Part two - in praise of tools

In my kitchen, I have about 10 cans of tuna.  When I am feeling particularly vulnerble or just plain tired, I like to whip up a pot of tuna and pasta which I usually follow with a comatose quality nap.  Given the recent numerous frustrations I have faced here, I have, on more than one occasion, reached for the cans of tuna, only to recall that I did not have the foresight to buy a can opener.

A unique phenonmenon in most African countries is that almost nothing is sold in its intended volume.  You can buy one cigarette, one wedge of laughing cow cheese, and even tiny plastic bags of tomato paste or peanut butter at a price most of the clients can afford.  It defnintely increases the amount of packaging and trash but it brings just about everything you can imagine within reach, just in smaller doses.  Having given up on finding small bags of tuna, I have gone into a dozen stores looking for a can opener only to encounter the same face blank faces, raised shoulders, and suggestions to check the guy across the street.  Nope, not there either.  The hunt continues but as you have probably already guessed, every life experience told in this blog leads to a larger life lesson.

Tools are a big deal in most parts of the world.  I know women dig tools too, but they are decidedly a male thing in the United States.  The New York Times does a huge spread advertising deals on tool boxes, new wrenches, and tool accessories every Father's Day.  Never mind  the fact that most guys today never touch the stuff.  My girlfriend could hardly conceal a chuckle, when I told her that I needed new tools to make the needed changes in my life and career.  She was not objecting to the idea, but the idea of a tooling up seemed a tad, well, mechanical for something as fragile as peace work or someone's life.  Yet, tools are huge.

USAID's agency on Conflict Mangement and Mitigation, the US Institute of Peace, and many other national and international organizations have published reams of manuals on how to manage conflict. These toolkits - as they are actually called - underscore the potential pitfalls of a particular approach and recommend possible ways around thorny issues and problems, drawing on the experiences of other organizations that have been there before me.  When I first set out on this search, I was certain that a toolkit with my name on it was just around the digital google search corner. And there are a lot of excellent kits out there.  Accord has a great publication series that covers every angle of peace talks in various parts of the world.  CMM's toolkits are concise and provide good recommendations that I believe any field practitioner should heed. But I was still finding myself falling short of the type of approach needed to avoid some of the attention I drew in Darfur, Rwanda, and Senegal thus far. Plus none of the toolkits really addresses the question of what to do when operating in hostile territory, when key political interests in the government do not want you there?

Epiphanies come at strange moments for me. I have the habit of carrying a pen and pad of paper for just such occasions. I scratched the barely legible words "same tools, smaller doses" during my bumpy taxi ride home. It is still a work in progress but I like the idea of small and accessible.  I look forward to developing it into something "bigger," but is definitely going to be our approach.  Same goals, same outcomes, but workng in doses small enough not to ruffle political feathers and big enough to bring measureable change to the conflict climate in which I work.  I look forward to breaking this down in my next installment.

Afternoon comatose naps are overrated anyway.