Teame Mebrahtu came to Caux in 1967, five years after his homeland of Eritrea was annexed by Ethiopia. The liberation struggle – which was to continue for three decades – was gaining momentum. Resentment against government policies had led to a student strike, which closed all secondary schools.    

As a lecturer at the Asmara Teacher Training Institute, Teame Mebrathu had met members of an international group of Moral Re-Armament (MRA, now Initiatives of Change), who were touring the country with the film Freedom. He recognized the values portrayed in the film as part of his own spiritual upbringing as a Coptic Christian. But the concept of change at a global level was new to him.

His time at Caux was a revelation. He was struck by the mix of countries, cultures and religions represented and by the experiences people shared. He began to see that, if he was to help Eritrea, he needed to lose his bitterness against the Ethiopians and against the Americans based there, who had treated him badly. He decided that, as a teacher, he had a responsibility to bring about change but had first to change himself. It was a liberating experience.

His time at Caux was a revelation. He was struck by the mix of countries, cultures and religions represented and by the experiences people shared.

Back in Eritrea, which was still in the grip of the student strike, Teame began to work with the MRA team. He decided he had a duty to negate the mentality of thinking ‘I can’t do much about the problems’, and that change does not come from silence.

He was a speaker at a mass rally which persuaded the striking students to go back to their studies – an act which is likely to have prevented bloody clashes with the Ethiopian Army. Later some of the students told him that they had been swayed by his comparison of them to an aircraft which had run out of fuel and was trying to land on a runway planted with nails.

Teame went on to become director of the Asmara Teacher Training Institute and then Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Asmara. After the murderous Mengistu regime seized power in 1974, his life was threatened and he sought asylum in Britain.

As a refugee, Teame declined welfare support and borrowed from relatives to support himself and his family. ‘I felt it was important to be a contributing citizen just as I would be in the society I came from.’ As a first step, he went to 100 schools in the south-west of England to teach the children about Africa and promote international understanding.  

You can’t solve problems through the barrel of a gun.

He went on to a distinguished career at the Bristol Graduate School of Education, teaching and mentoring students from all over the world, many of whom became leading educators in their own countries. He was and is still passionate about using education as a tool to bring change in a divided world: ‘You can’t solve problems through the barrel of a gun.’

One of his proudest achievements was a major conference in Bristol on multicultural education, which focused on improving  schooling opportunities for ethnic minorities and making all children aware of a world outside their borders.

He also continued to work to improve education in Eritrea. Between 1986 and 1988, while the fighting still continued, he travelled to the liberated zone of Eritrea to conduct workshops for students and teachers, gathered under trees as Ethiopian MIG jets flew overhead. After independence in 1991, he set up a partnership between the University of Bristol and Eritrea, training educators and education officers.

Now aged over 80, he holds to his conviction that everyone has a personal responsibility to shine a light, however small, on the injustices of an imperfect world. Small chinks of light can become beacons of hope. ‘It’s immaterial where I live,’ he says, ‘it’s immaterial who I am: what is important is the part I play.’

________________________________________________________________________________

Watch Teame Mebrahtu speak at a conference held at the Westminster Theater, London, 1977, in the film Choice for an Impatient World from our archives (16'01" - 16'28")

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Top photo of Zero School in liberated Eritrea: Jenny Matthews 
• Eritrean: Across the Bridge, Mike Lowe, For A Change Magazine, 1987
• Film Choice for an impatient world: Initiatives of Change

In 1966, a senior Sudanese politician, Buth Diu, presented the London headquarters of Moral Re-Armament (MRA, now Initiatives of Change) with spears and a hippotamus leather shield, as a token of his desire to end tribal and regional warfare in his country. ‘We can use our spears on fish instead of on each other,’ he said.

Buth Diu’s intentions had not always been so peaceable. He grew up in the Nuer region of what is now South Sudan, and started paid work as a house servant of the British District Commissioner in the years before independence. With no formal schooling, he taught himself to read, write and type. He won the prized post of interpreter, founded a political party, and was elected to parliament in Khartoum.

