War and Peace and the Fragility of Human Existence
Since December 2022, I have returned to one of the places that feels most like home for me: Graz, in Austria. This was possible because I started work for Caritas Styria, as project officer for their projects in South Sudan.
With this not only came a welcome return to Austria, a move to a beautiful house-share on the edge of town up a hill in tranquil nature, a new opportunity in a well-established, reputable non-governmental organisation that has at its core human-kindness and compassion in action and allows me to relax into (for me) unknown structure, holding and security that frees inner resources for my processwork diploma studies. It also was the beginning of a deep-dive into humanitarian aid, work within the humanitarian-development-nexus and the realities of a young country moving towards recovery from civil war – with its enmeshment of war lords, cleptocratic rulers, dependency on foreign aid, high levels of food insecurity, low levels of literacy and schooling, generations that have only known war and violence, as well as all the shadows and facets of complex trauma that decades of violent conflict leave in the hearts and minds of people.
It has me, as so often, pondering life and death, war and peace - and the fragility of human existence.
When I recently returned from Northern Uganda, from Palabek Refugee Settlement, Gulu and other places, from encounters with locals but also with refugees from South Sudan and the DRC, people asked me “how was it?”. What to say? I was reminded of the same questions and the same wordlessness after the Bearing Witness retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau. How to respond? How to put into words, how to make understandable, tangible, relatable such profound, painful, deep, wordless/beyond-words experiences? How to give voice to the billions of processes running in me at the same time?
How do I try to explain my difficulty to readjust to being back in central Europe, in such a safe, sheltered, comfortable, wealthy and privileged place and my outrage at the criminal wealth and complacency, my inner social justice activist raging and on fire? Everytime I return to central Europe, I fall into a hole. There’s something about it that makes it so unbearable, even though I am so much part of it. And I wonder, why is it so hard for me to be here, even though I hold all the privileges and possibilities needed to thrive here? Every time I return, my patience for (white) people is close to zero, my judgement, cynicism and dislike soaring.
How can I explain my inner conflict of finding myself in a humanitarian role going to East Africa, when I so fundamentally disagree with this whole system? I reject it all even though I also carry it all inside me. How can I explain my inner split, when I don’t want “aid”, I don’t want “charity”, I don’t want “development work”, but I want real global solidarity, I want justice and a due redistribution of wealth, power and resources (or even compensation), I want ethical trade and conscious partnerships, learning from one another, and co-creation - and maybe that’s not even the solution either.
I want a revolution. I want a collapse of this system and yet I also know that I have no idea what this even means, I have no understanding of the pains of this, because I have not lost friends or loved ones to the hopes and promises of revolutions that - in the end - just failed.
I want this old system to die, finally, even though I am so much part of it and it of me.
Positionality and the complexity of power asymmetries. Constantly checking myself for snippets of white saviorism and exoticism, trying to spot even the faintest sign of it, trying to catch and unearth any blind spots I might hold.
How to use my power and privilege and skills and abilities to burn this system down, or change it, or build a different one? Where are the tables on which decisions are being made - and would I want to be on them if I could, knowing they are way deep in the old system?
Where are the tables? And how would I get there? Which ones would I need to be on, to bring a pinch of justice into this? Not coming from saviour syndrome, but from a deep love for humanity and all life - especially all that are being marginalised, neglected, violated by the current status quo.
And at the same time, around me in my closest circles, many people are currently facing either their own mortality or the (looming) death of (way too young) loved ones. Be it because of cancer, illness - or, in my case, travelling to dangerous places. So as I prepare for the trip to South Sudan next month, I am also deeply looking within to befriend death and make peace with the possibility of anything happening.
Especially since I have no real knowledge of what (violent) conflict or war means because I have grown up in the privilege of only knowing peace (or often fake peace and fake harmony). I do not know what it means to be in conflict, corruption, polarisation, war - to live in it, and survive time and time again. And yet, I seem to be called to some of the most dangerous, forgotten, unloved places to learn about it. To learn about war and peace, human psychology and trauma and where to begin to end the cycles of violence.
