On the outside looking in

 I live in a working class neighborhood.  That means dirt and uneven roads mostly with the random cement brick apartment building among the mudbrick homes that dominate the landscape.  When you take a taxi anywhere in the city, the easiest way to indicate your destination is to name the closest school.  Oddly enough, some neighborhoods here take the name of the school and not the other way around.  My place holder is École Amed Barrry - an elementary school with mudbrick walls and green painted wooden shutters that have been feeding generations of termites since they were first attached to the glassless window frames in 1995. 

Each morning, the tradition is reborn. Old women position themselves at the entrance to the school sitting on small wooden stools, they arrange their assortments of dried fruit, peanuts, and fried sweet dough for sale to the kids whose parents did not have time to feed them before they left home. It is a swift and apparently lucrative business. On more than one occassion, I have seen two women bickering over who arrived first, pushing their small round platters as close as possible to the rickety rusted gate that you have to lift to close.  Little kids crowd around, fingering the precious 5 cents that will bring a tasty treat before school starts. Others finish their breakfast before entering.  French baguettes with some form of spread inside is the usual fare.  It is amazing to watch these tiny 4 or 5 year old kids finish off a foot-long baguette on their own.

On days when I am running late, the commotion in front of the school has all but vanished and left behind are idle boys or girls standing on their tippy toes trying to see what is happning inside.  Are they the odd sibling that was not allowed to go to school or are they looking for an accomplice for a day off?  I remember how jealous I was when my sister first went to school.  We were inseparable at home but somehow she was able to tear herself away to go to school?  That just did not seem fair.  Or even conceivable.  Watching these kids linger just outside the reach of an education makes me conjure an entire story around each one.  Yesterday I stopped to share a small pouch of peanuts and asked why he was not going in?  "Oh, I go to another school," came the reply. Then why aren't you there? "I like this school better.  I am not a little kid." Je suis pas une gosse he insisted.  So we sat there finishing the pouch and watching the taxis and wagons roll down the only really smooth street in the city.  His name is Emmanuel.  And I am not sure if he ever made to his school at that morning.  But he sure gave me the desire to skip work, just for one day. 

I am sorry to miss so many days with you all. About two weeks ago the blogosphere collapsed and I was not able to upload any new stories.  Then when I WAS able to log on, I had fallen out of practice.  

On April 27, the director of my unit called me to inform me that they were having thoughts about shutting down my unit or perhaps just phasing out my position since the nature of the program had changed and they could no longer really justify someone with my expertise (and pay level).  The conversation was polite and considerate.  Since I started this program, none of the senior staff has had any experience or training in peacebuilding or conflict work at all.  My component therefore has been the hardest to sell and poorly represented when senior staff met with the donor or the general public.  It has been an uphill battle and one that, it seemed, would soon come to an end.  "Your notice letter is just about ready.  You should be receiving it soon," she said with kind consderation for my predicament.  

Well, soon is now a month later.  And I have no idea if another month will roll by before I have a clearer idea of my status.  At least I am guaranteed 4-weeks notice and I will be able to use that time to prepare my replacement who I assume will be a host country national. Work has picked up tremendously and I am enjoying the challenges of everyday meetings with civil society, local authorities, and chance encounters with rebel representatives hoping for some sign that we are still on board.  In the meantime, I am enjoying bouncing through town on my bicycle. 

Each time I survive a nasty pothole or a plane of sharp rocks my thoughts and thanks go to Scott in Mishawaka who promised me that the tires would be all but imprenetrable.  You were right Scott.  Wish you were here to celebrate your feat of invincibility with me. Scott passed away a few days ago due to complications with MS.  He was an amazing giving man.  Rest in peace Scott.  You will be missed.

Finding a way forward together

On my way to work a week ago,  I saw two donkeys struggling to make progress. They were both lashed to a wagon carrying 10 very large bags of cement.   One donkey was leaning his entire body weight to the right, his hooves scrapping on the uneven pavers to pull the wagon to make a right turn,  The other donkey had its head down pulling with all his might to go straight.  All the while, the owner whipped them both from behind but with a mixed message.  The one to pull harder to the right and the other to stop pulling straight.  Not sure the guys were getting the message.


The scenario reminded me of how awful a work environment can be if everyone does not find consensus in the way they work together.

Last week, we held a workshop to prepare civil society groups for an upcoming forum and today I am training my staff on how to develop an action plan.  We will face a particularly arduous task of developing an action plan for a group of people and organizations who work in the field but cannot work together for various political and inter-personel reasons. I am looking forward to the challenge.  The meeting was rescheduled to make sure all the bells and whistles are in place.

