So what exactly are you doing?

This is one question I am faced with constantly--both by those at home in the states and those here in Belize. For any of you who want an answer, I'm pasting below the text of a presentation I gave this morning for the third form (eleventh grade) class at a local high school. Hope you enjoy it, or, even better, learn from it!

Good morning! My name is Cisco Fernandez, and I am here today to talk to you about conflict resolution and anger management. But before I do, I’d like to introduce myself. As I said, my name is Cisco. I am twenty-five years old, married, and a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Belize working with the George Price Centre for Peace and Development. So, to begin, I need to take a minute to thank you. Peace Corps is a US volunteer organization that sends men and women to countries all over the world, and without the hospitality of you and your fellow Belizeans, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to be here—either here in Belize for two years as a volunteer or here today speaking to you. And one more plug before I begin: I am spending my time here in Belize working with the conflict management program at the George Price Centre. I’m fairly certain that one or two of you attended the PEACE Camp there this summer, which I planned in addition to doing workshops for teachers and events such as this. And now, since you’re probably starting to getting a bit bored by me talking about myself, I’ll move on to why I’m really here: Conflict.

I’ve already mentioned the term more than once, but what is conflict really? First, I’d just like have some input from you. What is the first thing that comes to mind when I mention the word conflict. Unfortunately, I can only call on a few of you, so to make sure you all get a chance to participate, I’m going to ask that everyone please stand up. Stretch out a bit if you need to, I understand you’ll be here most of the day, so I don’t want you to get stiff. Now, sit down if you have ever: been in a fist fight (pause); talked back to a teacher(pause); back-bitten a friend (pause); yelled at a parent (pause); or done something that you knew was wrong. That should take care of about everyone. If you’re still standing, I won’t question your integrity and will rather congratulate you on your morally perfect existence. But seriously, all of those things I just mentioned, that we have all either done or had done to us, are the result of conflict. Conflict involves all of us—whether we start it, finish it, or just suffer through it.

But now, to answer my earlier question, conflict can be defined simply as a disagreement or a controversy. I cannot emphasize enough, though, the importance of the word “simply.” There is very rarely anything simple about conflict. Whether it’s between siblings, rival gangs, or disputing countries, conflict almost always has many layers, many parties with different perspectives, and many obstacles to overcome before it can be resolved. So, with all of that in mind, I’ll give you a little more complex definition of conflict. The background knowledge you’ll need is that when a person writes in Chinese, he or she writes with symbols, not words. Those symbols can have different meanings, depending on how they’re used, and some words are even expressed using a combination of symbols. The Chinese word for conflict is one such word. It has two symbols. One of the symbols is the symbol for danger. When most people think of conflict, they think of the dangers involved—they think of people fighting, arguing, and refusing to work together. The other symbol in the Chinese for conflict, however, is the symbol for opportunity. Rarely do we think about conflict as an opportunity, but it is; and it’s important to remember that it is. For example, whenever you face a conflict, you’re also facing an opportunity to solve a problem. Not only that, but you can also be preventing future conflicts—like I don’t know if there’s rivalry between schools here, but where I’m from, schools would have huge rivalries where one would always try to out-do the other with pranks and chants and so on. Sometimes those rivalries can get out of control, to the point of violence at sporting events. By solving the original conflict, by building understanding and camaraderie between schools, those conflicts could be avoided. Finally, one of the most significant opportunities that come from conflict is the opportunity to build relationships. You really know somebody when you can resolve a conflict with that person, but that’s because in order to truly solve a conflict, you must invest yourselves, work hard together and individually, and at some point let go of feelings that get in the way of your resolution.

Now that is the long definition of conflict: A situation that presents a person or persons with both danger and opportunity. Now that we have that settled, I’d like to answer the next question I just know you’re dying to ask: Why would we want to manage conflict? Or, even better, why would the George Price Centre for Peace and Development spend so much time and energy—not to mention money—on a program solely focused on conflict management? Well, for one thing, conflict is everywhere, like we already said. But even though it’s so prevalent, people are rarely trained in methods to deal with conflict. Despite the fact that experiencing conflict is universal, dealing with conflict requires specific skills that aren’t always natural to normal human behavior. To put it in terms of our definition, people tend to see the danger of conflict instead of the opportunity. Another reason to focus on conflict management is that we don’t want to eliminate conflict or even avoid it. Conflict makes life interesting. Whether watching a TV show, a sporting event, or even the news, you will see that conflict is what compels you to keep watching. I’m sure you’ve seen TV shows that have a guy and a girl that really want to be together, but something always comes up so that when one’s available, the other isn’t. You keep watching, hoping to see how the conflict is resolved! That’s why when a football game is 3-0 at half-time, you see so many fans leave the stadium; it’s not that they stop supporting their team, but rather that the conflict has been resolved in a one-sided victory. Another reason we manage conflict is because it won’t always just go away if we ignore it. It requires conscious effort to find positive means to resolve conflict—even if that effort just leads you back to deciding to ignore it. And finally, conflict can be dangerous. War, violence, and strife all derive themselves from the same origin: conflict.

