OUR DIALOGUE IN NIGERIA FILM
"Nigeria, on the west coast of central Africa, is the most populous nation on the continent. The country is about half Muslim, half Christian, with a minority practicing even earlier traditions. Across the land, Nigerians also identify with historic roots in over 300 tribal ethnicities, each with pride in its individuality of language and culture. Nigeria's wealth is in her abundant natural resources, extraordinary human resilience and hospitality, and rich diversity of traditions. Paradoxically her greatest challenges are rooted largely in human disconnection. The resultant ignorance and thus fear of each other perpetuates citizen's inability to embrace one another, cooperate, and share resources and wealth. The resultant poverty, competition, and disunity fuels violent - sometimes brutal - acts against one another that cry out for a new quality of successful human engagement across the land."This hopeful documentary gives voices and faces to 200 courageous Muslims and Christians diverse young women and men who unite successfully in Jos, central Nigeria.
Refusing to be enemies, they are together during days and evenings of the 2010 International Conference on Youth and Interfaith Communication. They are tense yet excited to finally cross lines of religion, economics, tribe, and gender to transcend the status quo and discover empathy for each other's personal life experiences. Together they realize that "an enemy is one whose story we have not heard," while listening-to-learn and thus dignifying themselves and the "others." Face to face and in small circles, they begin with ice-breakers and continue in depth to discover one another's equal humanity fear, grief, needs, hopes, and concrete plans for a shared future. These determined young Nigerians illustrate how others worldwide can successfully connect and communicate to create authentic community.