Zen and the Art of Peacekeeping

Zen Peacekeeper goes to the Oscars (not literally, sorry)

That's me, on the red carpet at Wellington's hottest Oscar party - the Weta Digital party where hundreds of Weta staff celebrated their win for best Visual Effects for 'Avatar'. The dude next to me is not a VFX, he really did stand there all afternoon posing for photos with people like me. Good people, the Weta people. Good, hard-working people.

Spoiler alert: This post reveals significant plot points of the film 'Avatar'

Yesterday I watched the entire Academy Awards presentation.

First up, can I just say, there were enough war movies in that show to almost give me nasty flash backs. I understand that the United State of America is at war, therefore people want to watch war movies. But can I just speak for myself and say - I don't really want to watch war movies. Alright, thanks for hearing me out on that.

Apart from the award for best visual effects, which went to Weta Digital for 'Avatar', I had no stake at all in any of the awards. I was watching the ceremony with hundreds of Weta Digital staff and I wanted them all to be happy, so I was thrilled that they got the credit they deserved.

Other than that, I had no strong views. I had seen very few of the films nominated and I'm generally a little wary of the whole Hollywood scene.

But I have been thinking lately about the power of cinema as a medium for telling stories in today's world. I’ve always thought that telling stories is a most powerful way to communicate. So after watching 'Avatar', I wondered whether it had the power to inspire viewers to take action to address the very real, current issues alluded to so clearly in the film. 

Despite not doing well at the Oscars, 'Avatar' has been a huge success at the box office and is on it's way to being one of the most widely viewed films in history. So, is it likely to inspire positive action for change?

With 'Avatar', James Cameron chose to tell one of the oldest stories on the planet, the story of a terrible threat to the survival of the very eco-system. In his telling of that story he did a great job of revealing much of what is going on in our own world today.

Scientists going undercover into a ‘hostile’ community and then being pressured to reveal their findings to the military has haunting echoes of psychiatrists, anthropologists and sociologists being sent into villages in Iraq and Afghanistan to gather information which is then also passed to the military for use as ‘intelligence’.

I know at least one civilian social scientist in Afghanistan who was killed under those very circumstances. As far as she was concerned she was doing anthropological research, as far as the local community was concerned she was gathering intelligence for the US military.

So ‘Avatar’ cuts close to the bone. I could have done without the stereotypical portrayal of the ex-military gun for hire. By portraying them as thugs, films like 'Avatar' underplay the intelligence and therefore the power of those men and women. But the parallels to the operations of Blackwater and other private ‘security’ contractors were clear.

The real-life relevance of the excavation for “Unobtainium” and the corporation's willingness to destroy Home tree and even the lives of those who lived within it don't need any explanation. James Cameron was laying the analogy on thick and fast.

But will it motivate people? Or will it simple depress people into hopeless apathy?

The answer to that question may lie in another aspect of the narrative: the myth of the single hero.

I’ve seen plenty of critics slate ‘Avatar’ for the use of the classic ‘Great White Saviour’ story line.

To summarise - the Nav’i, indigenous to Pandora, need an outsider (who just happens to be white and American) to rally them to action to save themselves.

Yawn.

It’s not only a tired cliché it’s also a dangerous one.

But it is one of our most beloved myths. Even when we get past the racism and accept the reality that the indigenous and non-white people of the world don’t need a white saviour, we still look for the one great hero to arise.

Think about Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. I don’t want to detract from the significant roles each of these men played as leaders in their respective liberation movements. They were charismatic and committed men who knew how to motivate action in others.  But none of them was a singular hero who saved the day by conquering a mythical opponent.

In great mythic narratives, however, that is exactly what happens. I have no problem with that as a myth, it's an excellent allegory for the journey each of us must take to slay (or better, learn to ride) our own dragons and find our authentic path to service in the world.

But I do have a problem with it as a means to motivate ordinary folks like you and I to action.

As long as we take the myth literally and hope that a hero will arise from amongst our ranks (or, even more unlikely, will arrive from somewhere else) and save us, we won’t feel very inclined to take the reins of our own lives and make changes to save our own world.

