country, Cry Freedom, Sarafina, and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom.
The readings are hard. Some are so dense that I feel like my brain is breaking, and some are so graphic that my stomach turns.
Slowly, I’ve been getting my footing, locking down key dates, familiarizing myself with the different ethnic groups, the various political parties, the geographical lay of the land. Now I’m beginning to dig into the theories, motivations, world views, political systems, the deeper (and slippery-er) complexities, the ways in which South Africa’s story connects to Nazi Germany, slavery in the U.S., the U.S.’s genocide of Indigenous Peoples, and the turmoil in Palestine.
Recently, the entire group, plus our South African leaders, have been having weekly Zoom meetings. This is not a learning tour, they said, and it’s not an excursion. Tourists pass through a place; pilgrims allow a place to pass through them. A pilgrimage is a way of unlearning speed, and it’s a different posture from “mission.” Pilgrims are there, not to make a difference, but to eat together.
If you cannot hear the mouth eat, you cannot hear the mouth cry.
Rwandan Proverb
November 5, 2024
We arrived in Johannesburg in the evening, bleary and rumpled after a 15-hour direct flight.
Anyway. The flight eventually ended (while in the air, we jumped forward six hours), and we arrived at St. Benedict’s, an Anglican retreat center where Desmond Tutu occasionally sequestered himself, and where we would be staying for the first part of the pilgrimage. Our Iziko (pronounced “ee-ZEE-ko”) leaders — Mzi, Nkosi, Pokie, and Steve — doled out t-shirts, water bottles, pens, notebooks, the wi-fi password, towels, a booklet containing the schedule, brief summaries about the sites of struggle we would be visiting, and poems and prayers we would be using in our group times.
I didn’t use the book much while we were there, but now that we’re home, I find myself repeatedly referencing it for spellings, dates, and definitions. It’s a brilliant little resource.
Some stats to get you oriented:
- This pilgrimage was organized by Mennonite Mission Network (MMN).
- There were twenty people in our group, including our two MMN leaders.
- Iziko Lamaqabane — which means “the gathering space of comradeship” — was our host organization. A little about their work:
Iziko Lamaqabane is on a pilgrimage to heal colonial wounds, disrupt systemic violence, and cultivate faith formed by and expressed in liberative praxis.
Let’s all be pilgrims together.
