Brief Biography of David Zarembka

Since 1998, David Zarembka has been the Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams. He currently lives in Lumakanda in western Kenya. David has decades of experience in Africa.

In 1964 after his junior year in college, he took a year off to teach Rwandan refugees in western Tanzania. He then returned to finish his BA in African History at Harvard College. After graduation he joined the Peace Corps in Tanzania and Kenya for two years. David then became the founding Head of the Mua Hills Harambee Secondary School in Machakos District, Kenya. Today the school has over 450 students.

On returning to the United States in 1971, he received his MA from the University of Pittsburgh in International and Development Education. He was the founder of a number of organizations in Pittsburgh including an alternative high school, a retail food co-op, a wholesale food co-op, a housing coop, and a group home for girls. David later moved to Yellow Springs, OH and then the Washington, DC area and began doing home repair which provided a livelihood which allowed him to pursue peace and social concerns activities. This allowed him to begin the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams and to visit the Great Lakes region two times per year for about a month each time.

David was instrumental in introducing the Alternative to Violence Project (AVP) into Rwanda (2001), Burundi, (2002), Kenya (2003), and Congo (South Kivu) (2005). He also organized the development of the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) program in Rwanda and Burundi and its expansion into Congo (North Kivu) and Kenya. Other activities that he helped initiate are the Friends Women’s Association Kamenge Clinic in Bujumbura, Burundi, an orphans program and technical school in Bududa, Uganda, and a summer workcamp program in the region.

He is the editor of the African Great Lakes Initiative’s publication, PeaceWays—AGLI. Copies are posted on the AGLI webpage, www.aglifpt.org. David has written numerous articles for the Friends Journal and other Quaker publications.

David is married to Gladys Kamonya. He has three children, Joy and Tommy Zarembka and Douglas Kebengwa, who help him with the AGLI program. David and Gladys are members of Bethesda (MD) Monthly Meeting, but now attend Lumakanda Friends Church.

David writes, “When I was eighteen and had to sign up for the military draft, I realized that peacemaking did not include military service as I would be unable to kill or prepare to kill another human being. I realized at that time that this would make me in opposition to the conventional wisdom in the United States and that my lifetime would be spent working on other alternatives. The Friends Peace Testimony fit directly into my concerns so I have been involved with Friends in peacemaking ever since. I have always been concerned, not with individualism, but community issues of conflict, war, genocide, and peace, reconciliation, and healing. I prefer, not the heights of governments and leadership, but the common, grassroots concerns of ordinary people and communities."

Puchase
A Peace of Africa
Click Here