Peace Stories

Stereotyping and Discrimination

I used to have very strong feelings against Thai people, especially red T-shirt people [note: the UDD party].

My heart was torn and feelings of anger overtook me whenever I heard another Cambodian was killed by Thai soldier. I hated them. I wanted to kill them if I saw them on the street. I thought that all Thai are bad people.

But having attended CRT course, particularly the lessons on identity, stereotyping and discrimination, helped to heal me and released me from the bitterness and pain. I am now able to see that not all the Thai are bad people, just a few of those who committed crime only.

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Released From Bitterness

My sister and I have had conflict long time; I had very strong feelings against her every time I see her or hear her name. I thought holding a grudge on her would punish her, I thought I was punishing her.

After a lesson on forgiveness I realized I was punishing my self. I was suffering in side me when I saw or heard her name. I learned that when I start to let go of my grudge on her it helped me to heal. I felt released from the bitterness and strong feelings. When I really forgive her from my heart I experience freedom in my heart.

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Learning to Listen

In my position as a pastor of a church, church members came to me for help about the problem they experience in their lives. I got used the habit of criticizing the one who came to me when they did things that I did not like. I judged the people who I don’t like. For those who under my supervision or lower than my position I quickly tried to fix the problem for them without taking time to listen to them.

After I attended the Part A of Conflict Resolution and Transformation, I realized did not offer good listening qualities for people who bring their problem to me for help. I now listen to people who bring their problem to me with the quality I learned from Peace Bridges like not interrupting, judging, criticizing, trusting that the person who bring his/er problem to me will have the answer.

I listened to a lady who had conflict with her husband and the conflict almost cost their marriage. I listened to her story and strong emotions. It was amazing for me to believe that just a good listening to her bring healing for her. I helped her to solve her problem with her husband using the problem solving questions I learned from the course. They were really effective and I did not have to work too hard in giving all the solution to her. I now trust that the owner of the problem may have the resources or ways to deal with their problem.

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Building Understanding

One of the current situations I am involved in concerns a counselor supervisor and one of her staff (also a counselor) whom she is responsible to manage and provide clinical supervision.

I have had numerous conversations with the supervisor as the issues around the counselor's work have been on-going over at least 2-years. Some of this has involved venting, but also the supervisor has concerns around the quality of the counselor’s work, the impact on children under her care and other colleagues both within and outside the organization.

I have had one meeting with the counselor where she described a couple of situations where she felt that the supervisor’s management and understanding of her situation was lacking. Although the two staff have met together on a few occasions, we had a joint meeting – them and myself, to share understanding around some of the core issues – trust, respect and communications. At this point I have asked them both to do some personal reflection around this and their expectations for themselves. We plan to come together soon and share reflections and see if we can reach some common areas of understanding and how this might look in terms of work-practice.

-Female MAC Participant

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I Will Stay

It is difficult to love my nephew and before the Peace Bridges training, seeing so much as his foot print would make me have negative feelings. I really can say that I hated him because he is rude and arrogant and embarrassing.

I want to talk about the Shalom lessons we had. Right after we had that lesson I became determined to get closer to him and I realized that my desire to just get far away from him would do nothing to help him. I decided then to use him as my moto-dup and try to influence him by loving him. Because he wanted the money he agreed to take me around (though I must say that it was even culturally embarrassing that he would ever take money from his aunt!). He was dismissive and would say things like “if the police arrest me for driving crazy, I’ll just call one of my big friends to get me out”, but I persevered and kept on trying to help to influence him and to love him.

Recently he got a job in Koh Kong but he continued being rude- complaining that he had no girls to flirt with. He made me be ashamed but I maintained my determination to remain calm .... I made the decision like Jesus.... Just so, I was given no indication that my nephew would change. I was raised to think that I should get away from all things that don’t seem good but I will stay with my nephew in hopes that one day he will feel my love and have a change of heart.

-Female NGO worker, C2

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Putting My Foot Down

In a staff meeting there were differing views between myself and one of my staff members. I began to power play, or put my foot down, wanting to end the particular discussion and move on. But I was aware that I was getting very frustrated and impatient while the staff member was getting very upset. Realizing that this wouldn’t be a good/ healthy place to end the discussion, for myself or the staff member, we took extra time to hear and recognize their concerns.

