e
are told to beat our swords into plowshares, and that is what is occurring in
West Africa. The casings of
bullets, fired ruing the Liberian civil war in the first half of the 1990’s,
are being reworked into crosses by local artisans.
George Togba, a native of Liberia, came up with the idea of making these
crosses.
In the heat of the country’s seven-year civil war, George and his family were among 600 people who had sought refuge in St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia, the capital. A military gang raided the sanctuary, and George saw most of the unharmed refuge-seekers killed in front of him, including his mother. “I escaped the massacre and joined the war – George said – but I didn’t really want to be a soldier.”
George made it through the war, and when peace finally returned to Liberia in 1996, he looked for a way to support his family. “In a dream I had a vision of changing the casings of shelves into symbols of peace.”
He started gathering the used cases that littered the war-torn countryside and se to work. “The lower part of the round I leave intact so you can see the job it was designed to do, but above that is the sign of life,” he explained, pointing to the cross.
Crosses from bullets? “We have to make peace with our former enemies by making peace with ourselves – says George Togba. - We make peace with ourselves by bring peace to others”
George, soldier-turned-artisan, has been joined by more than 30 other artisans, many of them also former soldiers. Today, many families in Liberia earn income from the casings-into-crosses initiative, sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation. The crosses serve as a reminder that “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Is. 2:4).
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)