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Joy Zarembka
David Zarembka
April 1st, 2021
April 1st, 2021
David Zarembka, originally from Clayton, MO, died on April 1, 2021 in Eldoret, Kenya, after being hospitalized for COVID-19. David was born May 6, 1943 to the late Richard Zarembka and the late Helen Jane Colvin Zarembka. David graduated from Clayton High School in 1961 before enrolling at Harvard University. In 1964, after his junior year in college, he took a year off to teach Rwandan refugees in western Tanzania. He then returned to Harvard and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in African History in 1966.
After graduation, he joined the Peace Corps, serving in Tanzania and Kenya for two years. David then became the founding Head of the Mua Hills Harambee Secondary School in Machakos District, Kenya. He married Rodah Wayua Malinda in 1969 and returned to the United States in 1971, where he received his Masters of Arts in International and Development Education from the University of Pittsburgh. David and Rodah had two children, Joy and Tommy Zarembka, while living in Pittsburgh, PA. They joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and became active members of the Pittsburgh Friends Meeting. David founded a number of organizations, including an alternative high school, a retail food co-op, a wholesale food co-op, and a housing co-op.
In the late 1980s, David moved to Yellow Springs, OH, and later the Washington, DC area. He pursued his humanitarian mission for peace and social concerns, doing home repairs to finance his dreams. He joined the Bethesda Friends Meeting and, in 1996, unofficially adopted Douglas Kebengwa. In 1998, David founded the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams, an organization dedicated to peacemaking activities in Eastern and Central Africa. Through AGLI, he introduced the Alternative to Violence Project and helped develop the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) program in Rwanda, Burundi, the Congo, and Kenya.
David was remarried in 1999 to Gladys Kamonya and moved back to St. Louis to be closer to his ailing mother. In 2007, they moved to Lumakanda in western Kenya to continue his social justice and peace work, which inspired his book “A Peace of Africa”, published in 2011. They became members of the Lumakanda Friends Church. David was instrumental in initiating the Friends Women's Association Kamenge Clinic in Bujumbura, Burundi, an orphans program and technical school in Bududa, Uganda, and a summer work camp program in the region. He also spearheaded Quaker speaking tours throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas for African peace experts. He was the editor of the AGLI publication, “PeaceWays AGLI” from 1998-2015 and subsequently continued the work through “Reports from Africa” series and numerous journal publications.
Those left to cherish and honor his loving memory include: first wife, Rodah Wayua (Mua Hills, Kenya); daughter Joy Mutanu Zarembka (Washington, DC), son Tommy Mutinda Zarembka (Gaithersburg, MD), and son Douglas Kebengwa (Hyattsville, MD); his grandchildren Naomi, Matias and Jayla Zarembka in the USA; his extended family of grandchildren in Kenya; his siblings Paul Zarembka (Buffalo, NY), Elaine Belmaker (Modiin, Israel), Arlene Zarembka (University City, MO), Michiko Shimizu (Tokyo, Japan); and in-laws, nieces, nephews, and cousins in the USA, Kenya, Israel, and Japan. In loving memory, we honor his second wife of 21 years, Gladys Kamonya (Lumakanda, Kenya) who succumbed to COVID-19 a week prior to David’s death.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to these organizations that David held so dear:
Transforming Community for Social Change (Kenya); Friends Women’s Association (Burundi); Innovations in Peacemaking (Burundi); and Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (Rwanda).
David’s heart was always in Africa. With a burial service on April 7th, his body was laid to rest in Kenya. A virtual memorial service will be held by the Bethesda Friends Meeting of Baltimore Yearly Meeting on April 24, 2021. A memorial service celebrating Gladys and David will be held by the St. Louis Friends Meeting on May 8, 2021 to celebrate their life and love. An in-person memorial service by the Lumakanda Friends Church of Lugari Yearly Meeting is planned for 2022, on the anniversary of David’s and Gladys’ passing.
