​In 2004 I was the lead researcher on a three-year peace education book project in Sri Lanka funded by a Dutch NGO, Cordaid, part of the Caritas Intl. network and implemented by a local Srilankan NGO, Foundation for Co-Existence, headed by the international peace and security analyst Dr Kumar Rupesinghe, (fmr. Head of PRIO, Oslo and International Alert, London). In an exercise in multicultural team relationship management, I worked remote from Brussels with Colombo-based co-researcher, Ecuadorian political science graduate, Maria Jose-Bermeo, Indonesian and Dutch researchers including in-person meetings with Dutch and Sri Lankan NGO colleagues in Den Haag and Colombo.  

 

The first text Nonviolent Coexistence: Moving Communities beyond Suspicion, Violence and Weapons of War was translated into the national languages of Sri Lanka -Sinhala and Tamil. I reached out to diverse contributors of original chapters including the first publication of the private letters of FARC hostage Guillermo Gaviria Correa, the peace interventionist from Colombia's political elite. Among them were the notable Dr Duncan Morrow the then-Chief Executive of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, the late Ali Gohar, an Eastern Mennonite University scholar in Bradford, UK and Pushtun activist for jirga based nonviolent resolution of conflict, and a Californian Jewish activist engaging in peacebuilding in Palestine.  

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The second book of oral histories of peacebuilders examined the contribution of those motivated by their innate desire for peaceful communities in conflict zones, produced to counter the bias in donor circles that big bucks from international NGOs was the motivation to engage in peacebuilding in impoverished crisis communities. I was introduced to the significance of oral history data in understanding and incorporating contradiction, nuance and the unexpected. The Mennonite scholar John Paul Lederach chaired the international review panel and this book included chapters on Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Philippines and India. The multicultural research team swelled with the addition of an Indonesian and a Dutch researcher. I married my German husband days before the Asian tsunami of Dec 2004.

 

The publications were launched in Aug 2007 at a peace conference in Colombo during the hostile breakdown of ceasefire in Sri Lanka. Diplomats, activists, faith leaders, community and governance leaders and politicians as well as diaspora peace activists were in attendance. I began life as a trailing spouse a few months later, early 2008, as my husband's career moved our young family to Firenze, (Florence).