In 1956, Sudan gained independence from its British and Egyptian rulers. The South Sudanese (who finally achieved a separate state in 2011) resented the domination of the Arab North Sudanese. In their turn, the North Sudanese had a saying: ‘a Nuer next door is a fire next door’. Buth Diu’s fiery speeches in parliament bore out this apprehension.

It was in Caux at the conference centre of Moral Re-Armament, in 1958, that Buth Diu’s commitment to reconciliation was born. Then Minister of Works, he was part of a delegation of politicians sent by the Prime Minister. Buth Diu was amazed on his first morning when his room-mate, an Englishman, cleaned his shoes. Later he commented, ‘I felt MRA must be a revolution.’

He pledged himself to work for reconciliation.

He was enthralled by the film Freedom (see 1955) and conferred with the Africans who had written it. At a plenary meeting, he apologized for his hatred of the North Sudanese, and for his domineering approach to political rivals in the South. He pledged himself to work for reconciliation. Back home a new joy came into his family life, and he named a newborn son after one of the Northern Sudanese who was at Caux with him.

The next years in Khartoum were tough. A military government swept away parliament, and civil war escalated in the South, a devastating setback for the whole country. Buth Diu brought Northern and Southern Sudanese together in his home, where he often showed them Freedom or other MRA films. 

When democracy returned for a few years, Buth Diu became Minister of Animal Resources. In 1966 he won cabinet approval for Harambee Africa, a musical revue created by young Africans inspired by MRA, to give two weeks of performances in Sudan as guests of the government.  

Over the years a close rapport developed between him and Dr Mohammed El Murtada of the Ministry of Labour, who was applying MRA’s formula of ‘not who is right but what is right’ to industrial disputes.

At the time, Buth Diu was building a new house. One evening he and Murtada sat at a table in its shell, and jotted down some ideas on how the North-South war might be resolved. Next day they took them to the Ministry of the Interior. The following year, some of their ideas resurfaced in the peace agreement of 1972, which brought 10 years of intensive fighting to an end.

Some years after Buth Diu’s death in 1975, Mohammed El Murtada became Director of the Ministry of Labour. When he attended the annual International Labour Organization conference in Geneva he often visited Caux.  In 1983 he wrote: ‘I learned from Buth Diu’s example that the settling of problems does not depend primarily on technicalities and formal approaches.  Basic solutions come from a cure to the weaknesses of human nature – pride, fear, hatred and suspicion. These can be replaced by forgiveness, love and common targets for the wellbeing of a nation, as individuals find the courage to obey God’s guidance.’

In the years since, Sudan’s history has been turbulent. Caux has continued to receive groups working for reconciliation, both from the North and from the South, before and since its independence.

I learned from Buth Diu’s example that the settling of problems does not depend primarily on technicalities and formal approaches.

Mohammed El Murtada

_______________________________________________________________________________

About the author

After a deep personal change on meeting Moral Re-Armament during his studies, Peter Everington switched to Arabic for his last year at Cambridge. He was 23 years old when he went to Sudan for the first time, teaching English for eight years with the Sudan Ministry of Education. In more than twenty return visits since, he has kept up support for the peacemakers of North and South. Peter was awarded Sudan’s highest decoration for services to education.

Read more about Peter's experience in Sudan.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Watch the film from our archives on the musical show "Harambee Africa"

Harambee Africa from IofC & For a new world Archives on Vimeo.

________________________________________________________________________________

This story is part of our series 75 Years of Stories about individuals who found new direction and inspiration through Caux, one for each year from 1946 to 2021. If you know a story appropriate for this series, please do pass on your ideas by email to John Bond or Yara Zhgeib. If you would like to know more about the early years of Initiatives of Change and the conference centre in Caux please click here and visit the platform For A New World.

