by Peter Bauman ’97
One afternoon during my sophomore year, I passed a friend in the Cistern Yard. She was sitting in the grass filling out an application. When I inquired, she said that she was looking for a unique experience and was planning to study abroad in Finland her junior year. My parents always encouraged me to study overseas, but I guess I needed the stimulus to come from someone else.
Following our conversation, I walked over to the study-abroad office and began filling out an application. Months later I received notice that I would be spending my junior year in The Netherlands. That year abroad would have a tremendous impact on my life. In fact, it was there that I decided that I would return to Charleston, complete my degree in psychology and then work my way around the world before figuring out a set career path. I had no idea that almost 15 years later I would be working as a conflict and development consultant in conflict zones throughout the world.
After graduating, I lived out my dream … bartending in London, living in a château in France, backpacking through Europe, Morocco and southeast Asia, and teaching English in Taiwan. After two years, my mind began to drift toward the future, and the stress of choosing a career was taking its toll. I decided to return to the States. After getting over some serious culture shock, I worked as a live-in counselor at a psychiatric hospital in Atlanta. I wanted to explore the possibility of becoming a psychologist. After a year, I felt that the hospital was a mere holding cell and the major challenges were inherent in the system, not the individual. I also disliked the institutional setting and, therefore, became interested in wilderness-based experiential education.
I missed living overseas, so I got a job working as a counselor for experiential education programs in Israel. This also gave me an opportunity to explore my own identity and take side trips to Egypt and Turkey. Three months later, the Second Intifada erupted. I was fairly naive about the historical conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis, but this experience was a major wake-up call, forcing me to do some soul searching: What did I believe? Who did I support? What could I do?
I decided to combine my skills and interests and create a wilderness-adventure program for Palestinian and Israeli youth. I moved back to the United States and began training to be an Outward Bound instructor to gain the necessary technical skills to start the program.
In 2004, this dream became a reality and the first-ever Palestinian/Israeli Outward Bound Unity Project was established. The program made an enormous impression on the individual participants, but, once again, I realized that the problems were inherent in the system, and without changing the structural inequities, individual transformation would have limited agency. At this time I was attending the master’s program in intercommunal coexistence and conflict at Brandeis University to gain a greater theoretical understanding of identity-based conflict. Just like my previous adventures, my next inspiration was about to unfold.
While scuba diving in Costa Rica, an earthquake off the coast of Indonesia triggered a tsunami that wreaked havoc from southeast Asia all the way to West Africa. Once again, I searched for ways to make a meaningful contribution. For my M.A. field project, I led a team to explore the impact of the tsunami and tsunami interventions on the conflicts in Sri Lanka and Indonesia/Aceh. I wanted to see if natural disaster would bring people together and create space for peace or if it would politicize and exacerbate preexisting tensions.
I was astonished by the level of devastation, but even more surprised by the carelessness of the international response. For example, in Sri Lanka, when the tsunami struck, the Tamil Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka were engaged in a failing ceasefire. Both sides still felt that they could defeat the other through military power. Unfortunately, the donor funding was restricted for only the tsunami-affected population. This sounds good in theory; however, it left out the thousands of war-affected internally displaced persons who had been languishing in camps for decades. Unfortunately, this disparity was split along the same ethnic lines as the conflict (Tamil vs. Singhalese), making it easy for both sides to quickly politicize the aid and mobilize their constituencies for war. This was my immersion into the aid industry.
After I completed my master’s degree, my goal was to gain as much experience as possible working in conflict environments. By default I became a consultant. My first contract was with Religions for Peace, an organization based in New York City. My job was to help develop interreligious councils for senior religious leaders from Sudan, Iraq and Palestine/Israel.
The objective was to convene senior religious leaders in Kyoto, Japan, for “secret” problem-solving dialogues. The work was extremely interesting and the exposure and access I had were remarkable, but I also realized the limitations of senior political and religious figures. They would say one thing in private and the exact opposite in public. They were caught between their individual values and beliefs and their constituencies. I learned that hardliners represent only a small percentage of the population, yet they wield enormous power. Because of this, political and religious figures have very little room for negotiation.
While in Japan I received an e-mail from an organization based in Cambridge, Mass. It wanted me to conduct a case study looking at how organizations were implementing programs in the midst of war. Despite the best intentions, interventions of aid often have unintended consequences that can undermine local capacities and exacerbate tensions. Thus, my task was to assess how organizations were designing and implementing
aid programs in conflict areas without causing more harm than good.
