I've really hit my stride here in Cambodia. Individuals are eager to meet and talk about peacebuilding. I leave meetings feeling genuinely moved by the dialogue. The word 'meeting' sounds cold and impersonal, and these conversations are not. They're warm and funny, sad at times, honest, actionable and also hopeful.
What is exciting about the Cambodian peacebuilders I've met with is that while there is good ethics tied to it, their work is built around frameworks that are more actionable than ethics -- like economics and education. Peace seems less ambiguous here than in the states. I've been told that much of the hope for peace in Cambodia depends on the Buddhists. That without their leadership, peace will be impossible. Later today I'll meet with two monks that are taking the lead on engaging Buddhists in peace here in Cambodia and I hope to go to Battambang to meet another Buddhist peace leader. I'm eager to learn more about Buddhism's role in peacebuilding while here and discuss it with Kyomunim down the line to identify overlap with our topics. The United Nations SDG focus of my project comes and goes. I've recorded great findings on the perception of the SDGs but continue to find that CSOs on the ground do not feel particularly connected to these goals and as a result, nor do I. On Wednesday I went into the field with a group here. We drove to Kraing Ta Chan, a prison during the Khmer Rouge time where over 10,000 people were murdered. The group I went with (Youth for Peace in partnership with the Cambodian Institute for Peace) has a small peace center there. The Center there is doing this AWESOME project where youth are trained to collect oral history from genocide survivors and then make art out of the memories that are shared. The artwork is on exhibit. It is so cool because it connects generations, offers youth a skill-set around research and mental health issues, gives opportunity for expression outside of writing and provides a safe outlet for survivors. It was a real privilege to see this sort of peace work in action. On the way back from the trip, we visited the Chiso temple. It was incredible. As one person I interviewed here said, "Look at Angkor Wat. Look at our temples. If Cambodians can build those, we can certainly build peace."
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With the political situation here, I felt it important to speak with someone from the government about peacebuilding this week. I met with Phay Siphan, the official Govt. spokesperson for Cambodia at the Council of Ministries. His office was quite welcoming and it was interesting to hear his perspectives on Cambodia history and the goverment's role in peacebuilding. I will write another post on this down the line with deeper details.
One theme coming up is the idea that Cambodia is in a unique position to take the lead on peace for the region. It is a theme that developed from a discussion I had at the Cambodia Institute for Strategic Studies, but as I test this thought in other meetings and hear from others, there's agreement on the notion. Meetings continue to progress well, here. My time is being well-spent, largely with local Cambodians and grassroots groups, but I've also a little time with some I-NGOs. For example, I visited with a group who is doing development work with a former "dump community" here in Phnom Penh. In addition to a number of projects they work on, they conduct youth leadership programs. Next week they are focusing on: the future of the community, what type of action is needed in the community and how the youth can play a role. Some of their program courses sounds quite similar to the Asia Pacific Leadership Program. I'm off now to touch base with Youth For Peace which is a crucial group here and a meeting I've been excited about, especially given the youth population here in Cambodia. I'm really looking forward to learning what types of peace leadership trainings they're doing there. I hope maybe some of this peace leadership curriculum that I'm learning about can be shared with APLP down the line and visa versa. This past week our GIST team met up together in Pursat, Cambodia for a rendezvous and service project. It was really wonderful to be together as a group. We are a well-balanced group in terms of our personalities and our talents.
In addition to the time we spent with the organization professionally, we also we are able to get together socially. In fact, one of the best parts of my visit to Sustainable Cambodia was dinner out with Soy Bean on the last night. Soy showed us to a local vegetarian restaurant and afterwards, shared with us his favorite beer at a karaoke bar. It is called “snow beer” and is cold and slushy. Delicious! Thinking about our contributions and learnings from our short time at Sustainable Cambodia, I am asking myself questions about how I can improve my involvement with team service projects in the future:
Today Htet, Marianne and myself visited the Tuol Sleng museum and traveled to Choeung Ek afterwards. An emotional day but it was filled with lots of learning and being able to experience the museums and then discuss the history with fellow GISTers made it a really productive day.
Of all of the exhibits, I was most moved by a room filled stories written by some perpetrators of the genocide. The exhibit teaches that perpetrators were also victims of the conflict, many of whom were just children at the time. This theme is one I will explore further, as some of the groups I plan to meet with are working on projects with similar learning goals to this exhibit. I am looking forward to connecting with local peace groups, sustainable development organizations and various CSOs about peace building here in Cambodia. I'll also be meeting with a leader and some of his staff at the museum in the next few days and I'm grateful for the opportunity to explore the mueseum and its exhibits beforehand. This week in Chiang Mai I've been focusing on getting well and on learning more about the conflicts and peacebuilding in Myanmar. I've met with folks at the Burma Study Center and two journalists that work in the area and report on border issues. It has been quite eye-opening to hear the different perspectives and start to build up a more academic base for my interest in Myanmar.