What do you think? Do films like 'Avatar' motivate you to take action to preserve the planet? Or do they leave you feeling hopeless and helpless?

Did any of the Oscar nominated films this year motivate you or others you know to make positive changes in your life or your community? How about films not nominated for any Oscars?

'Love Melts Fear' - Best of 2009: Challenge

[I'm participating in Gwen Bell's Best of 2009 Blog Challenge]

This has been a pretty challenging year. In January, when I let my wildest dreams for the year blossom, I decided that this was the year when I would become a yoga teacher and write my book. I've done both, but not without a good dose of fear.

I was afraid that my story wouldn't be good enough to make a book out of it. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to write well enough. I was afraid that if I told my story, truthfully, people would decide that I was crazy or - worse - that I was a Drama Queen.

I still am afraid of those things. But I decided to write my book anyway.

I was afraid that I wasn't 'good enough' at yoga to be a teacher. I was afraid that no-one would want to come to my classes. I was afraid that if I started teaching my weaknesses as a yogini and as a person would be so apparent that people would decide that I was crazy or - worse - that I was a phony.

I still am afraid of those things. But I became a yoga teacher anyway.

Every time I turn up to teach a yoga class, I start over again. I hear the voices of fear. What if they don't like what you have to offer today? What if they hate it and they all leave? I tell those voices that I don't have time for them. I'm too busy feeling so much love for the people who have been brave enough to show up. I'm too busy offering them what I have to share - a very simple, very authentic practice of yoga that has given me so much.

Every time I sit down to write, I start all over again. I hear the voices of fear. What if I have nothing to say? What if all my writing is crap and no-one has been honest enough to tell me? I tell those voices that I don't have time for them. I'm too busy reaching deep inside to find the stories that demand to be told. I'm too busy feeling love for the people who trusted me with their stories, and who trusted me to share them.

My biggest challenge this year has been finding the balance between noticing where my fears were pointing me (because they have an unerring sense of direction) while not letting them paralyze me. What I've learned is that love melts fear. When I love the people in my classes enough to really want to serve them as best I can, the fear melts away.

I'm so glad that I have found my solid ground, that unshakeable place of love and peace that I can fall back into at any time, because it gives me the courage I need to keep on walking, writing, teaching and loving in the face of fear.

This post was inspired by:

• This post by Jen Lee
• Some kind words from my friend Emma; and
• 'Love Melts Fear' by my beautiful friend Edo Kahn of The Kahn Brothers

Best of 2009: Best blog discovery

There is no question. The very best blog discovery for me this year was Jen Lee.

I had come across Jen plenty of times in the past, she is friends with some of my dearest bloggy friends and I had even bought her "Don't Write" journal on the recommendation of the awesome Jen Lemen (who also took the beautiful photo of Jen above).

But I hadn't 'met' Jen. I hadn't spent any time on her blog, I hadn't listened to her voice, I hadn't really pad attention. Now I can't believe it took me so long. She is, hands-down, the most compelling story-teller I've 'discovered' this year.

I'd love to tell you all about Jen - her extraordinary story-telling, her courage and her beauty - but I'd rather that you went to meet her at her place.

The Peacemakers Art: An Unbiased Heart

 

Image of Ishmael Beah by John Madere from Ishmael's website

If you've been reading here for a while then you'll know that I believe in the world-changing power of a story. I believe that listening, with an unbiased heart, to someone's story may be the most important thing we ever do for them. This much I learned in two years in Afghanistan. I also believe that telling our own stories can change our own lives and can open space for wider change in the world. This much I am learning as I find the courage to write my own book this year.

One of the kindred spirits I have met along my own journey to uncover the simple, profound power of story is Laura Simms. I've never actually met Laura in person but we have spoken on the phone and emailed each other at different times over the past three years.