But what makes conflict so dangerous? Why is it that a simple disagreement can escalate to the point of people dying? There are two basic reasons, I think. The first is that we must distinguish between reacting and responding. I’ll give you an example. If you threw something me, like a paper ball, my reaction would be to try to catch it. I wouldn’t have to think about it, I would just catch it. Likewise, when you go to the doctor, they knock your knee with the little instrument to check what? Your reactions. Reactions are things that we often do before we even know we’ve done them. A response is something different. A response to you throwing something at me would be thinking, “Man, I must really be boring to them,” or asking, “Who threw this at me and why?” or even me throwing the paper back. At the doctor’s office, you could respond that you think the doctor hit you too hard, or that you think the reaction test is ridiculous—I mean, really, they physically hit you! So the difference, then, is that a response requires thought; it is a deliberate action, something you do intentionally. A reaction, on the other hand, is automatic, instinctual. In the face of conflict, it is incredibly important to respond instead of react. By reacting, a person gives in to emotions and lets go of rationality. And what happens when you react to someone? They often will react back. And then you react to their reaction; they react to your reacting to their reaction, and so on. It’s a vicious cycle in which one reaction evokes another, until something or someone breaks.

I’d like to show you an example of this, but I need four volunteers. Thanks. Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to give each of you a balloon and then read a story. Imagine the story is happening to you. If at any point you think you’d get angry or frustrated, blow into the balloon. Easy. Let’s begin.

• It’s Monday morning and you have to get up for school.
• You look at your phone and realize you woke up late this morning and will have to rush.
• You stayed up late trying to finish a science project, which you were going to get up early to finish, but now you don’t have time.
• You realized you are even too late to eat breakfast before you leave.
• You walked outside to find that your little brother took your bike to school because his has a flat tire. You’ll have to walk.
• On your way to school, a car drives by hits a mud-puddle just as it passes you. You’re covered in mud.
• As you walked into school, your teacher saw you and said, “You can’t come to class like that, you’ll have to go home and change!”
• You didn’t have any clean uniform shirts, so you had to wear a T-shirt instead.
• You finally made it back to school and your teacher told you he wouldn’t be able to accept your incomplete project.

Now you have some quite large balloons. Now what happens?

• Yellow – You go back to your seat next to some friends. You respond by whining about everything that’s happened to you today. (Pull ends of balloon mouth to make whining noise)
• Red – When you leave the teacher’s desk, another kid in your class points and laughs because you got a zero. You react by just letting go. (Let go of balloon and watch it fly). You get it all out, but now you’re sitting in the principal’s office next to a kid with a black eye, and you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.
• Blue – You respond by going back to your seat and taking deep breaths while counting to ten. Later you play football and get the last of your stress out. (Release air in balloon in your hand with as little noise as possible).
• Purple – You react by not doing anything. (Hold balloon still inflated). What do you think will happen is something else frustrating comes along? What if your teacher calls your parents because of your missed assignment? What if your brother wrecked your bike and now you have to pay to repair it?
Let’s everyone thank the volunteers. So how do you respond appropriately to a situation like that? I’ll give you more tips later, but one easy way is to just take one deep breath. Try it with me; we’ll breathe in for three seconds and out for five. How did that feel? From where I’m standing, that’s an interesting exercise to watch. I saw all your shoulders rise to take the breath and fall as you let it go. Did you feel your fingers tingle a little? Do you feel more relaxed? How much different is your body language now than if you had reacted? Deep breathing is so beneficial because in addition to clearing your mind, it physically relaxes your body.

The first danger, then, is of reacting instead of responding. The other danger in conflict is emotion. In talking about reaction vs. response, I’ve already mentioned it some, but the role emotions play in conflict is huge. Of all the emotions, though, the one that really takes the opportunity out of conflict is anger, and there are a few reasons for that. First, anger affects you physically as well as mentally—everything tenses, your breathing becomes shallow, sometimes you even start to shake, basically it does the opposite of what deep breathing does. Now, in addition to whatever conflict you’re facing, your body must also deal with the added stress that being angry puts on it. A second reason anger is so detrimental in conflict is that it clouds your judgment. It has nearly the same effect, in this respect, as drugs or alcohol. Plus, we just talked about the danger of reacting. Well, anger pushes all the work you do to respond out the window. Even worse, you’re reacting with your body pumping adrenaline, your body is already engaged by the anger, and now your body will want to participate in whatever your reaction is. The final reason, and I think the most important reason, anger worsens conflict is that anger is almost always a secondary emotion. I bet that needs a little explanation, but it just so happens I’m prepared to explain.