For anybody interested in doing more reading, the Burma Study Center has a great resource lists on their website http://www.burmastudy.org/ and I've started to download some literature and documentaries to help shape my own study. Off to Bangkok for a few more meetings with a Sustainable Development expert/entrepreneur who is doing some work on the SDGs, as well as an NGO director doing peace work in the region with youth. I'll then head to Cambodia to meet up with the rest of the GIST team and do a service project with the team. Very much looking forward to seeing familiar faces! After Mae Salong, I took a truck-taxi to Thoed Thai. I had really rich dialogue with a local resident there about the way the village looked and felt back in the 60s and 70s. An absolutely fascinating, but also fun, conversation.
My view of "peacebuilder" shifted from these meetings in Doi Tung and Thoed Thai. Prior to visiting, I assumed that the drug lord Khun Sa was a negative force and a detriment to the communities. While some might still argue that is the case, many residents also view him as a peacebuilder and a freedom fighter. His presence and security team kept the village safe and that he put money into the village community. He also spent time with the people. This takeaway seems so obvious -- I mean, of course people view leaders in different lights -- but it was a good reminder to not make assumptions about what peace is or is not (or should be or should not be) to others. Day-to-day, my formal meetings still continue to be slow to come. I would have liked to have had more by now, especially given how much outreach I've done. It does look like some appointments will come together for Bangkok next week, so I will head back there before heading to the rendezvous for this. I am also lining up things for Cambodia and Myanmar with peacebuilding organizations, a handful of which seem to be themed around youth. At this point, I'm just pushing to talk with anyone that is willing and focusing on meeting interesting people doing cool peace work, rather than trying to check mark off the perfect box of "this organization aligns PERFECTLY with my mission to analyze the UN peace agenda" or "I really need to talk with five orgs doing XYZ for my data to be viable". Looking forward to discussing this in Cambodia with Nina and the team and hearing about others' challenges and victories with meetings. Personal perks of my travel up north: fresh hot market donuts, an awesome hike in Mae Salong with Scott Coates and his wife Erica, drinking fresh tea by myself for hours at a tea house overlooking stunning mountain landscapes, and my taxi driver who made video game sounds the whole way up the steep, windy road into the mountains. That is it for now! I am totally down and out with a terrible, terrible cough. Last night at a dinner a guy named Dave did tell me it, "sounded like it could be H1N1 and so I need to be informed." Thanks for that, Dave. I'm pretty sure it is just a bad cold, made worse by the slash and burning smokiness up north. Keeping a close eye on it and will head to the doctor if need-be, but I don't think I'm there yet. Special thanks to Dr. Htet for his phone consultation, to the liberal pharmacists in Thailand for their support and to Tyra Banks for providing online streaming of America's Next Top Model -- without which I would be much worse off. Having an amazing time up in Northern Thailand. Being in Doi Tung and Mae Salong gave me historical context for some of the conflicts in Thailand. It also was good to have some much needed time outside of the city. Sometimes I forget how much better I feel when I'm not in a city. It calms me way down and gives me better perspective, always.
Alumni Hlek is the coolest. He took a full day in Doi Tung to tour me around the area and brief me on the strategic community development work his foundation is doing (http://www.maefahluang.org/index.php). I met members of his team and visited local gardens, farms and factories that are all tied to their development projects. The work they do is so impressive that I took six or seven pages of notes during the briefing on their work in Thailand, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Indonesia. After spending the day with Hlek, I headed further up north into the mountains to Mae Salong, a tiny village town that is mostly Yunnanese. I spent a couple of nights there exploring, talking with locals and doing e-mail outreach with a view. While I was here I was able to spend a lot of time outside, doing lots of walking, a little hiking and enjoying outdoor cafes. Check out my photos from Mae Salong! I've brought too much stuff with me. Before Cambodia, I hope to have shipped a box back to Lanai. Less clothes, less products, less shoes, less kukui nut leis, less stress.
