Some time ago, a person I know relatively little, with whom I found myself sharing a dinner with mutual friends, looked me in the eye and asserted between a bite of steak and a sip of red wine:
“Marghe, what do you do for a living?”
To be honest, the question—seasoned in its original form with an expletive that gave it a more vulgar tone—is presented here in a more neutral form. Therefore, I’ll leave it to the reader to imagine and use whatever word they like to make the question more “colorful.” The point is, for many years, I struggled to find the right words to answer a question that has been asked of me a truly considerable number of times. Today, I feel that sensation of uncomfortable unease is comparable to a minute of holding your breath, or rather, to that handful of seconds that precede a performance, a physical and mental effort: three, two, one, go!
Thinking about it, this question has rarely been gently accompanied by a preamble that gave me a hint of “where we were heading.” Instead, it was thrown, without warning—sometimes carelessly, sometimes with skepticism—like a rock. I assume many expected me to catch it on the fly, with agility and ease. Instead, I often found myself watching it fall in disbelief, or fumbling in clumsy attempts to save it. The ready answer wasn’t there; it never has been, and it isn’t even today, although I can finally admit it with a serene heart.
This, however, does not denote a lack of awareness. To quote Tolkien, “not all those who wander are lost,” and I undeniably wander, but I have a clear destination, or rather, I wandered in search of my destination—my dream—until one day I saw it, and today my wandering persists because it is itself part of the goal. Therefore, I believe that the discomfort back then stemmed from a dual source: trying to articulate a goal that wasn’t yet entirely clear and the thorny issue of having to include words like “peace” or “human rights” in the answer. But why thorny?
“Working in peacebuilding,” “working in the field of human rights,” are phrases that, besides appearing empty if excluded from a broader clarification, risk meaning absolutely nothing to an unknowing listener, or, rather, leading them toward preconceptions and mystifications (partially true) that I have struggled to deconstruct over the years. I assume that “peace” often rhymes with words like “volunteering” or “precarity” in people’s minds. It’s a job, if you can call it that, that is not very profitable, a reality that isn’t sustainable in the long term:
“When will you look for a real job?”
This is the question that, far too many times, has been asked of me with irony or cynicism. It is striking how its counterpart, the market generated by war, is, on the other hand, a business that is not only profitable but also completely normalized in the global landscape. Therefore, it is dramatically more difficult to explain what a job related to “peacebuilding” consists of than it is to explain the business of war.
“Dramatic” is the adjective I feel compelled to use without hesitation. Nothing to be surprised about, some might say, yet we must strive to be surprised by the level of normalization that violence has reached. By our deep internalization of a “culture of war” that we are—dramatically—steeped in. Nevertheless, if culture is nothing more than “a web of meanings that individuals construct,” then the culture of peace, just like the culture of war, can be sown and cultivated. This, like any other job, requires study, apprenticeships, updates, planning, monitoring, experience, passion, and all the boring footnotes of a well-structured job.
So, what do I do for a living?
I WORK in peacebuilding and conflict transformation.
What does that mean? And here, I refer back to what I previously explained: I apologize, but a ready answer doesn’t exist, or at least, I don’t have one. Although I can offer my interlocutor a few generic words, there’s a risk of being incomprehensible. The clarity of the answer depends mostly on the patience of whoever throws the rock at me and their urgency, or lack thereof, to get it back. Over time, I’ve learned to “go placidly amid the noise and haste” and to weigh the rock before throwing it, sometimes fighting with social conventions that demand easy and immediate answers.
Peace, as we know, is not a fixed formula. Every context is different—as are the problems and challenges to be faced—and this means that the existing guidelines, objectives, and strategies must be tailored to the present and past circumstances to be effective and generate a real impact. This translates to: the job, and consequently the answer to the initial question, changes based on the context. Hence the idea for this blog.
Over the years—wandering—art, writing, and a passion for photography have been loyal friends that have accompanied me at every stage. The unexpected result was finding a true archive of photos and writings in my hands, which I shared sporadically and partially with family and a few close friends. However, looking at it as a whole, it’s easy to see that the content of this archive, reorganized and presented here in blog form, doesn’t speak about me—at least not directly—but rather about people, their stories, their suffering, their hopes, and their tireless fight for a more just and humane world:
Culture, Peace, Conflict, and Resistance are, therefore, the keywords, the guidelines of this space.
Peacebuilding is inextricably linked to the victims of conflict, the survivors, old and new generations, and civil society, in its global entirety. Therefore, the content here is also a reflection of both my journey and the work done over the years. This space contains part of the answer, in its most intimate and complex form. Here, I take the time to weigh the rock. In returning it, I hope not only to offer a more tangible and concrete answer to the initial question but also, and above all, to amplify the voices of all those who over the years have helped to shape me and my wandering through their (r)existence. As Marie Colvin said, in documenting war—and in this case, also the different processes of peace and resistance—the real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity, believing that people will care when your story finally reaches them.
Therefore, I hope these stories reach you, in the broadest sense of the term, just as they have reached me—sometimes I looked for them, and other times they found me—and that they can keep alive that faith in humanity that we should never lose. With all its deceptions, injustices, and sorrows, it is still a wonderful world, and it is still worth seeing the good, believing, and fighting for it.