Laura is a storyteller, writer and meditation teacher. She is also the adoptive mother of Ishmael Beah, a storyteller in his own right. If you haven't heard of Ishmael and his story then I highly recommend his memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier about his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

Next month Laura and Ishmael will be leading a workshop at Esalen. I went to a workshop at Esalen for the first time this past summer and I was very impressed. The site, in Big Sur, is stunning. From my cabin I had views out across the beautiful organic vegetable gardens to the ocean. I soaked in the mineral hot pools and walked through the beautiful grounds. Even if the workshop I attended hadn't been amazing (it was!) it would have been worth it just to enjoy the rare luxury of peace and simplicity and community that I found at Esalen.

Here is the overview of Laura and Ishmael's workshop:

At the heart of peacemaking is the art of unbiased presence, genuine listening, and the ability to discern meaning. How we communicate can plant the seed of compassionate change or it can be the source of misunderstanding and conflict — in our own hearts and in the world.

This workshop will unfold as a deepening process of working with embodied presence, mindful awareness, and sharing the age-old wisdom of storytelling and visualization to uncover our inherent capacities for accessing tools for peacemaking in ourselves and among family and community, including humanitarian and educational endeavors.

Each day will begin with guided Chi Kung and meditation practice, and continue with storytelling and writing activities that promote unbiased listening and show how genuine presence and story can nurture nonaggression and peace. Each participant will leave with skills and practical information, and a personal story that uses mythic image and experience.

I highly recommend this workshop. I would be there if it were a little closer. If you go, will you promise to report back here about it. A guest post maybe?

'Bad tea, bad sign': an extract from my WIP

This is an extract from my work in progress, a memoir about my life and work as a human rights officer with the United Nations in Afghanistan. This text may not be reproduced without my permission. For more extracts select WIP extracts from the categories in the sidebar. Let me know what you think!

The next morning our courtesy meeting with the Provincial Governor took place in his office, a simple room that had nonetheless been furnished with a lavish lounge suite, including a two seater, two armchairs and an intricately carved and painted coffee table. As he welcomed us enthusiastically to the province and exhorted us to make ourselves at home a young man entered the office with a tray of glass teacups filled with green tea and a plate of caramels.

Over the course of the two years I spent in Afghanistan I must have eaten a thousand caramels and drunk at least twice as many cups of green tea. No meeting took place without tea and caramels or dried fruit and nuts.

The Governor’s tea tasted off, as though the water with which it had been made had not been clean. I considered for an instant not drinking it but the risk of causing offense was more pressing than the threat of a stomach bug so I began to sip the tea, reaching for a caramel to cover the bad taste.

It wasn’t only his tea that was off, however. Everything about this Governor screamed foul to me. His manners were exaggerated and oily and he spoke about the province with a thinly veiled contempt. It was fairly obvious that this man, an urbanite from Kabul, resented his posting to this remote and ‘backwards’ province.

I had heard rumours that the man was deeply corrupt and that he was too busy lining his own pockets and rushing off to Kabul to seek a transfer to more appealing post to actually get anything done for the province. Now that I had met him I found the rumours easy to believe. For the province’s sake, if not for his, I hoped he got the transfer and that Badghis would get a Governor who actually cared about the place and it’s hard-working people.

In the meantime I asked him a few tough questions that I had been fed by my boss back in Herat, just to see if he would squirm or give anything away. He was far too smooth for my game and I was soon ready to thank him for his fetid hospitality and move on. He had, at least, confirmed the reports of crop shortages and had sent a message to the Department of Agriculture directing them to prepare some data for me to collect the next day.

Our next courtesy stop was at the office of the Provincial Chief of Police who was quite a different sort of a man. He welcomed us into his office with a stern nod and seemed quite unconcerned about whether or not he was charming me. He did, of course, serve us tea and sweets but as the tea was poured he skipped through the preliminary greetings and got down to business.

He was concerned about reports of increasing activity by anti-government groups in the province. Only the previous week there had been a rocket attack on one of the district police stations in the province.

He was also concerned about renewed reports from the northern part of the province of ‘night-letters’ in which anti-government groups, perhaps even Taleban, warned teachers and students against attending school. There had been many night-letters in the Southern provinces of Afghanistan at this time, but they were a new phenomenon in the north and the police chief wasn’t happy about the development.

