Patrick Kukanu's story

I was first admitted to AMBS in 2005, but could not come then so I sought permission to defer my enrollment. After that, the seminary’s peace studies program grew increasingly attractive to me as I reflected on the peace commitment of the Mennonite church. It didn’t take long before I began to wonder what it might mean for me to pursue a peace and justice career. Upon further reflection I decided to seek a readmission, this time toward a peace and justice career instead of the Bible translation career I was initially coming for.

Apart from (perhaps secondary to) the fact that I came to study for peace and justice ministry, there are other reasons why I chose AMBS instead of other institutions which offer peace studies programs: AMBS is the main North American Mennonite seminary, and as a member of a Mennonite congregation, Holyrood in Edmonton, Alb., I am privileged to receive some financial and other support.

The main reason, though, is the peace commitment of the Mennonite tradition, which the seminary represents. This commitment is why I fell in love with the tradition after I was introduced to it by members of Holyrood Mennonite Church. Being with people who are conscious about world peace and who care for humanity is the most impressive aspect of the Christian faith and it felt like finding where I belong, even though I was baptized in a Pentecostal tradition. Space would not permit me to say much but here is a piece. Around 1982 and 1984, when I was part of a soccer team in my village in the Ketu district of Ghana, we received some visitors from Togo, a neighboring country.

These visitors claimed to be interested in supporting the team and started flooding us with sports equipment. We were too naïve and excited to imagine that our visitors had any ulterior motives to recruit us to fight in their country. A few months later, we were invited to join others for a special training, military training, and some of my colleagues went. Those who joined were among hundreds who were lost in a bloody revolt of 1986 in Togo.

Much as the death of those boys terrified everyone, there has never been any meaningful reflection on how vulnerable the community was that strangers could easily infiltrate and take such an advantage. Until I joined the Mennonite church and read a few materials on pacifism and nonviolence and listened to conversations on war and peace, I never gave this story any attention.

Through my reflections, which culminated in my coming to AMBS, I realized that those children wouldn’t have died if there had been relevant awareness as well as adequate parental and community responsibility. I am at AMBS, therefore, to learn and understand peace and nonviolence issues to be able to pursue a peace and justice career. I want to further explore ways of engaging communities like mine, and even non-peace-tradition churches in conversations about peace and nonviolence from the perspective of pacifism. But as stated above, I could not imagine this without the support of the church and the seminary.

Patrick Kukanu is combining the AMBS Master of Arts: Peace Studies degree with a Master of Social Work degree from nearby Andrews University.