Pieces of a peaceful weekend

Nobel laureates Tutu, Dalai Lama show human sides,
inspiring teens along the way

By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
September 18, 2006

Betty Williams, left, hugs a weary Rigoberta Menchu Tum backstage Saturday before the Nobel laureates' public talk at the University of Denver.

"How are you? Are you well?" asked the 74-year-old.

"Not really sure," said the 71-year-old.

"I was worried about you. I heard you had a lung problem."

"I had a cough. Quite serious. Now better," said the 71-year-old, his face framed by thick glasses, his balding gray head closely shorn. "And you?"

"After six years in remission, it came back," the other man said, referring to his bout with prostate cancer.

"Mmmmm," the 71-year-old murmured in contemplation.

The pair say they are not any different from any other two old men sitting at any coffee shop anywhere. One of them calls himself "an ordinary man," the other, "a simple monk."

The 74-year-old spent decades helping to overturn apartheid, then spent years listening to the horrors of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, trying to teach forgiveness for what many considered unforgivable.

The 71-year-old is considered the spiritual and political leader of an exiled nation, Tibet, and a face of compassion worldwide.

In the center of the table at the University of Denver, Archbishop Desmond Tutu looked at the Dalai Lama, and tilted his head.

"How long is your exile now?"

"Almost half-century," the 71-year-old monk said.

"Whoooooo," Tutu said. "That's a long time."

"But I am all right because I have friends like you."

"Friend?" Tutu said, raising his eyebrows in mock seriousness. "Who told you I was your friend? Who?"

The Dalai Lama smiled and pointed toward the ceiling.

"God told me," he said with a grin.

"So you cannot argue."

Idea born in Denver

The day before the largest-ever gathering of Nobel laureates in the United States, a woman wandered into an old house in Arvada that serves as the headquarters of the PeaceJam Foundation.

"I was told to come over and talk to someone about taking care of the cats," she said.

"OK. The cats need to be fed three times a day," said Dawn Engle, owner of the cats, as she talked on a cell phone to officials from the Secret Service while simultaneously stuffing an envelope labeled "HHDL," for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and another labeled "The Arch," aka Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

After more than a year of planning, it was about to happen.

Hundreds of thousands of kids have participated in the PeaceJam program and the group was about to present its largest conference in its history, with 10 laureates in attendance.

In the backyard of the office, volunteers loaded a rental truck with boxes, while another fleet of PeaceJam participants coordinated credentials.

"This is such a cool thing," said Alyssa James, as she sorted the stacks of names from more than 31 countries. "Is this, like, going to be in textbooks you think?"

"No, I doubt it," said Cathaerine Ferguson. "You'd like to think the peacemakers would make it into the textbooks, but it's always the wars instead."

The scrappy organization has, for the past year, worked on this 10th anniversary PeaceJam. The group formed a partnership with the city and the university. They interested the British Broadcasting Corporation to produce a 13-part documentary on the Nobel laureates and their work with kids.

For years the phone rarely rang. Then, Friday afternoon it was suddenly, "PeaceJam, please hold."

In one room, Kate Cumbo worked to secure exit visas for teenage refugees from Burma. There were last-minute charter flight arrivals for dignitaries and coordination with five levels of security service. Then there is what PeaceJam cofounder, Ivan Suvanjieff calls "the flake factor," the people who want the Dalai Lama to bless their animals or who claim they're a distant cousin of Desmond Tutu.

"There are 42 people who say they are making a documentary on the Dalai Lama, and they want access," he said, shaking his head.

Suvanjieff and co-founder, Dawn Engle, both 49, and both from factory-worker families in Detroit, started the organization from a loft in north Denver, with an idea to introduce teens to the stories of Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Since then, the group has coordinated PeaceJam conferences in several countries. During each conference, the teens meet with at least one laureate to share their plans to contribute to the community.

This weekend's event would be 10 times as large as anything the group had ever attempted. The obstacles began almost as soon as they decided to give the idea a try.

There were scheduling conflicts. Visa trouble. A concert at Red Rocks fell through. They found out the weekend was the same as an enormous electronics exposition, and that most downtown hotels were sold out.

At the Inverness Hotel and Conference Center in Englewood, nearly an entire floor was reserved for the laureates and their entourages.

Most, but not all.