In the south the letters had sometimes been followed by school-burnings or the execution of local teachers so he had plenty of reason to be concerned. As soon as our meeting was over I asked one of our young assistants, Rahim, to find and talk to as many people he could find who had come into the capital from the districts. They would be able to tell us more about the night-letters.

Before we ended our meeting, though, I asked him about the two Pashtun detainees I had heard about the night before. I told him that I was concerned that the rumours circulating about maltreatment of these two men appeared to be inciting ethnic tension in the town.

I suggested that it could be helpful if the UN were to visit them and then clear up the rumours definitively. He agreed and assured me that I would be welcome at the prison anytime I wanted to visit the detainees. So once we had said our farewells and sent young Rahim off on his investigations I asked Fazel to accompany me directly to the prison.

The danger of a single story

Two of the finest books I've read in recent years were "Half of a Yellow Sun""Purple Hibiscus" both by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If you haven't read these books yet then I highly recommend them to you.

Adichie is a masterful storyteller who has tackled extremely challenging subject matter in both of these books. 'Half of a Yellow Sun' tells the stories of three very different characters who are swept up in the events of the Nigeria-Biafra war in the 1960s. In 'Purple Hibiscus' when a 15 year old girl is sent to her aunt to be kept safe from a military coup she discovers a word beyond the confines of life with her strict Catholic father.

My own father grew up in Nigeria and I, as a result, grew up on many stories of Nigeria. In this one case I was spared, therefore, what Adichie has termed 'the danger of the single story'.

In this video Adichie talks about both the power and the peril of allowing a single story - no matter how true - to become our only story about a people, a place or an event. It is, I believe, a call to action for storytellers. It is also a compelling reminder to readers to read widely and to be wary of falling for the single story.

I'd like to thank my friend Karen for bringing this video to my attention.

Because everyone is your people

I've just finished reading 'The Translator', a memoir by Daoud Hari. It is one of the most humane and powerful books I've ever read.

Hari writes about his experiences of the genocide in Darfur. His own village is attacked and his family decimated and scattered. He goes on to work as a translator for UN investigators and journalists in an effort to get the truth told about what had been done to his people. He writes with an extraordinary combination of elegant poetry and brutal honesty and his moral insight is as sharp as a knife.

He is asked why he takes the risk of traveling back into Darfur, over and over again, when he is wanted by the Sudanese government and lives with a constant death threat hanging over his head. In response he says that as long as his people were not safe he could not be safe anywhere. The next line spoke to me so clearly I imagined I could hear his voice here in my kitchen with me:

"How can you be safe if your people are not safe? And so who are your people? Perhaps everyone is your people."

That, my friends, is why I write about the Gaza Strip and Afghanistan. That's why I write about climate change affecting farmers in Tanzania and why I've worked for Oxfam, the United Nations and the Palestinian Human Rights Centre. As long as our people are not safe, how can any of us be safe? And is not everyone our people?

Missing the train

Yesterday I missed the train. It's a short story. I was planning to catch the 4:13 train. But there was no 4:13 train. There was a 4:03 train, which I chased fruitlessly along the platform. The next train would be too late to get me into town in time to teach my yoga class.

I spent a moment wondering why, when all the other trains run thirteen minutes after the hour, the 4:03 train had to be different. I spent a moment berating myself for not double-checking the timetable before I left the house. I spent a moment contemplating calling my boyfriend, before I realised that he couldn't get me into town either and although I wanted a little sympathy what I really needed was a plan.

I considered my options. They were few. I have no car, there are no buses from our village and the next train would be too late. It was too far to walk or bike, at least in the time available. I glanced across to the highway on the other side of the railway tracks. I watched the cars whizzing by on their way into the city. I realised there was only one way for me to get to my class on time. I was going to have to do something I hadn't done since I was backpacking around Africa more than ten years ago. I was going to hitchhike.

I felt a moment of hesitation. Would I be safe? Was I about to do something really foolish and end up as a headline in the evening news? Probably not. I decided to take a chance on good fortune and the kindness of strangers. I walked to the end of the train platform and crossed the busy highway. When I got to the other side I turned around to face the oncoming traffic and thrust my arm out, thumb up.

