Write, Just Write - It's All You Have

Months have passed since I wrote anything more than a briefing paper or an assessment of protection concerns in some far-flung region of South Sudan that few have ever heard of, fewer still have ever been to.

I don’t mean that to sound romantic. In the past several months, I’ve been to villages named Mading, Buaw, Gorwai, Pulturuk, Waat, Mathiang, Koch – each one different in so many ways and yet so similar. In nearly every one, markets are shadows of their former selves or gone altogether. Families crowd into ever more fully-packed shelters as they welcome distant relatives or complete strangers who have fled conflict in a neighboring county or village, their condition ranging from dire to “normal for South Sudan,” a state that is rarely normal for anywhere else in the world.

And yet many cope. They continue to get by, as millions of humans who have lived and loved and lost, survived and died, for thousands of years. What choice does one have, in the end? Give up or keep going. We’ll all die eventually, and the only choice that many have in such hard circumstances is to wake up with the resolve to say, “Not today.”

One would think it would be easy to write in such conditions – to record the stories of those who have said, “I’m still here, and I plan to remain as long as I can.” To speak of one of Sudan’s top marathoners, a man who, though old now, told me of finishing 60^th out of 1000 in a race outside Addis Ababa thirty or more years ago. I, amazed, had to smile a bit, incredulous at his disappointment. In the swamps and the desert heat of Sudan, he was unbeatable, but take him to the mountaintop, where the air ran cold and thin, and suddenly, his career was over.

My mother was the first to notice the long stretch where I was no longer writing. It worried her, but I brushed off her concerns like so many others she’s raised throughout the years. Not because she was wrong, but because I was afraid of all that was right in her worry. I’ve seen so many of my friends and colleagues take up habits that signal an unhealthy amount of stress. Juba is full of them. Those who drink too much, smoke too much, work too much, fuck too much – the city is a seedy hive of empty relations and forced joviality. All to keep darker emotions at arm’s length.

I don’t go in for that, and for most of my time here, I thought I was immune. Everyone likes to think that they’re stronger than they actually are. All of these vices are an avoidance trick, a way to keep from looking in the mirror. You dance and turn circles, faster and faster, hoping that the momentum can keep the world blurred until you break the cycle with R&R, or until you break down.

I don’t smoke. I haven’t taken up drinking. My avoidance trick was just to never look inwards, and to do that, I had to give up writing.

Because writing, for me, takes strength. It takes an ability to live alongside my inner self and communicate freely with those emotions that are hidden from the everyday. That act can be profoundly spiritual, in a way, but it’s also profoundly vulnerable.

In our work, especially amongst protection actors, we have to cultivate empathy. Without it, it is impossible to cultivate the trust and relationships necessary to speak openly and candidly about where an individual or community’s concerns, fears, and hopes lie.

But it’s a razor’s edge, both for me and the person I’m interviewing, and it’s often one that I’m walking blindfolded. Think of it like this – a person has been displaced from her home. She has no idea if or when she will go back. She is, more often than not, missing a child, probably more than one, or a sister, brother, husband. By opening myself up, I may open her up, and she may relive darker moments – a grandchild murdered while she watched, his throat slit. Rape. A friend who died of thirst in the bush, unburied.

That’s what I’m avoiding when I don’t write. I’ve been maintaining my distance from some of the darkest stories I’ve ever encountered. They’re not the same as those written up in a report from Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or the UN. Those are words on paper, able to move someone, but ultimately unable to truly reflect the pain in an old woman’s voice or the vacant look in a teenager’s eyes.

Even now, I want to push this away, close the computer, and delete this file. I don’t want anyone to know that in hearing these stories, I’ve absorbed some of the darkness. However much I’ve tried to protect myself, I still need to empathize, and that means leaving the door unlocked for a whole range of emotions, not least trauma and loss. Even if it’s not my own, I as a human being can picture my own family, my own friends, those I’ve lost and those who are safe at home, unaware of all these…these things.

But if I close myself off to the bad, I also shut out the good. I shut out the amazing men and women of South Sudan who have acted as translators, facilitators, and friends in this last year. People who have lived through horror and yet are full to bursting with energy and humor. People whose lives have been full of tragedy but also full of adventure and life – like the marathoner whose legs took him from a rural village to the regional capital, from secondary school to university, and let him see places many here can’t even imagine. Or the school teacher, who chooses to remain in a small town with his family rather than move to a city several hours away for the safety and security of an NGO job. To him, the presence of his family in an emergency outweighs any monetary gain.