"There are a couple of rooms on our floor that we can't have because some of the Broncos stay here, and they wouldn't move them around because they always have the same room," Engle said. "Apparently it's their lucky room."

After they checked in, her cell phone rang again.

"Oh, no," she said, as she learned the news: The truck they spent all day loading had broken down on the road. She dispatched her sons to help, then began unpacking.

"Look at this place," she said as she peered out toward the immaculate golf course and upscale hotel room.

"And we have a broken-down U-Haul."

'This takes a lot of courage'

Archbishop Tutu sat on the passenger side of Suvanjieff's gray Saturn sedan, a backseat driver in the front seat.

"There - it says south right there, man!" he said, after Suvanjieff made a wrong turn. "Oh, man! South right there."

"Thank you, Father," Suvanjieff said as he pulled the car onto the freeway.

The archbishop sighed and made the sign of the cross.

"Father, I have to warn you. He drives like a crazy man," said Mike Engle, Dawn Engles' son, from the backseat.

"Stop!" Tutu said. "When the light is red, stop!"

"I'm color-blind," Suvanjieff said, grinning.

"The red one is the top one, man," the archbishop said.

As they drove, the teasing continued, but along with it Tutu praised the conference before it even began.

"This is wonderful what you've done, you know," he said. "This takes a lot of courage."

"Actually, I think it's a lack of brains, Father," Suvanjieff said.

"That, too!" Tutu said, giggling.

After the car pulled into the hotel, Tutu stopped to shake the hands of each valet and porter. He regularly does the same with maids and restaurant servers, long before he makes it to the line of official dignitaries.

Inside his room, within minutes of arriving, he conducted interviews with ITN television of London and a Canadian radio station. Before the interview began, he asked to say a prayer. After the interview began, many of his answers also sounded like prayers.

"God has put us on this planet to learn one lesson: that we are family," he said, speaking of the tendency to lump deaths into statistics. "When human beings get dehumanized, you and I are, to that extent, ourselves dehumanized."

One of his primary issues regards the massive killing in Darfur. If action isn't taken, he said, the phrase "never again" will lose its meaning. He noted how quickly the world acted in Kosovo, and most recently in Lebanon, to intervene.

"The swarthier your complexion the more likely it is that you'll end up at the bottom of the pile. We've seen it in Rwanda, in Darfur . . . we've seen it here in New Orleans the aftermath of Katrina. Because most of the casualties were black, you're finding that there were unbelievable inefficiencies" in the response.

After the interviews, Tutu tried to call his wife over an Internet computer line, then dropped a not-so-subtle hint.

"Things like lunch," he said, "they're not unimportant."

Tutu and his assistant headed downstairs, where Tutu would grab a salad and order a banana daiquiri - "virgin, no alcohol."

On the way down to lunch, at the elevator, they met a hotel guest whose eyes immediately widened.

"I heard there was some kind of peace conference going on. I think that's great," he said.

The man stared in awe, waited a few moments, then worked up the courage to ask the question:

"Are you Nelson Mandela?"

Inviting a prime minister

On the fifth floor of the hotel, with Secret Service agents flanking the exits, AC/DC's Back in Black echoed through the hallway - the ring tone for Alyssa James' cell phone.

Outside the room of Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta of East Timor, the 19-year-old picked up the call as she waited outside the prime minister's door to escort him to her home.

The teen first met the dignitary two years ago, at a PeaceJam conference in Denver, and has kept in contact ever since. When they learned he would return for the 10th anniversary, Alyssa and her mother decided to invite him for dinner.

They didn't realize the prime minister of a foreign country can't just drop by.

"I only thought that one Secret Service guy named Cody was coming, so I told my mom, and she said, 'Well, do I have to feed this Secret Service boy Cody?' "

"The funny thing about the Secret Service is that they're, like so not secret," James said. "You can always tell who they are. They have these wires going down the back of their ears."

Inside the modest brick home in Lakewood, two non-secret-looking government SUV's were parked out front, filled with men with wires wrapped around their ears.

Inside the home, Alyssa's mother pounded anchovies for the salad dressing, while the charcoal heated and a friend prepared the steaks.

"After all the people he has to meet, I just thought he would like to come over to some normal person's house to have dinner," Sherry Frame said.