I had been there for about thirty seconds when a car pulled out of the village onto the highway and immediately pulled over in front of me. I walked up to the vehicle and bent down to open the door. The driver was a woman in her forties or fifties. She didn't look up at me but, keeping her eyes on the road, asked "Where are you going?" In the passenger seat was a black curly-haired dog who watched me with anticipation.

"I'm going to the city," I replied, "I just missed the train." "Well, I'm only going as far as Porirua," she responded, "but there are plenty of trains from there."

"Great," I said as I bent to climb in. The dog leapt over into the back seat but as soon as I was settled she jumped back and perched on my lap. She was not a small dog. The woman scolded her affectionately and eventually she conceded the seat to me and retreated to the back.

"I'm Alison" she said.

"I'm Marianne. Thanks again for picking me up. I was a bit stuck there."

All the way to Porirua we talked about composting toilets, wetback wood burners, solar panels, water storage tanks and household sized windmills. We shared an interest in making our homes as self-sufficient and environmentally kind as possible. We talked about the council's efforts in the 1980s to put our village onto sewage systems, rather than the septic tanks we (thankfully) still have. The problem, Alison pointed out, with a town sewage system is that the developers can come in and build high-rise and multi-unit properties. It's harder to do that on a septic tank.

As we pulled into Porirua I was telling Alison about the community yoga class I teach in the village hall and she was telling me that she had been meaning to come along for months. We arrived across the stream from the train station just moments before the 4:03 train did, so I ran across the bridge and through the tunnel under the tracks and made it up onto the platform just in time to leap onto the train before the doors shut again. 

As we rolled away towards the city I smiled because missing the train is one thing, but missing the moment would have been much sadder.

WIP extract: In which Murphy's Law applies and I end up in the deep end...

23 October 2006

I’d been on the job less than a month. I was barely settled into my room at the guesthouse and was still having problems figuring out how to use my handheld VHF radio. But it was Eid, the holiday that follows the end of the month of Ramadan, and my colleagues were all ready for a break. So I was about to be left in charge of the entire Western Region of the United Nations Assistance mission in Afghanistan.

Our office covered four provinces of Afghanistan and was responsible for ‘promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan by leading efforts of the international community’. Sure, no problem. I can do that. Well, I had some doubts. So I double-checked with my boss. Was he really sure that I was ready for this? I should have known that his interest in getting out of the country on a long overdue break might cloud his judgement on the matter, but I decided to trust him when he looked me in the eye (as he rushed out the door) and said “you’ll be fine Marianne. As long as no-one kills Amanullah Khan, you’ll be fine.” Okay, I’ll be fine. Hang on a minute, what was that last bit? He was kidding about Amanullah Khan, right?

Amanullah Khan was one of the two biggest political figures in Western Afghanistan. The number one position belonged to Ismail Khan. Ismail Khan first came to attention when he led a local garrison in Herat into an uprising against the Soviet government in 1979. Although the uprising was defeated, and the overwhelming military response of the Soviet regime led to the deaths of an estimate 24,000 people in Herat province, Khan went on to become a powerful Mujahedeen commander during the Soviet War in Afghanistan. He was also a key member of the Northern Alliance, second perhaps only to Ahmad Shah Massoud in both power and popularity.

Once the Soviets had been ousted Khan became the Governor of Herat Province, successfully defending the province against the Taleban in 1995. But he was no liberal himself. Khan strongly opposed participation by women in higher education and the workforce (both of which had been encouraged by the Soviet regime), was known for his repression of journalists and the press and established his own ‘Islamic police’ that patrolled Herat arresting and beating anyone found to be breaking Islamic laws.

Despite his reputation for repressive policies and brutal policing, Ismail Khan had, and still has, many supporters in Herat. After the fall of the Taleban, despite moves to re-establish national governance of Afghanistan, Khan continued to rule Herat as though it was his personal emirate. He collected taxes and customs duties himself and refused to pay them into the central purse in Kabul. Instead he used them, or at least some of them, to rebuild Herat city. While Kabul waited for the slow trickle down of international aid, Herat’s roads, bridges and schools were being rebuilt.

