Ebb/Flow

I was a smiley kid. All the time, I was walking around like it was a sunny day, with a big grin on my face. I must have looked like a complete dope.

Then one day, when I was in 7^th grade, some goth/punk burnout noticed the dopey grin on my face and asked me, in front of everyone, “Why are you smiling all the time? Did you just get done masturbating?”

Everyone who heard him laughed. And laughed. I didn’t know what masturbation was (I was a very innocent kid, which probably helped explain the dopey grin), but I could understand intrinsically that being labeled a chronic masturbator was something all the other kids would make fun of me for.

So I stopped smiling.

It’s not that it launched me into a deep depression or that I never laughed. It’s just that from that day forward, I never wore that dopey grin again. It’s come back from time to time, but it’s always been something I’ve kept hidden.

Two years ago, when I first came to South Sudan, I was excited about a new challenge, a new context, and finally achieving something I’d been working towards for years. I was mobile, which suited me well with my love of movement and rapidly changing contexts, learning on the fly, and adapting as best I could.

I naturally turned towards writing, and this blog, to pour that energy out into the world. Three posts in April, two in May, and then “Cowboys,” in June 2014.

Then it drops off. One post in August, and not another one until January 2015, another in April, and this is the first since.

What changed? I submitted “Cowboys” as a comms piece to the organization I worked for. We had a part-time comms officer who never did her job. I didn’t know I’d almost been hired as a full-time comms officer, so the fact that I’d published three pieces for the organization’s blog probably made it look like I was gunning for her position.

So she undercut me. Hard. She launched a campaign of sneering and mockery. A month or so after that piece was published, everyone was talking about it, and none of it was good.

People took to calling the mobile team the ‘cowboys,’ even though the article said that we weren’t doing the real work, the difficult work of helping communities knit themselves back together after a crisis. I could tell that I was quickly becoming an outsider in a place where you couldn’t afford to go it on your own.

So I stopped writing. 

I shut down the part of me that was outward facing. I kept my journal, but I couldn’t bring myself to really push my own boundaries anymore. 

And that was a shame because there were so many stories to tell. Not just mine, but the personal stories from a conflict that's raged now for over two years, displaced millions, and slowly ground down so many who hoped for so much more. 

I'm amazed that people still maintain hope. The Greek legend had it that when Pandora opened her box, she let out all the evils of the world - death, famine, plague, sadness, misery, poverty. She closed the door with one voice crying to be let free. That voice was hope. It always struck me that maybe hope was the worst of all, that hope helped people endure but that it also inured people to the suffering around them and prevented change. 

I don't know if I still believe that. As I get older and the thoughts in my head get more and more nuanced, I'm not sure what I believe anymore.

But if anyone asks me why I return to places like South Sudan (where I am currently), I'm reminded of all the hardship, all the pain, the death, the disease, the loss of a child, a wife, a husband, a home, a family, a community, the loss of dignity, the loss of even the most basic rights - food, shelter, safety, and I see that life goes on. 

No matter how dark things get, there is hope. It's there in brief moments, but it's the only thing that keeps you from breaking, that keeps you committed to life and everything in it, for better or for worse. 

This war, which doesn't get as much coverage as it should and will probably never get as much coverage as it should, will eventually end. Life continues, with or without us.

That doesn't mean we have to like it. That doesn't mean that we have to inure ourselves to the pain and suffering around us. The news calls it a 'migrant crisis' rather than acknowledge the thousands of women and children who are fleeing war and desolation. 

I can't end a war. I certainly can't end this one. But I can work to try to ally myself in others' suffering, to stagger on together in an attempt to demand dignity from a hard world, made harder by people who have doubted themselves, been afraid, lashed out, and taken one step after another down a road that sees another human life as worth less, as lesser, as expendable and exploitable. 

At my worst, like all of us, I have lashed out, I have done wrong, but I must remember to turn inward, heal my own pain, and open myself again. 

South Sudan has taught me many things. It's given me at times an awfully black sense of humor. It has shown me things that I've heard only in news reports, an unimaginable world far away from my own. It's shown me courage, true courage, the ability to carry on when everything around you seems impossible. 

I gave a copy of the Tao Te Ching to a South Sudanese colleague. In a place where books are hard to come by, he's read those simple poems over and over and over again. He's found wisdom there. And even though he lives in a country at war, he can read about peace and about the ebb and flow of life. 