This morning I got an omen of sorts.  On my usual morning commute, I passed the same cart and donkeys.  This time, the donkey who knew the way was free (unattached) running a few paces ahead, while the donkey pulling the cart followed, smoothly without either critter getting the whip. How is that for team work?  Not sure how the owner figured out that solution, but I pray for that kind of inspired genious, when 65 organizations pour into the conference room for a 2-day session next Wednesday.  I am putting the final touches on the training module now.  Wish me luck!

April fools

Today, I thought i would take a break from the search for tools just to catch up on the day-to-day.  The great relief I experienced from the constant wind off the Casamance river is dissipating as we edge closer to the hot and humid season known here as hivernage (winter).  It is still a good three months away but the days of high temperatures and low humidity and cool nights are being replaced with slightly lower temperatures and much higher humidity. The heat is the central topic of discussion among strangers on a crowded bus or shared taxi.  Across the brows and glowing exposed arms and shoulders of people on the street, you seen a sheen from the sweat.  The streets have less hustle and bustle.  The energy is more lethargic.  People just seem to have less 'pep in their step' as my grandmother used to say.  That may be due in part to Lent, which people celebrate here by fasting all day and eating only at night.  Regardless, life is noticeably slowing down. 

The slower pace of life here and now takes me back to when I lived in D.C. At the end of my day, I would pat my metro card on the electronic reader and skip through the open doors to await the red line train traveling north to Cleveland Park.  D.C. moves at an established pace.  I don't know who the pace setters are but the pulse is umistakable.  I remember the unspoken rule about how quickly you needed to go up or down the escalators or stairs or through the doors of the metro trains when they arrived. During tourist season, I could feel the disgust and sometimes hear a disaproving "tsk" or two from "regulars" when someone moved too slowly or stood on the left side of the escalator reserved for those coveting the option of walking up the incredibly long and steep climb at Dupont circle North.  When I emerged at street level, I felt another impetus to race to my apartment. People walked fast, passing me on the sidewalks in a dash to reach home first.  To do what?  Start enjoying life? Perhaps work was so foreign to life's greater purpose that only at home in surroundings that defined us could we start to feeling like we were fullfilling that special purpose. Can't really speak to the motivation of others. I think I was just fitting into the cultural buzz that was D.C.  On the Hill, we were presented with impossible tasks and ludicrous deadlines. But we got it done and moved onto the next challenge.  It made for a pretty heady, competitive, and energized work environment that followed me and my workmates home.  By 8 pm, an hour of yoga and meditation put things back into perspective just in time for the evening radio show (no television for me) followed by a quiet dinner of stir-fried delights over ginger rice.

Here my days are no less stressful but far less competitive.  The stress comes from timelines designed in Washington and forced upon a social landscape that moves according to a different rhythm.  I arrive at 8 am, check emails, meet with staff, plan excursions to the field, cut corners to meet the donors' needs, and spend lots of time painting a picture in words of what kinds of processes are unfolding as a product of our work.  It seems that peacebuilding work is 10% action and 90% report writing.  That is a gross exageration of course.  It is really closer to 99% action and 1% writing, because the real work is what is happening among the people grappling with conflict, with dialog, acceptance, truth, forgiveness, justice, and inclusion in decisions about the course of their lives.  Doing justice to that process in a 15-page monthly report is the challenge.  I stay late most days, glancing time and again to watch the fishing boats return to the harbor - a sign that I need to leave today's demands for tomorrow - and hail a rickety yellow taxi for my bouncy commute home.  Climbing out of the taxi at the edge of a road too difficult for most taxis to navigate, I walk two blocks very slowly down a mango tree-lined street, pausing often to salute families sitting outside waiting for temperatures to drop.  Boys playing soccer in the street prepare to make their separate ways home. A deep breath of relief and satisfaction.  Another beautiful sunset. 

Today began like any other.  No pranks at work (so far).  Maybe April fools day is safely thousands of miles away.  But when I think of the manic pace of life on other horizons, of the life I used to lead and perhaps will do so again sometime, it is hard not to wonder, if I am the fool for sometimes craving the pulse of American cities.  A wise teacher once told me that it is good to acknowledge my desires and realize my relationship to them, without grasping, without forcing.  Life has already set the pace.  It is up to me to recognize my place among its complex rhythms and simplicity of design,

Hope you find that understanding in your lives as well.  

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.

Part One - Come equipped

This morning I left my apartment and waited in my usual spot for a yellow taxi to take me on my daily 15-minute commute to work. A small child appeared on the other side of the road. He could not have been more than 5 years old.  He looked left and right.  A car passed,  A moped moved slowly across the intersection.  A few bicycles struggled across the many potholes in the road.  And the boy waited.  I admired his cautious attention to traffic.  He kept looking right and left and right again.  Bicycles blocks away were enough to make him hesitate. I imagined a mother taking her child aside and drilling him on the perils of road crossing - perhaps to excess because this child was literally frozen in his tracks. After 10 minutes of this, I crossed the road, offered my hand and we crossed together.  The boy remained at my side for a bit, looked up, and then decided that he could make the rest of the way on his own.  The school was less than 20 feet away.  I think it took him another 10 minutes to get that far.  I cannot say for certain.  I had found a taxi and was on my way as the boy stooped to examine an interesting pebble.  Everyday is an adventure worthy of exploration when one is a child. Such a blessing to have that kind of outlook on life.