I had always wanted to go trekking in the Himalayas, so I suggested Nepal. The organization agreed and I was off to Kathmandu. After completing this study, I was contracted by multiple international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) to assess their peace-building and development programs and advise their teams on ways to increase their positive impact. During this time the United Nations was facilitating a peace process between the Maoists and the government of Nepal. There were strikes and power outages, but I never felt unsafe even when working in some of the most remote villages that were Maoist strongholds. I loved Nepal, especially the opportunity to go hiking in some of most breathtaking mountains in the world.
After a year and a half, I was ready for a more challenging environment. I wanted to go to Africa.
Serendipitously, a D.C.–based INGO contacted me to go to Southern Sudan to advise its team on the development of a major peace-building program being funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the development wing of the U.S. government. Arriving in Southern Sudan is like landing on a different planet. It’s hot, dry, dusty and poor. There are few paved roads and very little infrastructure. The people are hardened by decades of war, causing their genuine smiles to hide behind a faÂçade of hardship and trauma.
In Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, nearly every international organization can be found hosting hundreds of expats engaged in every kind of business one can imagine – diplomats, Doctors Without Borders, deminers, military contractors, environmentalists, oil company executives, missionaries and multilateral donors working for groups such as the World Bank and the United Nations. Everyone lives on a guarded compound and drives around in big white Toyota Land Cruisers. I often compare my experience in Sudan to summer camp for adults – only in a warzone with guns.
After three months, USAID decided to end the funding for this project, and I was hired to work with the U.S. government and the Southern Sudan Land Commission to lead a team of experts to develop Southern Sudan’s first land policy. After decades of war, Sudan’s government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army signed a comprehensive peace agreement. In this agreement, the South was given a chance to create its own government and, in 2012, vote in a referendum to become a separate country. Thus, the South would have to create a government from scratch.
This was an eye-opening experience in foreign policy and the politics of aid. For a country endowed with oil, every individual and every country have an interest that too often trumps the humanitarian imperative and what is best for the people. Land in Africa and much of the world is at the heart of conflict, especially identity-based war. Thus, I often found myself in the middle of this quagmire.
Many people ask if I ever felt unsafe and get excited to hear wild stories. At times I did, but mostly because of the tremendous insecurity and lack of the rule of law. A place like Southern Sudan is unpredictable. If something goes wrong, it can escalate quickly. However, dealing with the emotional and mental stress was much more difficult than any physical concerns. Watching naked children rummage through piles of garbage for their daily bread while billions of dollars in international aid is poured into oil-rich areas can make one weary.
After a year, my contract came to an end. It was time to move on. My team was able to make some progress on the land policy, but because land is so controversial, it will likely take years to formalize. In much of the developing world, particularly in Africa, the people have followed customary law for centuries. Mentally transitioning to statutory law and developing the structures to enforce it will take a long time.
While in East Africa, I was able to take many trips and go trekking in some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world. I visited the genocide memorial in Rwanda and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Kenya, the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda and the Simian range in Ethiopia. I was able to visit the mountain gorillas on the border between Rwanda and Uganda and experience the vastness of the Serengeti. People often ask me what Africa is like. In the West, we tend to clump it all together. But, its human and geographic diversity is vast. However, when I do think about Africa, I think of big skies and a very visceral sense of being. Africa is raw.
Since my projects in Sudan, I have been working on and off in Liberia, training the government’s peace-building office, and, most recently, I completed a contract with AusAid, the development wing of the Australian government. I was asked to train a team of civilians who will be working alongside the Australian Defense Forces in Afghanistan in a concept called “Conflict Sensitivity.” Their goal is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people so that they do not join or support the Taliban. I’m skeptical, to say the least, but wish them a safe and successful journey.
As I write this, I’m driving from Uluru to Alice Springs, the Aborigines’ homeland in Australia. The scenery is stunning, but I find myself overwhelmed with sadness. Perhaps one of the most successful and sustainable cultures has been destroyed. No apologies or concessions will bring it back. Now, they and their land have become tourist attractions.
As I head to the Great Barrier Reef to do some diving, I find myself at a crossroads. At 34, I have lived and worked all over the world. I feel like I have lived many lives, witnessing both the sublime and the tragic. Oftentimes, I find beauty sitting next to the darkness: the hospitality and simplicity found in rural poverty, the people with the least often giving the most, the courage and sense of purpose found in the tragedy of war.
Most of my dreams have come true, and I feel like I have just completed a major chapter in my life. When I think back to my time in Charleston, I always smile. As much as I have experienced since college, those years – still – are possibly the best years of my life.