I don’t know about others, but for me, writing, especially when I can evoke feelings that are true and pure and deep and real to me, can carve me out and make me feel like I’m bleeding from a thousand emotional cuts. But the hope that it brings, the hope that soothes the pain, sets me on a stronger foundation.

                

I have to write again, and I want this to be the start.

Practice Makes Perfect

Nine and a half hours of training in the sweltering heat of Juba’s early rains is probably more than enough for most people.

But for the twenty-one of us who came to do unarmed, nonviolent civilian peacekeeping in South Sudan, in the middle of a civil war, there’s a bit more to worry about than the humidity.

We’ve spent these first few days going a bit through security risks – abductions, grenades, targeted attacks, and the near-constant presence of small arms such as pistols and assault rifles. In this, we’ve learned that much like martial arts, the best defense against these risks is to avoid confrontation in the first place.

As unarmed civilian peacekeepers, our duty is to the communities we serve. We’re not content to wait patiently behind massive walls edged with razor wire. We don’t carry weapons to defend ourselves, nor do we travel in convoys with force protection accompaniment.

Rather, we rely on our relationships within the community to keep us safe and help us in our work. If the Bible teaches to “Love thy neighbor,” then the training so far has definitely focused on “Know thy neighbor…and make sure she knows you.”

Not just your neighbor, but your community – the various shop owners in various towns, the district government officials, the police, the military, the boys in the cattle camps, the women at the well, even the armed actors on the other side.

Indeed, the guys with guns, from either side, are some of the most important contacts we have. It’s important not only that we remain nonpartisan in our work, but that we remind others of our nonpartisanship. We do this not only by working with all sides but by making sure everyone knows we work with all sides.

There are definitely performative aspects in this. It’s not enough to be nonpartisan and nonviolent. Instead, we have to broadcast – through our words and deeds in every aspect of every day to as many people as possible – that we are dedicated to reducing violent potential and safeguarding vulnerable populations.

Practicing Fear

Everyone has to start somewhere, and on our second day of training, that start was with us, as individuals. We had to break ourselves down to build ourselves up.

That’s because one of the greatest dangers to the organization and to our personal safety will most likely not come through an external threat, but through personal mistake. It is all too possible, after weeks in the field, after bearing witness to fights, death, displacement, and extreme trauma, that it will all get too much. That instead of bending, we will break.

The first step is controlling oneself in the face of danger. Focus on the breath, reduce the pulse. Above all, remain calm. The second is to recognize the danger within you, the levels that can build and build until trauma has forced you so far into a corner that you have no choice but to lash out.

Without going into too much detail, we were pushed, hit, threatened – put in simulated situations that should frighten us and asked to remain calm. It’s the training that hopefully will prepare us for similar threats in the field.

There is fear in these scenarios, even if they’re just simulations. But by focusing on one’s breath, by turning inward, by finding that core inside of you, that the threats, the hits, the abuse and humility becomes so much white noise.

Practicing Trauma

Indeed, fear was easier to confront – the external – compared to what came next. We had to face down our demons and thank them for hurting us.

Each of us was asked to remember previous trauma. Something someone said to us that hurt so deeply, that even if we forgave or forgot long ago, left a spiritual scar in its place.

We shared simple phrases with the team that we associated with those events, and then we had to walk the gauntlet.

Think of some of the most hurtful things you’ve ever heard, and then think of some of the most hurtful you yourself have ever said, whether intentionally or not.

You’re stupid. You’re lazy. You’re fucking useless. I don’t want to see you again. I never cared for you.

We each had our phrase, and we had to walk between the lines of our team members while they looked us dead in the eye and repeated the phrase back to us. Twenty other people reminding you of your trauma and throwing it in your face, and after each one, we had to thank them for the pain.

For me, the anxiety skyrocketed the closer I drew to my turn. As I began the walk, each word cut deep. But as I continued on, it had less and less of an effect on me. The trauma was still there, but it no longer owned me like it once had.