-Female MAC Participant

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More Aware, Less Tempted

My younger sister had stomach surgery but even before that she was always was always losing her temper, finding fault with me, and having a lot of expectation that when I came home from work I would spend a few hours cleaning and washing despite having a pretty intense full-time job. I longed for personal time but I could see that my sister feels that she can’t manage (and shouldn’t have to manage) all the chores at home and I’ve gotten better at accepting that this is part of my responsibility at home. I am now much more aware of others’ feelings than before and less tempted to judge my sister and dismiss her as lazy but rather try to be fair and generous and kind because I love her.

-Female NGO worker, C2

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Surprised that I Was Kind

I want to share a story about what happened with the landlord of our NGO office because it reflects a positive change in me since participating in the course.

When we first rented the building we had an agreement that we would initially pay less because we did not use a middle person (who typically gets a commission from the landlord for helping to rent the property). She must have forgotten this because when she came to collect her money and it was less than she expected, she was very angry and rude. I was full of emotion myself and wanted to yell right back ... - but something stopped me from trying to get back at the angry landlord in this way.

Instead I remained calm and let her vent her frustration and when she was done screaming at me I asked her to please have a seat and went to retrieve the contract and calmly gave it over to her to review. She was embarrassed and apologetic and, I think, surprised that I was kind to her despite the fact that she was not kind to me.

-Female NGO worker, C2

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Recognition

I recently went to my orchard with his wife where there is a man who works for us by picking fruit. At the end of the day my wife wanted to give him some extra money for his help- 10000 riel - but when she attempted to give him the money he refused to take it – he just kept trying to give it back at us and when we were driving away the guy tossed the note into the car and I just kept it.

My wife was very angry at me for not just tossing it out the window and driving off but I could tell he really didn’t want to take money from us that day. I recognized that my wife had a reason to be upset with me because she was trying to be generous and I prevented that plan and so I apologized and rather than getting angry with her for not seeing my side of the story, I accepted that her feelings were right also. I can definitely say that participating in the course has made me a better husband.

-Male church pastor, C2

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What People Need Most

My neighbor has many family problems and feels open to share with me about not having enough food to feed his family, poverty, illness, difficulty with his children who skip school and have other problems related to raising teenagers. Before the PEACE BRIDGES course, I struggled with that and other relationships because I’d always thought I had to come up with a solution whenever anyone sought me out for help. I realize that often what people need most is someone to listen to them (regardless of my own temptation to always give something or fix something. I also observe that listening without judging and criticism has resulted in people being more open and hopeful and in the end, this has brought about more healing.

-Male church pastor, C2

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The School Yard

There has never been a clear boundary between our primary school in my community and one family’s land that borders on it. This case remains unresolved and has already been considered at the village, commune, and district levels.

Sure that their property goes 5 meters into the school yard, the family cleared the land, expanded their pond, and planted a garden. It was only after this was done that the school announced the need for expansion and demanded that the family get off the land that had, until recently been considered part of the school grounds. From the family’s perspective, the school should have made this claim long ago- why wait until now to say it belongs to them and not on the first day they started clearing?

The school’s reaction so far has been to get thumb prints from many families to force the family to give up the land but so far they have been unsuccessful. My wife was one of the teachers in the school and was familiar with what I learned from Peace Bridges, particularly related to conflict resolution and told the school principal I might be able to help. I met with him in order to understand the problem from the school’s perspective to better understand the problem and met with the family to understand their perspective and feelings.

There had never been any negotiation with the family and the government didn’t do any negotiation- officials just sided with the school and what I figured was the best approach- that the school forget about the paperwork and try promoting a “win-win” situation by negotiating instead of fighting and trying to win. I asked him to maybe think about how to compensate or compromise for a solution that makes everyone happy. I think my role is to help them realize that there were more options and help to facilitate a process where they create options that are satisfactory to both the family and the school. The principal has agreed to allow me to try and help to facilitate generating some options.

-Male church pastor, C1

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A Land Dispute

The assistant pastor of my church is also an assistant village chief in his village. He was a part of a training I did with some church leaders in my church related to the way we analyze conflict and helping people in conflict situations.

After the training, he was asked to mediate a land dispute – two individuals in an ongoing heated argument were accusing each other of taking each other’s land. It was quite obvious who the rightful owner was and this was confirmed when the man whom the assistant pastor thought was guilty slipped some money into his pocket the day before the two in conflict were meant to meet with him to mediate the conflict. He came to me and described the situation and I encouraged him for his good analysis and good insight, and asked, “why not go and look at paperwork and do your job to the best of your ability and gather as much information as you can and analyze it."

He went to the meeting the next day confident that he had all the facts in order and could look to solve the problem impartially with no bias, just the facts.