This independent streak may have been tolerated by Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul were it not for two factors. Firstly there was the problem of revenue, Herat province borders with Iran and so the customs duties collected in Herat constituted a massive proportion of national revenue from import duties. The government couldn’t afford to allow Ismail Khan to continue to hold those funds in Herat province.

Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, Khan continued to foster close relations with Iran. President Karzai’s main backers, the Americans, were not happy about that. So in 2004, under the urging of the USA, Karzai agreed to send Afghan National Army units to Herat to remove Ismail Khan from power. In the clashes with Khan’s men that ensued, Khan’s son was killed. As a conciliatory gesture he was offered an especially lucrative ministerial post, that of Minister for Energy, in Karzai’s cabinet.

Although Ismail Khan no longer held any official positions in the government of Herat province, there was no doubt as to his ongoing political power and influence. The first time I saw him in person I was surprised at his modest stature. His reputation was so gigantic that it was hard to reconcile it with the reality of the small, rotund man with a long white beard who I watched descending from a private plane at Herat airport. But the calibre, and political stripes, of the people who had shown up to welcome him home had tipped me off to the importance and the identity of the man on the tarmac. I couldn’t help staring.

Here before me was a character of legendary proportions in Herat and he looked, quite frankly, so ordinary. But appearances can be very deceiving. Even if I hadn’t seen him at the airport I would have known within an hour that Ismail Khan was in town. Our political staff made a point of reporting to me immediately when he came ‘home’ because, they insisted, whenever he was in town something big was going down.

Amanullah Khan (who was affectionately known in our office as AK) was one of the few people in the Western Region who had the balls and the backing to openly challenge Ismail Khan (aka IK, obviously). He was the leader of the branch of the Noorzai tribe based in the Zirkoh valley to the south of Herat city.

The Zirkoh valley-based Noorzai are only one small part of a much larger clan. Araf Khan Noorzai, Deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament at the time, is one of the well-known members of the tribe. Another is Bashir Noorzai, the war/druglord who was lured from Afghanistan to Manhattan by American intelligence agents in 2005 with promises of a cosy chat about the Taleban. Instead of a cosy chat, he was questioned for days to extract as much information as possible and then, as he went to leave, arrested and slapped in jail on drug charges.

The dirty deals made and broken between US agents and the warlords of Afghanistan could fill a book on their own, but for the purpose of this story it is probably enough to know that the Noorzai are Pashtun (like Karzai himself and the majority of Afghans) whereas Ismail Khan is Tajik, the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. To oversimplify and generalise wildly, in the interest of getting on with the story, you could say that there are closer links between Pashtun leaders and Pakistan, on the one hand, and between Tajik (who are Persian-speaking) leaders and Iran on the other. As the removal of IK from his position of Governor of Herat had shown, the American backers of Karzai’s government had little tolerance for any friendly relations between the powerful elite of Afghanistan and Iran. I had even heard rumours that AK had received clandestine support from the central government to mount a campaign against IK.

Iran, on the other hand, was very keen to make friends in Afghanistan and was happy to spend money to do so. Iran had spent vast amounts of money on reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. Most of these efforts had been focused in Herat province, where Iranian money had paid not only for the construction or repair of madrasas (religious schools) and mosques but also of orphanages, roads and hospitals. In my own office there were tensions evident between Pashtun staff (who tended to be more suspicious of Iran its influence) and Tajik or Hazara staff, many of whom had themselves lived in Iran, often as refugees.

My own assistant, an extraordinarily bright and hard-working young woman, was subjected to open discrimination and harassment from her Afghan colleagues because she was born Iranian. She had acquired her Afghan nationality only after her family fled Iran into Afghanistan to escape political persecution. She was still a child when they arrived in Afghanistan but her colleagues mistrusted her, some even accusing her of being an Iranian spy.