He and his wife had a child a few months ago, their first. It's not an easy thing to do, to bring life into so much suffering. And to know that in South Sudan that no child is safe until the age of five. Child mortality is one of the highest in the world alongside maternal mortality, but child and mother have both made it so far. 

Even in the midst of everything, life goes on. There remains hope. 

Leaving Redemption along the Road to Peace

The car jostled over footpaths and pushed through the encroaching greenery, emerging into a clearing dominated by neem trees, a water pump, and a long, multi-room school. The few women around the pump eyed us warily. Children hid behind their mothers. There were no men to be seen.

Our team leader, Rocky, explained, “You see, these men have fled into the bush, but they are close. Even the others, we asked, ‘how do you protect the women,’ and they said that they are just near.” Sure enough, a short distance on we met five men armed with Kalashnikovs. A small radio pumped music out of tinny speakers. These were the Thiiyic Galweng, the heavily-armed cattle keepers who keep watch over their community’s herds.

They watch not for lions or hyenas, though those beasts are sometimes found here in South Sudan, but for other men who come raiding for the cows that in Dinka and Nuer culture denote wealth, prestige, and power.

Now, however, these men were on heightened alert. One of their Thiiyic (pronounced Teach) kinsmen had killed the paramount chief from the Gony (Goyng) side and gone on the run. The Gony had responded in kind, storming through Thiiyic territory on a campaign of rape and retributive violence that they vowed would last until the murderer was apprehended.

The police officer who traveled with us exited the vehicle cautiously and spoke with the youth, who led us several hundred meters down a path and to another clearing encircled by several dozen additional heavily-armed men. They were here in hiding, they said. They wanted peace, and they knew that if they showed themselves it would lead only to more violence.

Nonviolent Peaceforce has been conducting peacebuilding activities in and around Lakes State for the majority of its existence in South Sudan. This is despite the fact that the state is overwhelmingly Dinka and does not, therefore, fit neatly into the international narrative of an ongoing ethnic civil war between the Dinka and Nuer. If everyone is Dinka, what is there to fight over?

Quite a bit, it seems, as the state is one of the most volatile in the entire country. The Dinka in Lakes belong to clans – the Gak, Agaar, Atuot, Ciec, and Aliab. Within this clan structure are sub-clans, and a multitude of conflicts have arisen over the years, typically related to cattle, grazing land, and women.

In Lakes, still waters run deep. Conflicts can last for years without any violence and suddenly flare up without warning. This latest, between the Thiyiic and the Gony sub-clans of Dinka Agaar, is a perfect example.

In 1997, Thiiyic youth murdered the son of the Gony Paramount Chief. Five years later, in 2002, the Gony struck back and killed the Deputy Paramount Chief of Thiiyic side. A Gony soldier, who is now a high-ranking government official, killed two of his own family in order to appease the Thiiyic, prevent retribution, and end the conflict. However, in early August of this year, seventeen years after the initial killing, the son of the murdered Thiiyic elder, who was only a child at the time of his father’s death, took his revenge by murdering the Gony Paramount Chief and fleeing into the bush.

The heavily-armed men we met deep in the bush were Thiiyic. They were angry and afraid. They had fled to avoid collective retribution, but the Gony had targeted their women, something unprecedented in the inter-clan conflict. Women and children had always been considered off-limits.

Perhaps in the context of the civil war, where an unknown number of women have been raped and where children are regularly abducted and pressed into military service, the rules of war are changing. What was once unthinkable becomes common. The rules have been broken, and one fears they may not be repaired.

In this context as well, when tensions are high, anything can be considered a further affront, and there is no such thing as an individual crime. A woman killed her nine-month pregnant neighbor in a dispute over a goat. Both were Gony, but the dead woman was married to a Thiiyic. In Dinka culture, dominated by patriarchy, a woman upon marriage loses her identity and takes that of her husband. In addition, the crimes of one person can often easily become those of the entire community.

Luckily, in this case, the Thiiyic weren’t seeing it that way. In the team’s meeting with the Thiiyic elders, under a tree in a clearing surrounded by armed men, they recognized the woman’s murder as an individual crime, one that needed to be resolved by the courts. They wanted peace, a chance to return to their homes.

