Use whatever you have to create peace!
If you have music, use your music to create peace.
For us, we have coffee. We are using coffee
to bring peace to the world.
~ Founder J.J. Keki
Below is the trailer for Kawomera — Plant, Pray, Partner for Peace, a documentary produced and directed by photographer-filmmaker Marla Mossman. The film is about a transformative interfaith community of coffee farmers in Mbale, Uganda, who created a cooperative to export their coffee and live in religious harmony. Today, the cooperative, founded by J. J. Keki, has more than 1,000 members. The farmers sell at fair trade prices directly to the artisan roaster Thanksgiving Coffee Company (read about the business model), which enables the members to achieve a higher standard of living.
The film includes interviews with local rabbis, ministers, and imams; examines the community's various traditions; and explores how peace can be achieved through cultural acceptance, respect, and understanding. Its message of Peace Kawomera, or "Delicious Peace", is profoundly timely.
Kawomera won "Best Documentary Short 2014" at the NYLA International Film Festival. A screening is scheduled for September 16-21 at the Global Peace Film Festival, in Orlando, Florida. (My thanks to International Arts Movement for the introduction to Mossman's work, which also includes the documentary-in-progress Peace Caravan Journey Along the Silk Road. Watch the trailer and visit the Peace Caravan Website.)
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings released in 2013 an album titled Delicious Peace: Coffee, Music & Interfaith Harmony in Uganda (recorded in 2012). All of the songs are written and performed by the cooperative's farmers. (Read Jeffrey A. Summit's article in Smithsonian Folkways Magazine about making the recording.)
Mirembe Kawomera Coffee (Website)
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