• Photo top: (left to right) the Marquis of Graham, Buth Diu, Ahmed el Mahdi and Rajmohan Gandhi in Khartoum in 1966, credit: Peter Everington
• Photos Khartoum, Buth Diu's son: Peter Everington
• Photo Harambee Africa: Jürg Kobler
• Photo Buth Diu in Caux and with shield and spears: Arthur Strong
• Photo Murtada: Initiatives of Change

In 1965, the first freely negotiated agreement between industrialized and developing nations on the price of a raw material was signed in Rome. This pioneering accord was in large part the work of an unlikely revolutionary, who was a regular visitor to Caux in the 1950s and 60s.

Robert Carmichael was a French industrialist who believed, in the words of one observer, ‘that putting people first is the only possible way ahead for industry’. He had met Moral Re-Armament (now Initiatives of Change) just after the end of the war and put its principles into action in his factories, which processed jute for the manufacture of string, sacks and matting.

He went on to work closely with an old antagonist, Maurice Mercier (see 1951), to bring a new spirit of consultation to the French textile industry. And he felt impelled to apply this approach to the relations between industries in Europe which processed jute and the farmers in India and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) who grew it.  

In 1951 Carmichael visited Calcutta, and was horrified by the misery he saw encamped on its streets. A clear thought came to him: ‘I am responsible for the millions of jute-growing peasants who are dying of hunger.’ He accepted this responsibility as a vocation and went into action.

He accepted this responsibility as a vocation and went into action.

The first step was to form an association of all the European importers of jute. Carmichael became its president. At its annual conference in 1959, he said, ‘If the European jute industry makes an effort to create a sane economy in this sector with India and Pakistan, it can find its real reason for existence. To do this, the basic motives of European industrialists must undergo a fundamental change.’

This did not go down well, and Carmichael offered to resign. When his opponents could not agree on a successor, he was asked to resume his position.

In spite of increasingly disabling arthritis, Carmichael travelled back and forth to Asia, weaving new ties between India and Pakistan and the eight European jute-importing countries. His task was exacerbated by speculative traders and by the ongoing hostilities between India and Pakistan.

In 1965 all the countries which produced or processed jute met in Rome, under the auspices of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Several delegations arrived with instructions which would have made a conclusion impossible, and Carmichael’s  European colleagues did not want him to commit himself to one side or the other.

For years Carmichael had been building personal friendships with each of the men at the conference. This helped him to overcome the obstacles. He offered the chairmanship of the debate to the most awkward person. Astonished and flattered, this man accepted the responsibility of arbiter, and carried out his duties impeccably without imposing his own arguments.

Carmichael had introduced such a spirit of frankness, that one of the Asian delegates proposed a figure which was agreed immediately.

In friendly conversation with another man, Carmichael discovered the parties agreed more than their official instructions allowed them to reveal.

Everyone expected that the figures put on the table at the start would be so far apart that agreement would be impossible. However, Carmichael had introduced such a spirit of frankness, that one of the Asian delegates proposed a figure which was agreed immediately. The other details then settled themselves as a matter of course.

For the first time the price of a basic raw material had been freely negotiated between equal partners. This showed that a similar approach to other international trade negotiations was possible. 

There’s a footnote to this story. Early on in Carmichael’s connection with MRA, a friend had challenged his busy lifestyle. He pointed that as a conscientious Christian, Carmichael would of course consciously resist if the devil tried to tempt him with any obvious sins. But instead, this friend suggested, the devil might fill his life with so many ‘good works’ that he’d miss the task that God most wanted him to fulfil. In response, Carmichael resigned a number of roles, and told his wife that he felt naked. But when the agreement was reached in 1965, he saw the fruits of this painful stripping away.

Adapted from 'The World at the Turning', by Michel Sentis and Charles Piguet

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Watch Robert Carmichael in an extract from our archives from the silent film "Ciné Journal Suisse 1953 (00'52" - end)

• Photos: Par lui-même, Robert Carmichael, 1975, Caux Books and Initiatives of Change
• Film: Ciné Journal Suisse 1953, Initiatiatives of Change
• An unexpected revolutionary, Donald Simpson, The Industrial Pioneer, 1984