I feel like I got a second chance to look on the world with new eyes, the day I walked out of the Joyce Center auditorium and returned my rented graduation cap and gown.  I felt ready to tackle the world.  I had already spent nearly 6 years in Africa before starting my graduate degree at the Kroc Institute for International Studies. The daily tomes of reading and intense regime of role play exercises and lectures had prepared me for a new adventure - a life of as a peacebuilder.  For my first post abroad, I relied on my informal academic advisor, Juan Mendez, who called me into his office, made a few phone calls, and handed me a 6-month unpaid internship in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  

The International Human Rights Law Group could neither pay for my flight out there nor provide housing or transportation, but a desk was available and they were interested in someone with knowledge about transitional justice.  With the help of a 3,000 dollar grant from the Kroc Institute and the blessings of family, I was off to start a new career. You are probably expecting me to say that life in the field was different from what I had experienced in the classroom.  It was and it wasn't.  An interesting fact about peacebuilding is that there are very few people doing it.  Instead of arriving in a area where you have to adapt to existing norms and customs, the practitioner is very free to create the world he or she wishes to build. If you are a pessimist then, I imagine, the experience will be excruciating.  But I am, by nature, a hopeful idealist.  I used to challenge my political science professor at Notre Dame by saying that I was a utopian realist.  I believe in a perfect world but recognize our current starting point. Thus, the field was as I had decided it would be.  It is as simple as that.

With idealism as my lens, Congo became a wonderous playground for learning traditional approaches to fostering dialogue and transforming conflict into opportunities for growth. Politically, Congo was a mess. Perhaps, if I had decided to focus on all the politics involved in maintaining the status quo of managed chaos, then I would have been unwilling to give it a shot.  But people have always been my focus, and I remained on that path even after CARE International recruited me to work in my first active war zone in a district in northeastern Congo called Ituri.  

Ituri was a fertile ground for peace work.  I was holed up in a recently evacuated convent.  I had a beat up but working cherry red Land Rover pick up truck and a dedicated staff.  The days were long and interesting (Angelina Jolie visited my office to learn more about the conflict) but it was in the evenings that the magic happened.  When I was not under my bunk trying to avoid stray bullets from the weekly gun battles, I would be meeting with rebel leaders who had sent messengers to join them at the local bar.  The conversations were about anything but politics.  I got to know these leaders as men and quickly earned their trust.  Perhaps trust is going too far, but at least they no longer saw me as a potential threat.  My nationality was also a motivator for continued contact in case they should  one day need the support of the United States government.  (It is amazing how much people read into one's nationality)  My team and I managed to make significant in-roads just before the program was canceled. CARE had not managed the program to the donor's satisfaction. I set my sights on home for a much needed breather.

Since that experience, I have worked in more politically charged environments, where an American peace builder could not go about his business without raising concerns and alarm. Darfur was one such example. While local authorities eventually dropped their guard to some extent, the continued naming and shaming tactics of the Enough and Save Darfur campaigns painted me as a troublemaker. I was detained in Rwanda and briefly held for trial during a time when pressure on the Rwanda regime was increasing.  Fortunately all charges were dropped and I was allowed to leave after an extended 5 days stay in Kigali. Chad, Angola, and Cameroon had all become arenas where it was important to tread softly and often discretely if you wanted to have any positive impact at all.

So it was no surprise that Senegal presented similar hiccups to peace work. It also sent a message to me that I needed to update my toolkit. But what kind of tools does an idealist need?

Part Two - Finding the right toolkit

More pictures from today's event in Dakar

 

Distraction and frustration

The marches promised for March 19th have been taking place across the city in the approved designated areas. For the most part, the marches have been peaceful.  At one point in the Place de l'Indépendance, youth began throwing rocks at the police and surrounding buildings breaking windows and causing some damage to local stands.  The police intervened immedately, firing tear gas and dispersing the crowds.  Minutes later, people returned to the square and resumed a peaceful demonstration in favor of better living conditions, more transparency, lower food prices, electricity in their homes, and lower taxes.  The populations most affected by poorer standards of living live in the suburbs of Dakar, but several attempts during the day to organize impromptu marches in these areas were immediately put to a halt by riot police.  The right to march is guaranteed by the Senegal constitution, but the organizers must inform the government in advance of the plan to march, the route, and the duration.  I will send a final update on how the day ended.  But it looks like the demonstrations are already winding down.  Peacefully.