This year, Alyssa's mother also participated in PeaceJam as a mentor for teens from Jefferson Unitarian Church. As a fundraiser, they made peach jam for PeaceJam.

Before transferring to Longview High School and, later, joining PeaceJam, James had considered dropping out of school and had no idea where East Timor was. Now, in her spare time, James volunteers at battered women's shelters and is considering the Peace Corps.

"But she can still be a pain-in-the-. . . teenager, too," her mother added.

In the yard, Horta said that's exactly why the program works.

"Usually, when coming to America from East Timor, the presumption is usually, they don't need you, you need them," Horta said. "But in my experience with PeaceJam, there are a lot of kids like her, thousands of them, who are materially more well-off than their counterparts, but in terms of life experience they had very little, so it was a matter of exposing her to a little bit of real life."

Ten feet away, a Secret Service agent stood between the houses. Inside the home, Alyssa's mother finished with the salad.

"I asked Alyssa if she thought about what Jose would think of her decisions in life, and she said she did think about that."

She looked out the window at her daughter in the backyard.

"I appreciate Jose and all he's done for East Timor and for the world," she said.

"But I care even more about what he's done for her."

Unwelcome in own countries

Inside the lobby of the hotel, Tutu embraced the woman that nobody was sure would arrive.

"How are you? I thought they weren't going to let you come out," he said to Shirin Ebadi, of Iran, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

"Thanks to God I can," she said, through her translator.

"Yes," Tutu said. "Thank you, God."

One month before she left Iran, Ebadi's organization - which provides pro-bono work for political prisoners in the country - was declared illegal by the Iranian government, and she was threatened with arrest. The delegation of Iranian students she hoped to bring with her was denied visas, but she managed to make it out of the country.

She is now part of the Nobel Women's Initiative, a group that includes Jody Williams of Vermont, Betty Williams of Northern Ireland, and Rigoberta Menchu Tum of Guatemala - all of whom greeted Ebadi with long, tight hugs.

Then during lunch on Friday at the University of Denver, she was spotted by the Dalai Lama.

"You're here," he said, surprised.

"Yes," she said.

After her organization was declared illegal, the laureates signed a petition in protest.

"Restrictions?" he asked.

"I did have problems, but I'm here now," she said through her translator. "Your support is very important to me. Thank you for your support."

The Dalai Lama is still unwelcome in his own country, which has been occupied by China since 1950.

The Dalai Lama fled in 1959, and set up a government-in-exile in India. Since then, the monk has given up the quest for independence, asking instead for self-rule within the country.

"How are things with China?" Williams asked.

"Difficult," the Dalai Lama said. "They said they want us to agree with their version of past history."

As the lunch progressed, the Dalai Lama caught Jose Ramos Horta, who was exiled from East Timor for decades before the country won independence from Indonesia. He was elected prime minister earlier this year.

"As a young nation you have a great opportunity," the Dalai Lama told him. "I think, most important is education, plus more ethics. Invest in education."

At the lunch table, the conversation lulled briefly, and, as usual, Tutu filled the gap.

"You're looking good, man," he told the Dalai Lama. "But what's the use of being beautiful if you won't get married."

"I asked him to marry me," said Betty Williams. "I said we've been together too long - we might as well get married.

"I told her . . . " the Dalai Lama started, then lost himself in a fit of laughter.

"I told her, 'You are too old,' " he said. " 'Need younger.' "

"When you two get together you're like two mischievous little boys," Williams said with a half-smile, half-frown. "Two naughty schoolboys."

"You are a mischievous person," the Dalai Lama said to Tutu.

"I am the mischievous person?" Tutu asked in a high voice. "I'm very well-behaved."

The laureates then assembled to pose with the wait staff for a photo. Tutu sat on the Dalai Lama's lap, the monk wrapped a hand around Tutu's neck and smiled.

"See what I told you," Tutu said. "He's so violent!"

Broncos and the Dalai Lama

While most people slept in the hotel, they were likely unaware that at 4 a.m., the world's most famous monk was in his room praying.

The Dalai Lama keeps the same schedule, no matter the time difference.

Not long afterward, Tutu was in his room, doing the same.

One person who did know was busy parking cars.

"We got a memo that they were coming," said 19-year-old Andrew Cochran, a valet at the hotel. "I looked up the history on him, and found out he's the 14th Dalai Lama and that they believe he's reincarnated through the other lamas."

