Timescapes and Landscapes

Time is an illusion. Sometimes I tell myself that time is my best friend. Time is all that is needed to allow a situation to calm down or to rectify itself. But for time, the feeling does not seem to be mutual. I don’t care what scientists may say. Time is not some constant that eases, steadily, along some linear path. Time seems to have an agenda of its own making. Speeding up when we want it to slow down or dragging along painfully when we need desperately for events to change quickly in our favor.

The last few weeks I have been sitting on a precipice. Listening, learning, seeking insight, and understanding from those who have come before me and from those who are here now, throwing money, bullets, training workshops, marches, and political favors at the enormous and complex creature before us – with all the results you might imagine.

Today, Thanksgiving day, I went to work. We learned that it was a holiday only after we had confirmed meetings on Thursday and Friday. Anyway, I have had too many days off since I arrived. Five days off, out of the last ten to be exact. That may explain my obsession with time of late. At a late morning meeting with a colleague, the peacebuilding director of an international non-governmental organization, helped to set things into perspective. He gave accolades to me and my team for taking the time to show an interest in what has come before but quietly urged me to step from the role of the observer to the actor as soon as possible. “The earth,” he said, “is spinning a lot faster on our side than where you are standing now. The sooner you jump on board the faster your body learns to adjust or to desperately hang on while trying.”

My mentor, Jean Paul Lederach, used a lot of analogies when teaching how to gain perspective in a moment of crisis. He referred often to the river as a frame of reference. You step into it and instantly an entirely new body of water is flowing past you, through you. It’s only constant is change. “You can never step into the same river twice,” he would say. But what I took away most from that cliché-filled teaching was the part about perspective. While two people may stand debating whether the river is the same as the one they just stepped out of, another person, an observer, is standing on the edge of a bluff above, looking down. The observer sees the bends in the river, the perils and opportunities up river, and the course the waters have taken since crossing the path of the two debaters. The role of the outsider is to add new perspective to the same situation. It is not my role to change someone’s experience, nor their attachment to pain, revenge, or speed.

I am not sure I have chosen a bluff high enough to gain the kind of perspective Lederach advises, but I may not have the luxury of climbing higher anytime soon. Yesterday, international news outlets reported a shipment of Iranian arms that was intercepted in Nigeria. The client paying the bills is the Republic of Gambia, though the actual destination is the object of debate, accusation, and conjecture. But as our town sees a larger than normal sprinkling of armored convoys of small tanks, commandos units, and military ambulances, waiting, it would seem, for a final green light, it is hard to shake the feeling that time will be jumping forward very quickly and very soon, jerking me from my desk and arm chair analytical phase and proverbial mountain top into another sphere entirely.

I hope that I am able to find permanent housing and am given at least a week to unpack my bags so that I can at least pretend to live at home instead of at the office. My shipment of personal effects is due to arrive in Dakar at the end of the month. I am scheduled to look at three apartments this weekend. I have seen the pictures of one of them. Looks like a winner though it is much further from the river – and cooling evening breezes – than I would have liked.

Happy Thanksgiving to my friends and family in the United States and all those celebrating abroad.