Marion Ouphouet, assisted by me, led a workshop in Lomé, Togo, this past January for leaders from several West African Francophone RC Communities—in Guinea, Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, and Cameroun. There were forty-two participants with a range of two to twenty-one years of RC experience, the majority having between five and fifteen years.

We began leading workshops in the Francophone Communities of Togo and Benin in 2010. In 2013 a Community was started in the Ivory Coast. Cameroun and Guinée started RC following Sustaining All Life workshops, and their leaders now come to the Francophone workshops.

Currently there are seventeen certified RC teachers in these Communities who lead fundamentals and ongoing classes. About the same number of uncertified leaders lead support groups by constituency (young adults, women, men) or by geographical location. In the more established Communities of Togo, Benin, and Ivory Coast the membership is as follows: Lomé, the capital of Togo, twenty-two active Co-Counselors; Kamé, three hours north of Lomé, thirty Co-Counselors; Benin, one hundred Co-Counselors in several coastal Communities around Cotonou, the largest city, and Porto Novo, the capital; Ivory Coast, twenty-five Co-Counselors in and around Abidjan, the capital.

Both Marion and I are committed to the development of RC in Africa. Our original goal was to contradict the language oppression of Francophone countries dominated by English-speaking countries. It helped that I am fluent in French. Over the years of working together in this project we have combined our leadership skills to communicate everything we know about RC theory and Community building and have developed life-long connections with everyone we have come in contact with. We know there are other Francophone RC Communities in other parts of Africa—the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Gabon—that are eager for this resource, but we have not visited these Communities.
Chioma Okonkwo, Regional Reference Person from neighboring Nigeria, has been involved in these Communities for several years and is now referencing their leadership and development. She has also brought representatives from these Communities to workshops in Nigeria for women, young adults, men, and healing from war. The information and experience these Co-Counselors have gained from the Nigerian workshops have broadened the range of RC work in their respective Communities. Our contact with Chioma has been mutually enriching. We have worked closely together, and Marion and I have enthusiastically backed her leadership.

Each time we visit these Com-munities we are struck by [impressed by] the eagerness of Co-Counselors to learn and apply the theory and practice of RC, and we have noticed the steady progress in their re-emergence over the years. They understand the implications of RC for their own as well as for their people’s liberation. They persist in meeting for classes and sessions under challenging conditions, such as lacking the easy access to transportation and communication that we in the economic North take for granted. Many of them spend hours traveling by foot or bicycle to attend a Co-Counseling class or workshop. Many Communities do not have a building in which to meet regularly.

Here are some highlights of the recent workshop:

• Communicating the basics of RC theory and practice. We especially emphasized the discharge process, the roles of client and counselor, RC policies and guidelines, Co-Counseling relationships, and telling our stories.
• A lively discharge-filled class on class issues. Everyone divided into class-based discharge groups. The majority were raised poor and working class. There was a small middle-class group of teachers and professionals and an even smaller owning-class group consisting of government officials, landowners, and descendants of royalty. As a raised-poor leader, Marion was able to provide examples of how class oppression works, which created safety for people to work openly on class hurts.
• A class on sexism that stirred up many feelings and much discharge. The women, especially, could show outrage at how sexism had affected them as young girls, young adult women, and older women. Many of them could fight hard for themselves. The men listened respectfully and seemed affected by what the women showed about sexism in their lives. The group was divided into women’s and men’s groups. Some of the men stayed longer to discharge on male domination.
• A class on care of the environment and climate change. Everyone was concerned about the destruction of the environment in their countries caused by capitalist countries and corporations extracting resources from their lands, cutting down their rain forests, polluting their air and water, and changing their traditional agricultural practices. Many RCers are involved in community-wide efforts to plant trees, clean up the debris in their cities, ban plastic bags, and so on. We encouraged them to look at the discouragement, despair, and urgency they feel and to work on the early roots of these feelings along with taking action.
• Working hard from early morning to well into the evening. Although the 7:00 a.m. classes were optional, almost everyone came, as they were eager for all the experience and information they could get. We talked about and demonstrated discharging embarrassment and counseling on fear.
• Good work done on losses of family members. Several of the participants had recently lost a partner or close relative. Death, separation, poverty, and disease are constant hurts and factors in their lives.
• Interpretation throughout the workshop. We emphasized the importance of language liberation, how their languages were taken from them by colonialism and how the Francophone countries are oppressed by the English-speaking countries. Several bilingual participants extended themselves to interpret during classes, support groups, topic groups, and topic tables. Everyone cooperated in slowing down and honoring the one minute of attention given to the interpreter and the one minute of silence.

Marion and I have both benefitted enormously from supporting the development of Francophone RC Communities. It has been personally rewarding for me to work with Marion, to form close, permanent relationships with many people in these Communities, and to care deeply about getting resource to the Francophone Communities.

This workshop, which was part of the Francophone RC project, could not have happened without the support of the Re-evaluation Foundation, specifically the Africa fund. As a member of the Foundation Board, it matters to me that as many RCers as possible be aware of fundraising for the Foundation—so that as opportunities present they can support them, or make non-RC family and friends aware of them, so that these kinds of projects can grow and multiply. Marion and I will be holding a fundraising report-back on our Francophone project for the Seattle (Washington, USA) Communities in the near future.

[There will be reports from participants at this workshop in the next issue of Present Time.]