The Way to Peace

The way to peace is somewhat long and winding.

Sometimes it may be a smooth path. And sometimes not.

Sometimes the path is straight forward and loses its complexity. But it's a lonely journey if traveled alone.


Each morning we travel this route together. We're fathers. We're mothers. We're daughters and sons. We're sisters. We're brothers. We're lovers and friends. We're lawyers and instructors and new graduates. We're Christians, Muslims, Agnostics, Buddhists. We're experienced and young.

Together we learn, share, laugh, discuss and analyze conflict situations and how to deal with them effectively.



Then we take a morning break and dance to a song. :)

Tope Ciudad Colon

I live in a town called Ciudad Colón which is about 7km away from the campus. It has a population of around 21,666.

I feel Colón is a town of youngens. Either that or these people have found the miracle potion to reverse aging! And they party hard! I've been here slightly over one week and the amount of beer i have witnessed being consumed would put Oktoberfest to shame. Okay, i exaggerate but they still know how to have a good time.

The second and third week of august in this town is when the Fiesta Ciudad Colon takes place where there's a street fair with music, dancing and lots of traditional food and noise. Also in August is Tope, a traditional horse parade where hundreds of riders come out and show their horses and skills. "The tradition began in colonial times as a horse race to commence the Fiestas de San Juan, a horse-racing and bullfighting event. It was customary for everyone to come out to see who the best jockeys and the fastest horses were."

UPEACEing

The University for Peace or 'UPEACE' as students, staff and faculty like to refer to it, is a United Nations affiliated university that was established by the UN General Assembly in 1980. The school's missions is "to provide humanity with an international institution of higher education for peace and with the aim of promoting among all human beings the spirit of understanding, tolerance and peaceful coexistence, to stimulate cooperation among peoples and to help lessen obstacles and threats to world peace and progress, in keeping with the noble aspirations proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations".

The university offers ten masters programmes in peace and conflict studies and every year around 150 students travel to Costa Rica from all corners of the world to share, create, develop and implement their vision for peace with like minds.

I am blown away by the diversity in such a small group of people. My cohort is composed of wonderful men and women from 52 different countries. Myanmar, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgzstan, Trinidad & Tobago, France, Scotland, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Canada, USA, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Japan, South Korea, Belarus, Cyprus, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Cameroon, Nigeria, Sudan, Thailand, Iceland, Hungary, Somalia...I could go on but it will take up half my post!

Let's just say that we are quite the multicultural and professionaly and experientially diverse group with a lot to learn from one another!

Campus ground.

Winding down with fellow UPEACErs after a long first day of orientation.

Mi Madre en Costa Rica

We laugh. We hug. She kisses me and i kiss back. She feeds me three times a day. She reminds me when i forget stuff. We share so many stories. She don't speak a word of English and i am just learning Spanish.


Our communication bridge:

Seconds pass. Pages flip. Finger scrolls down one page to find a word and another and another until together they form a message.

Sometimes, even the dictionary and phrasebook is not necessary. We're on the same wavelength so we know what each of us is saying to one another. The power of genuine interest is amazing - it forms a bridge to bring two different worlds together!

Meet my Costa Rican mother, Martha Calvo.

Behind the Name

Someone very dear to me once told me that i was complicated. Of course, i was devastated at being labeled that way by this particular person as what he thought of me meant a lot to me so much that i sought to appear the opposite in his eyes thereafter.

Needless to say the path to "simple" was short lived as an attempt to shift the self from one dimension of consciousness to another for someone's sake felt inauthentic. Besides, i grappled with the concept of what a person who was not "complicated" should be like.

What felt true to me later however was to weed out the negatives from the word and to acknowledge, embrace and honor the intricate in me. Et voila, ComplexlyBilu!

The picture above feels like a reflection of me, my life and the people in it - rich, diverse, intricate, multilayered and COMPLEX!

I am grateful to the beautiful soul who by telling me what he thought, helped me unravel what could be and unwrap the gift of self acceptance. What follows is a series of short and long posts that capture moments, spaces, times and places as i see them.

Until later...