I knew that many Afghans had been treated very badly when they were themselves refugees in Iran, and had often had a lot of trouble getting work. So I could understand why they might have resented the fact that an Iranian refugee in Afghanistan could get a plum job with the UN. I could understand their resentment, but I couldn’t tolerate the viciousness with which these grown men ganged up on a young woman. They attacked her in underhand ways, first alienating her from the few other women in the office by telling those women that she was a spy, then spreading rumours alleging she had a boyfriend or that she was having an affair with a married man. In Afghanistan allegations that a woman had a lover were as damaging to her as allegations that she was a spy. In fact they could even be more damaging, because they are harder to disprove and easier to believe.

The week before my boss was due to go on leave I was still struggling to make sense of my role. For years I had been working in jobs where we identified the big, structural and systemic human rights problems and then addressed them through projects aimed at changing policy and practice at a national or international level.

In New Zealand, for example, I had worked to convince the Department of Corrections to change their rules and practices so that women in prison could breastfeed their babies longer. In Timor-Leste I had helped to develop a consultative, community-centred process for the Government to develop its long-term plan to better protect human rights in Timor. In Kabul I had worked on a project to ensure that, when they made plans about Afghanistan’s future, the Government and international donor governments heard the voices and views of Afghan citizens.  

My experience was in identifying the widespread, systemic human rights issues in a country. I could draft a good project plan and manage a complex, multi-disciplinary, project team to get the project implemented. Suddenly all those planning and research skills seemed to be relatively useless. My new job required quick assessments and reactions to rapidly changing political and security situations and the ability to carefully document individual human rights cases. I had moved to the other end of the spectrum. I was as far away from strategic, long-term, systematic work as it is possible to get. I was on the coalface of responsive fieldwork and it was difficult to stick to a daily to-do list let alone an annual work plan.

This job had thrust me well out of my comfort zone, which is saying something since in the past I had quite happily transitioned from corporate litigation to story-telling at children’s birthday parties. But that was a long time ago and in the intervening years, it seemed, I had learned to prefer structure, planning and control in my work. Since this job allowed for very little of any of those, the transition was proving to be uncomfortable.

Our daily work, which involved responding to individual cases of human rights violations, often seemed futile to me in the face of the gross structural injustices that kept vulnerable Afghan people from getting out from under their poverty and fear. Of course I had known when I took the job that I would be dealing with individual cases, and I believed that it was important work. I believed it was worth doing anything we could for each individual complainant that came to us. But in practice it was proving harder than I expected to maintain a sense of hope and usefulness. It was also turning out to be harder than I expected to feel competent or at all confident that I was doing a good job. Without a project plan to tick off it was easy to get lost in the endless parade of human suffering and never feel any closer to making a difference. 

My boss made his quip about Amanullah Khan at 9.00am on 23 October 2006. It was the Sunday before Eid and he was heading out the door to get on a flight for a much-deserved break with his family. I was hoping, and expecting, that things would be fairly quiet while he was way. Our office was scheduled to be closed for two days for the Eid holiday and all our Afghan staff were ready to go on leave on Monday morning.

By midday on Sunday, Amanullah Khan was dead.

Change the World: Tell your Story

The wise and wonderful Jen Lee said something this morning that shot through my brain like a lightening bolt.

She said "telling stories is the cure for any interpersonal woe."

I also believe this to be true. Which is why I left a job in Afghanistan supporting women and children to hold their government and international donors accountable for protecting their human rights to come home and write a book. It is also why I then gave up my day job with Oxfam, a great job for a good cause, to write full time.

It is also why it made my heart melt when people responded to my recent post on '10 things you probably shouldn't say to a friend who doesn't have children' with snippets of their own story. Even more powerful were some of the emails we exchanged, so thank you so much to those who shared their stories with me. You have given me much. If we hear each other's stories then we might understand both ourselves and others a little more and we might find a little bit more kindness for us all.

Today is the beginning of the first week since I finished my day job when I have no other big commitments. No yoga teacher training, no school tours, no visitors from out of town. This week I have five days to write. I'm very excited and ready to get started. So in honour of my first week as a full-time writer, later today I will post an extract from the work in progress.