Thank you for all the inquiries to donate to the Zarembka-Kamonya Peace Fund to continue their legacy and work in Africa. Here is a link for donations: gf.me/u/zq8rnu
David Zarembka's Obituary in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/stltoday/name/david-zarembka-obituary?pid=198313549
Events
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Tributes
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Kevin King
From 2007 - 2009, I'd read David's weekly missive (email) from his work with Friends Peace Teams and the African Great Lakes Initiative. I became convinced of a couple of things either from his writings or spurred by him. They were becoming a Quaker in 2010, and becoming an Alternatives to Violence Project facilitator in 2016. David, I owe the direction of my mission to your work and your writing. Thank you.
Dennis Warner, Pax Christi Metro Dc And Baltimore
David Zarembka was a true peacemaker. His entire life demonstrated his passion for social justice and his love for Africa and her peoples. His concern for the improvement of the lives of people in the countries of East Africa stand as a model for what can be done by one person working in close harmony with other dedicated individuals. Through his efforts he brought the peoples of Africa and America closer together. I wish I had known David better. We all have benefited from his life.
Robert Randall
David did so many great things in his life. I knew him as a founder and, for many years, the treasurer of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC), an organization for those unable, due to conscience, to pay U.S. federal income taxes because that money pays for war. This is one more way in which David was a peacemaker with his whole life. The loss of David and his wife to COVID-19 brings home to me more than has anything else the cost of this pandemic. I am so glad now that we were able to spend time again with David at our NWTRCC meeting in Washington, DC, in May of 2019.
Jane Goldthwait
It was wonderful to have David and Gladys spend the night at my house in Celo, NC, when they spoke to Celo Friends Meeting.
Robin Vestal
I met David and Gladys at Friends Meeting. Such wonderful people! They taught us to reject racism and their lives were a testimony to peace
Joy Zarembka
ILANA ELAINE BELMAKER, SISTER OF DAVID ZAREMBKA I have just finished reading all the many tributes to David. As one of his younger sisters, I learned so much about him from the tributes that I did not know previously. We grew up as siblings, playing the usual games that siblings play together, enjoying family trips and family holidays, with no idea of how our paths would develop in the future. Our paths diverged after college. My husband and I went to medical school and finished residency training in the US before moving to Israel, where we have lived ever since, while David's path took him to Kenya. We saw each other intermittently over the years during family trips back to the States. David took our kids on hikes through our favorite areas of Missouri (the Elephant Rocks, Johnson's Shut-ins, Taum Sauk Mountain). He came to Israel in 1985 to take care of our children when Bob had an important professional meeting abroad, to which I was also invited, and our young children needed someone we could trust to take care of them while we were abroad for two weeks. We also had a memorable family picnic together in St. Louis in 1989, a picnic with all four Zarembka siblings (Paul, David, Elaine and Arlene), our parents, our Aunt Eleanor and several first cousins as well as spouses and children. That was the occasion in which I remember David best as a happy, relaxed person, basking in the warm family atmosphere. I followed David's career working towards peace and reconciliation in East Africa, primarily through his weekly articles in the series PeaceWays AGLI and Reports from Kenya. We were overjoyed when David and his wife Gladys visited us for two weeks in Israel in 2015. On that trip we visited many different Israel-Palestine peace groups during which David presented the work he was doing in Africa, allowing me to learn more about the truly remarkable work he was doing in Africa, as well as sharing with him our experiences with programs in Israel working towards Israel-Palestine peace and reconciliation with which we had personal involvement. On a more personal note, David and Gladys proudly told us about the grandchildren they were raising in Kenya. Both of them glowed with joy and love as they shared with us pictures and stories about their grandchildren in Kenya. Reading through tributes that others have posted, I am struck by how many called David "Dad", "Papa", "Grandpa", "Uncle", or "Mzee", all signs of their great love and respect for David. He was a great and loving father and grandfather to so many! It was an aspect of his life that I appreciated when David and Gladys visited us in Israel and when we met David with his children, Joy and Tommy, and their children, his grandchildren, during our trips to the States. The untimely deaths of David and Gladys are a huge loss for all those whose lives they touched.
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