Turning these issues over to the courts is an important extension of trust towards national institutions, and a big step towards reconciliation. That’s what we strive for – local solutions to local problems.

The team meeting with the Gony leadership.

It is unclear whether the Thiiyic feel wholly comfortable petitioning their local government. Without going too much into the intricacies of South Sudanese politics, several high-ranking state officials in Lakes belong to the Gony sub-clan. These officials were already under pressure for the continuing intra-ethnic conflict in the state, and now that the violence is hitting closer to home, they’re under increasing pressure from state and national actors. It is just another reminder of how easily a local grievance can transform into a national issue, and how important it is when two sides can solve their problems peacefully and amicably.

The Thiiyic and Gony are not there yet, but the NP team in Rumbek is used to hard, arduous roads. As we left the clearing and the armed men behind, the team felt that we had made an important first step in reconciliation. The next day, the alleged murderer was turned over to the police.

It is only one step in along a long road to peace, but even the longest journey begins with a single step. 

Cowboys

It’s been a slow couple weeks in Juba. I was supposed to be out on mission earlier in the week, but due to circumstances outside of my control, I was never manifested on the flight and found myself grounded for another week in the capital.

I’m on the mobile protection team – a new approach to protection mainstreaming that is being led by my organization, Nonviolent Peaceforce. The idea is to integrate the protection of civilians into the overall humanitarian response in a sustained, meaningful way.

The problem is that the humanitarian sector is often preoccupied with logistics – how to get food from A to B, how many households need mosquito nets, and how to target vulnerable populations who have fled to the bush, those who are relying on emergency food strategies and sheltering under trees or in disused cattle camps.

My team will be there to make sure these logistics are incorporated in a way that humanizes the populations. Our main concern is to measure the capacities, vulnerabilities, and resiliencies of the host population in order to foster ownership and build long-lasting relationships with influential local actors.

We build the networks. We’re what Malcolm Gladwell calls “Connectors.” Ideally, those of us doing mobile protection are the “first in, last out.” We’ve joked that we’re the cowboys of the organization, flying wherever there’s need and busting our hump to establish a presence.

We don’t, however, just ride off into the sunset. When we hit the ground, we’re establishing relationships, not only with local leadership but with influential actors in the community – religious leaders, doctors, elders, teachers, business people, and women.

When a distribution finishes, we stick around to make sure that the systems serve everyone effectively, especially the most vulnerable – women, children, the elderly, and the infirm.

So you can understand the frustration that for the last week, I’ve been grounded. Insert Top Gun reference here –

I want the clip where they take away Maverick's wings for going below the hard deck, but you take what you can get, I guess. 

In all seriousness, it’s been a bit of a blessing in disguise. We’ve done a lot of the ground work that is necessary when building a team. We’ve been able to meet with others in the protection cluster to establish our mission and our responsibilities. We’ve also been able to outfit the team so that we can hit the ground running.

You’d be surprised how important this ground work is, and how little opportunity you have to do it in an emergency situation.

It’s also allowed me to spend time researching the human rights situation in the country and gain an understanding of what we will be facing in different areas of the country. Amnesty International published their report Nowhere Safe: Civilians underAttack in South Sudan a few weeks ago, around the same time that the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) published their Conflict in South Sudan: A Human Rights Report.

Both make for pretty grim reading. In the nearly six months since the conflict started, both government and opposition forces have committed grave human rights violations including rape, murder, targeted attacks on civilian areas of refuge including churches and medical facilities, attacks on humanitarian actors including the UN mission, and looting. Worse, these violations seem to be institutionalized on a scale and level of organization that represent crimes against humanity.

We can’t forget what that means. These are crimes so deplorable that they actually shock the conscience of humanity. They target civilian populations and serve no military objective other than to terrify and destroy innocent life.

There are, however, some gems of humanity that shine through the horror. Stories of survival buried in the narrative that allow you to believe that this conflict is anything other than madness and carnage.