Though the Dalai Lama entered through a side entrance for security reasons, Cochran was one of the staffers who saw Tutu's arrival and shook his hand.

"He was actually a lot friendlier than some of the Broncos," Cochran said.

Along with Broncos players, some of the Avalanche team also stayed at the hotel. The surreal contrast wasn't lost on Suvanjieff.

"You have people in modified pajamas who play children's sports and make millions of dollars," Suvanjieff said. "And in the same hotel you have people who are paid nothing to change the world."

Friday afternoon, two men walking out to their car had just heard the news.

"The Dalai Lama is going to be here," one of them said.

"What's the Dalai Lama?" the other man asked. "All I know about it is that quote from Caddyshack."

In the classic comedy film, Bill Murray's character tells the story of the time he carried golf clubs for the Dalai Lama on a golf course in Tibet.

"I actually have that quote on my computer," said valet Vance Pruden, as he stood within view of the hotel's golf course.

" 'Big hitter, the Lama.' "

Silliness among laureates

Backstage at Magness Arena on Saturday, inside the room that usually serves as the hockey players' lounge, an exhausted Rigoberta Menchu Tum sank into a couch.

"Ohhhhh," she said, as she rested her head on Betty Williams' shoulder. "So tired."

Williams hugged her, then kissed her on the forehead.

"Ohhhh, I'll be your mama for today," Williams said.

"I need a father, too," she said, looking over at Tutu.

"Come sit on my lap!" Tutu said, giggling, as Menchu Tum obliged.

Inside the room, Engle stopped - or at least paused - the silliness and quieted the bunch down for the night's instructions.

"This is our public talk. It's going to be to 7,000 people, and it's sold out," she said.

"When you go onstage you'll each have 10 minutes to speak."

"Ten minutes!" Tutu chided. "Ten minutes! Not 20?"

After her instructions, Engle then asked the laureates to move outside for a picture with the PeaceJam staff and the police.

"Oh, no! Oh, no! Not the police," said Williams.

"Stop being naughty," Tutu said.

"Everyone speaks except for this one," she said, shooting back with a smile.

"We're not going to let this one speak."

"That's all right," Tutu said. "I'm used to being discriminated against."

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper then walked in, offering thanks to the laureates, and Tutu stood up.

As Tutu thanked the mayor, the Dalai Lama walked into the packed room with his entourage, crowding the space further.

"You sit on the floor," Tutu said to a burst of laughter, then led the monk to his own chair.

"Where you sit?" the Dalai Lama asked.

"On your lap!" Tutu said, then followed through.

"Ohhh," Williams said. "I give up on all of these people."

Remarkable young people

As churches filled through Denver on Sunday morning, thousands of students had a front row seat for a sermon of self-confidence, with the man who many of them say transcends religions.

Over the past two days, they had met with laureates and with each other, sharing stories of their own struggles, and how they planned to solve them. They had written letters to the United Nations on behalf of political prisoners and developed plans for service projects in their own communities.

When Tutu pranced onstage, the crowd erupted. Tutu soon had them laughing out loud.

"A few years ago we were in Bali (at PeaceJam) . . . and they asked us, 'How does one get to be a Nobel Peace laureate?' And I said, 'Oh, very easy. You just need three things,' " he said. " 'You must have a big nose, like mine. You must have an easy name, like Tutu, and . . .' " he said, pulling up a pant leg. " 'You must have sexy legs.' "

Soon enough, he turned the laughter to cheers.

"I'm saying this very seriously. I am in awe of you," he said. "I mean that as serious as I could ever be. You are remarkable young people."

As the crowd cheered, he punched the air and swung his shoulders. But as endless as the energy seems, the teens never saw the effect of the excitement on the 74-year-old. After each appearance through the weekend, he used so much of his strength that he immediately retired to a silent room at the top of Magness Arena. Once inside, he sat, alone - sometimes in the dark, sometimes for hours.

Tutu used to dance across the stage at most every event. These days, considering his health, he will often abbreviate his routine, shuffling for a few steps and then resting.

After his morning speech for PeaceJam, kids rose to their feet, applauding, shouting, waving their arms, shouting his name.

The old man continued to dance.

sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2561

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