-Male church assistant pastor, C2

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Despite Her Anger

My niece also is quick to anger. Once recently I locked the doors of the church school without remembering that she needed to get in there to do her job- tidying up and preparing for the group coming to use the room later. She got furious because someone had locked the door and was yelling for everyone to hear and when I came back I apologized for locking the door and showed her where the key was kept. This didn’t seem to help in making her any less angry.

The good thing was that I remembered to be respectful even though I wish she hadn’t reacted so strongly and again, I just accepted her despite her anger. People not only have different identities, they also from different perspectives. We can’t assume we have the same understanding towards the same issue. This is always true.

-Male church assistant pastor, C2

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The Root of the Problem

I don’t believe that it was the war that resulted in a lack of peace. I don’t remember that forgiveness was something we cared about before that either. It was the same before in that people don’t want to hear negative stuff and didn’t want to talk about what people did wrong. Khmer people don’t want to think about something that has already past if it is negative. This is how it’s always been I think. The training has helped me to understand that peace is something we need desperately here and that if we understand the root of the problem and acknowledge that all those who in conflict are in some way responsible for it and listen and have the desire to forgive and work on forgiving that we can be free from the weight of our problems.

-Takeo New Life Trainee

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Invisible

I have to struggle to keep myself from being too proud and I’m still working to fight this- I’m not sure it ever goes away- but I realize now, after the course, more about myself and can admit my weaknesses knowing that all people have them. I was the sort of guy who figured out the status of a group in seconds and decided who I liked and didn’t like accordingly. I was arrogant at work and had little time for those in positions not as senior as my own. I realize this and in doing so have gotten to know people and care for them- the same people that were invisible to me before.

-Male NGO worker, C1

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The Mobile Phone

I work with prisoners but I must say that I didn’t like them before I came to this course. The reasons were obvious- they did something wrong, they are poor and not well groomed, they are often not very bright and all this made it easy to judge as not likeable.

This course helped me to realize that everyone is different and has problems and it’s those problems that led these people into making bad decisions. I try to remember this always and it helps me have more love and compassion in my work. I think it has actually happened because a funny thing happened to me recently.

Someone stole my mobile phone and I was certain it could only have been one person. When I confronted him I was shocked when he readily admitted having done it. When I asked him why, he responded, “Because I needed one and didn’t have the money to pay for it and when I thought about who to take it from, I knew it would be best to take it from you because if I got caught I knew I’d be in a lot less trouble with you than with someone who is not so gentle!” He gave me my phone back and I forgave him.

-Male NGO worker, C1

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Greetings

I am a greeter at the services at my church. Before taking the course I was very judgmental and if I would try to greet someone and they didn’t greet me back I quickly decided I didn’t like them. Now I realize that this doesn’t make any sense because I never did anything wrong and that it’s just a matter of them not seeing me or not registering to say hello.

-Female church volunteer, C2

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Don't Want to Hurt Her

I have a good marriage but because of PEACE BRIDGES it is now better. My wife was often frustrated because it didn’t feel to her that I listened when she was speaking. I remember once she took my face in her hands, looked into my eyes, and said, “LISTEN TO ME!!!”

Before I just thought…oh that’s just the way she is…but I realize that she right and that I could show her I’m focused when she’s trying to tell me something. I admitted for the first time that I didn’t listen as much as she needed me to and that this hurt her. Before I hadn’t thought about how my behavior hurt her and knowing that, because I love her and don’t want to hurt her, I’ve changed.

-Male Church assistant pastor, C3

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Sit Together With Me

Two nice people in a small church community had a conflict with one another related to jealousy. Rather than keeping the problem between themselves, both of them shared the story with friends and soon there was a lot of gossip and the conflict got bigger from everyone adding to it.

Finally I asked them to sit together with me and just listen to each other so that they could understand and we could put a stop to this conflict that was affecting many more people than just the two of them. Once they resolved their conflict the rest of the group was able to move on as well.

-Male Church assistant pastor, C3

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Sit Together With Me

Two nice people in a small church community had a conflict with one another related to jealousy. Rather than keeping the problem between themselves, both of them shared the story with friends and soon there was a lot of gossip and the conflict got bigger from everyone adding to it.

Finally I asked them to sit together with me and just listen to each other so that they could understand and we could put a stop to this conflict that was affecting many more people than just the two of them. Once they resolved their conflict the rest of the group was able to move on as well.

-Male Church assistant pastor, C3

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