From the Amnesty report –

“In the afternoon of 16 December 2013, I was at home, in the Mia Saba neighborhood, with my family. My wife and our five children were in our house and I was sitting outside under a tree with seven (male) relatives. We heard shooting nearby and I ran to a neighbour’s house. He is a Dinka soldier and a good friend. I stayed hiding in his house and we saw two Toyota pick-up trucks full of soldiers. We heard them shooting by my house… [After the soldiers left] we found that my seven relatives had been shot dead… We found my wife and children cowering terrified in the house. The soldiers had gone in and taken money, several telephones, a computer, and a TV. My neighbour took us to his home for the night and the following day he drove me, my wife and my children to the UNMISS base; he saved our lives. He knew that his colleagues had come to kill Nuer and he could not stop them but saved us by hiding us in his home” (emphasis mine).

In the midst of complete chaos, a friend helped a friend, a neighbor stood up for a neighbor despite ethnic differences. He did it at great risk to himself. There’s danger in being a ‘collaborator,’ a serious risk to your short-term well-being to preserve your own humanity.

It is ultimately why I have faith that a solution can be found in this conflict. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe that. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but then I think of two of my colleagues, national staff, one Dinka, the other Nuer. Over the course of our training, they became fast friends. We never saw one without the other. Two women who developed a bond that will long outlast the politics of the day.

It’s what gives me hope. It’s what allows me to read reports filled with horror, to suffer abuse from aggravated IDPs in the camps, men and women who have experienced traumas far outside anything I could imagine.

It is what allows me to keep going, even when I’m stuck on the ground, longing to fly.

The Peacemakers

I've been out of touch for a couple weeks now, traveling around Plateau State and conducting interviews with key stakeholders throughout seven of the seventeen local governments. One of the most enlightening aspects of the interviews came with this question: Who is most responsible for promoting peace in your local government?

In many of the local governments deemed "high conflict," the respondents had an immediate answer: Religious leaders, they'd say, followed closely by traditional leaders. Government sources tended to cite political efforts. One man confidently asserted that women were the most responsible for promoting peace. These answers, in and of themselves, gave us an idea of who was working in troubled communities and which groups needed support. Those with actual projects instead of platitudes are the mostly likely to be targeted.

However, arguably more interesting were the answers from communities that have known little to no conflict. When asked who was working the most toward peace, nearly every respondent had to pause to think. When pressed with suggested peace actors from other communities, respondents said that they couldn't measurably say who was working the most toward peace because nearly everyone was involved. Political leaders brought together religious and traditional leaders as well as women, youth, civil societies and NGOs. Each group has its own constituencies, and by bringing them together to work toward peace, these low-conflict LGAs were reaching every member of their community.

This seems like a straight-forward answer, but it inevitably is not. Every single Local Government Council praised the efforts of their chairmen calling together all actors for meetings and discussions. But there were subtle differences between those who have successfully resisted violence and those where violence has torn at the very fabric of the community.

These differences came from the interviews with non-governmental traditional, religious, women, and youth leaders. In conflict communities, many complained that when the government held meetings, they were just talking sessions. They met, they aired grievances, and they left. Nothing filtered down to the actors committing violence. Nothing was asked of the participants, and no practical action plans ever emerged from these monthly meetings.

The peace communities carried a different tone. Stakeholder representatives stressed that dialogue was important, but that dialogue couldn't stay within the upper echelons of these stakeholder groups. Representatives took their message to their constituents, and all were involved in forming individual community action plans: whether that involved inter-religious neighborhood watches, community relief, or any number of tangible interventions to control violence. The important introduction of women and youth leaders brought these messages to a wider audience, as these most vulnerable groups have often been ignored by local government officials who look for those in power to curb the violence, rather than looking at those most affected by violence.

It's difficult to stress how important this distinction is. By including typically disenfranchised groups in the decisions and the responsibilities of conflict and peace, the local governments in these areas have turned them from victims to actors. Rather than bemoan their lot, women realize that they have the power and the responsibility to affect change. Rather than participating in violence as little more than paid thugs, youth are tasked with the responsibility to avoid conflict. They realize then that the best way to protect their community is not to attack another, but to ensure peace through cooperation. In the end, it's a much more monumental task, one that asks something of everyone regardless of status or power. However, with that shared sacrifice comes the knowledge that everyone has something to lose if their efforts come to naught. By delegating responsibility to all, the Plateau's peace communities have fostered stronger, more resilient communities. After all, isn't this the truest responsibility of government? To prevent rather than to react? To build rather than divide?