GREAT week. On Monday, I had lunch with a former teacher of alumni Nok's. Kanya teaches nonviolent communication (NVC) courses. She also consults on NVC and conflict resolution with organizations and businesses. She is Thai. She is brilliant. Kanya met me at the BTS station and she had intuitively chosen a vegetarian restaurant. We shared tons of delicious veggie food (sesame crusted tofu, curry, vegetables with green chili paste and salads) and talked for over two hours about her work in NVC, my coursework at the peace institute at UH and our theories on peace. Also this week, I spent a morning at the Chulalongkorn University's Rotary Peace Center. The classroom reminded me of APLP -- there were about 25, three-month fellows from all over the world. I sat in on a session about peace processes and how to diagnose if a conflict is "ripe for resolution". During the class, I sat with a woman from Yemen who talked about the crisis there. Another woman from Papua New Guinea shared about the conflict in West Papua. I left feeling privileged to have listened and privileged to have never seen conflict like they have. The fellows invited me for lunch afterwards and it was cool to be able to hang with an international cohort and share about the APLP program, too. Being there definitely heightened my inspiration to go back to school for peace and justice studies. I will apply for the Rotary Peace Masters Fellowship for 2017. When I'm back in Bangkok, I'll connect again with a few of the fellows I met, all of whom work in peace-related professions. Also hope to interview that peace processes lecturer. I have not had as many direct discussions about SDG goal #16 as I had hoped to by this point. That said, I am still getting information about how peacebuilders on the ground feel about the goal in more organic conversation. How many people in that room have had to fight for their territory? How many people in that room have had their land being taken away? (a quote from the NVC specialist about goal #16 of the SDG decision-making process) and this is life or death, not development (said a journalist that I've been in contact with in Chiang Mai). Alternatively, I met with an officer at UNESCAP this week (though the meeting was cut short due to an emergency there) and she talked positively about the ambition of the goals. Interesting contrast, indeed. Eager to dive deeper into this. Heading to Chiang Rai in the morning. Will spend most of the day with alumni Hlek touring his foundation in Doi Tung and then head into the village, Mae Salong. On Monday, I'll move to Thoed Thai. I am working hard on letting go of my pre-conceived GIST and letting things unfold without putting to much weight on certain meetings, contacts or conversation topics. It turns out this is a much more fun way to travel. Highlight of the week: hanging out at the local joint down the road from our hotel, Mama's, drinking beer and eating good food with the regulars. My favorite regular is named Wow. She does not speak much English. I asked if she comes often to Mama's and she said, "No. Just every day." Low of the week: the server at breakfast yesterday asked if I was Marianne's mother. Let's hope I don't re-fill my newly emptied suitcase, and blow my GIST budget, on anti-aging products from Boots. At the start of GIST I did not anticipate to spend much time in Bangkok, or even Thailand for that matter. I planned to participate in the launch with East-West Center staff and then move along to a different country. Today marks two weeks in Bangkok.
Bangkok has made the perfect base for kicking off my GIST field work. This is in part because there has been a bit of a lag between my outreach to agencies and organizations in the area and actually scheduling meetings. Having cool coffee shops to work from, food courts to try and heaps of organizations to explore has made this city the perfect place to get rolling. I'm really enjoying making little communities as I find favorite hangouts to be a regular at in each neighborhood . This week it is Mama's, a little joint down the road from where Marianne and I are staying. The women that work and spend time at Mama's have welcomed us with so much fun and hospitality. A separate post to come on these ladies! Last week, it was a couple of the waitstaff at Siam Heritage on Surawong Street that practiced Thai phrases with me everyday while I ate my lunch. I am really good sat saying "aroi mak mak" (delicious) now. My project continues to shift and take shape. I am testing different language and methods with my meeting requests to see if my topic, or the way I am sharing my topic, is dis-interesting or disconnected from the folks I am reaching out to. Though my meetings thus far have been few, it is clear that having the conversations with individuals that they would like to have is much more valuable than having the conversations that I thought I wanted to have. I'm still weaving my interests into the dialogue, but I am not leading with them and this seems to be more successful thus far. Looking forward to meetings this week with a nonviolent communication educator and a representative from UNESCAP. I will also be sitting in on some sessions at Chulalongkorn University’s Rotary Peace Centre this Thursday and Friday. The sessions there will be: "Constructing Workable Peace Processes" by Dr. Norbert Ropers (Berghof Foundation & Prince of Songkhla University, Thailand), "Case Study: Southern Thailand" by Dr. Norbert Ropers and then a Southern Thailand Case Study Panel Discussion. The panelists are Dr. Chantana Banpasirichote, Mr. Don Pathan, and Ms. Rusda Sadeng. More to come as things continue to progress here and my itinerary takes shape! |
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