And that’s important. Because the most dangerous time could come from when someone inadvertently touches that trauma. We lash out, and conflict ensues. By accepting trauma, being grateful for it, it can no longer hurt us.

Practicing Meaning

Finally, I’ll leave with a question that was asked of us. “What is one action you have done in your life that left you feeling content and helped you to feel real meaning?”

It’s a question we can all ask ourselves, something that we don’t often do. When was that last time? What was it that you did?

Chances are, it came about through helping someone. Humans are social creatures. We thrive in our relationships and connecting with one another.

So ask yourself, “When was the last time I did something that made me feel I had done something meaningful?”

Then ask, “What’s the next thing I can do to feel that again?”

Pain and Vengeance: The Women of Jos

On Tuesday, I wrote about how Search for Common Ground organized a meeting between community leaders and journalists with the goal of better utilizing media to attain peace in Plateau State. On Wednesday, Search for Common Ground brought together 35 women community leaders and women journalists to discuss how we can increase women’s voices in the media. The goal: to give voice to those typically marginalized by conflict in order to attain a sustainable peace.

The two meetings raised similar issues. However, the character of the two groups could not have been more different. The men spoke of their exhaustion: ten years of conflict, neighborhoods and communities torn apart by violence, children raised on hatred and mistrust challenging their leaders, becoming more extreme, calling for more violence. The emotion was raw and powerful and helped more than anything to put a human face on this conflict.

I expected similar emotion from the women, and I had steeled myself for our meeting the next day. Indeed, one of the first women spoke about her role as a teacher, how she worked with children from some of the worst affected areas and their reactions to growing up in such violent circumstances. Many of the children, during an art therapy session, depicted houses on fire, knives, guns, a bomb. When she asked the child about the bomb, the simple response was, “That is what I will use to take revenge on the people that killed my uncle.” The impact on children was something the men had brought up the day before, but to hear mothers speak about their children gave the issue shape and clarity. There is a whole generation positioned on the razor’s edge of violence, and at times it seems like the slightest breeze could reignite the embers that are smoldering in Plateau State.

What surprised me, then, was the women’s reaction to the violence. Much more so than the men, the women dredged up the past and viewed it with an ugly, black hurt that colored the entire conversation. Rumors of “no go zones” and silent killings abounded, with women from indicted communities countering with their own horror stories about the opposing side. It was honestly shocking to hear women, so often considered the peace makers, speak with such anger and pain. In their voices I could hear the specter of the violence that has consumed these communities for so long and the danger that, in their anger, they may be the ones shaping their children’s views of the conflict.

During the break, I asked one of the journalists, a friend of mine who works for the government-owned television station, why the women spoke about peace with so much vengeance in their voices. She told me that for many of these women, this is the first forum they’ve been given to express their anger, their hurt, the trauma they’ve seen and experienced. The “white papers,” investigations conducted by state and federal government into the Jos violence, have often ignored women’s voices. The various peace committees that have been formed have never included women in positions of authority or opened the door for women to express their hurt. For many, this was the first chance to express that pain, even as it divided them into various accusatory camps.

One common refrain among the women was that the violence was the fault of men, that men committed the violence, men lead the violence. “Women we must tell our men to stop this violence.” In the past, I’ve agreed with this opinion, that war is men’s creation and men’s crime. However, juxtaposed with the hurt of these women, I can only recognize that we are all culpable in violent communal conflict such as this. Young men may commit the violence, but they are often under the exhortations of others. Violent conflict such as this is driven by fear, mistrust, and insecurity. Young men are often expected to take up the mantle of warrior, protector. Even if there are no direct calls for conflict, the pressure in most patriarchal societies is too great to ignore.

So I think we must throw away these gendered opinions of conflict and realize that we all have a stake in our communities. We shouldn’t assume that women are inherently always the victims in conflict, though women and children often suffer more than men. However, denying that women play a role in conflict, both as actors and as victims, denies them the anger and trauma inculcated by extreme violence. Denying them a voice in the peace process, a chance to work through that pain, can rob a community of a chance at sustainable peace. By recognizing our shared guilt, we recognize our shared humanity. Humans are fallible. We are imperfect creatures, and, recognizing that, we can begin to work together to pick up the pieces and rebuild.