Who knows anything about icebergs—raise your hands? Where is the biggest part of an iceberg? Right, the biggest part of an iceberg is under water. Anger is like an iceberg. When you see anger, all you’re seeing is the part sticking out of the water. So what’s underneath? Underneath you have all the other emotions that lead you to anger. You could feel hurt, betrayed, or backstabbed. You could feel stressed, depressed, and alone. You could even feel scared, disappointed, or frustrated. More often than not, you end up angry as a result of feeling these types of feelings. Have you ever been mad at a friend but unable to remember why? That’s probably because you felt some emotion that made you angry, and then the anger lingered long after the event that caused the emotion. When we allow anger to take over without acknowledging our underlying emotions, we enter into a very dangerous situation where our anger begins to take on life of its own, because once angry, we won’t really care who we release our anger towards.

I’d like everyone to take a few moments to do a quick exercise with me. It’s a writing assignment, but it’s easy, I promise. First, take a couple minutes and think about the last time you can remember being angry. Write it down in one sentence. Next, because anger often evolves from another emotion, write one sentence saying what other emotion you felt. Now write a third sentence explaining why you felt that way. And finally, to end our writing assignment, write one way you could have expressed that emotion without getting angry. Once you’re done, I’d like to have you share what you wrote with the person sitting next to you.

People say that hindsight is 20/20—or perfect, in case no one has ever explained that expression—and that’s why this exercise is so useful. When I look back at the times I’ve been most angry in my life, most of them seem silly and senseless. Not only that, but it’s also pretty apparent that there was a better way for me to handle my emotions. All this is to lead me to giving you a few techniques to try to diffuse and harness your anger. The first, most important, and easiest we’ve already talked about. I cannot overemphasize the importance of deep breathing. Physically, psychologically, it undoes all the negative things anger does to you. Next, keep a journal. You can use the form of your little writing assignment to get started. The more you know about your anger and the emotions that lead up to it, the better prepared you’ll be to handle it when it’s happening. We have a little saying we use in handling feelings and anger that has five easy steps:
1. Name—put a name to the emotion(s) you’re felt or are feeling. This part is incredibly important, and I need to add a little to it. Most people use a very limited emotional vocabulary—happy, sad, mad; the ones you learn in grade-school. Well, I’d like to make a grade-school analogy. Some kids come to school with an eight-count box of crayons. You can draw a decent picture with eight different color crayons, right? Well, some kid always comes in with an enormous box of like 500 crayons. That kid is Picasso. Anything he does will almost always be more intricate and more expressive simply because he has more crayons at his disposal. That’s how emotions are. The smaller our emotional vocabulary, the less able we are to name our emotions. So start trying to name your emotions and collect more crayons!
2. Claim—take ownership of that feeling. There’s nothing wrong with feeling your emotions; it’s how you handle them that can be right or wrong. Many people often say that someone made them angry. I hate that expression. Your emotions belong to you, and you are solely responsible for them. You can’t feel a wrong emotion, you can only have a wrong reaction.
3. Tame—decide what you need to do to make sure your emotions don’t get the best of you. One emotion high school students are all feeling for the first time is love. Love is a wonderful feeling, but you have to control it. If not, it changes from being love and becomes obsession. There’s nothing sweet or romantic about being the object of obsession. Anger and other emotions are similar; you have to tame your emotions before they take control of you.
4. Reframe—look at the situation from a different perspective. So if you are disappointed and frustrated because you didn’t make the football team, reframe that situation by saying, “Now I have a chance to try out for the band!”
5. Aim—point your emotions towards something constructive. Those same emotions you feel after not making the team can be aimed at trying to get good enough to make it next year, or even be aimed at practicing to make the band.
Those easy steps can make a world of difference in how conflict affects you. For one thing, taking those steps is a response instead of a reaction. Also, it pushes you to find the root cause of your anger, instead of dwelling on it. And taking these steps encourages you to find positive ways to use your emotions.

Other things you can do to reduce or defuse anger are to play sports—again, this gives you a physical outlet for your body’s anger. You can do mental calming exercises. Imagine yourself in a relaxing, calm place. And if you like to draw, to write, to do arts and crafts, to sing, to dance, even to do carpentry or fix cars, any of these things can help you overcome your anger.

This stuff is simple, but don’t think it’s easy. The last bit I’d like to share with you is about a guy I went to high school with. His name was Delvin, and Delvin was a year older than me. He was a constantly joking, and everyone loved to be around him. He grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in town, but he was as comfortable with the kids that grew up on his street as the ones from the other side of the proverbial track. He was a star athlete too. He played for our American football team and won a few awards for his individual performances. He ran track as well. Apparently he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds. That’s fast. I remember my junior year he competed in the district track event. There were about seven schools in our district that had about 700 students in each, so that competition was the best of around 5,000 high school students. That day he ran the 100 and won. Then he ran in the 200 yard race and won. Then he ran the 400 and 800 relays with the relay team, and they won those as well. As a direct result of his individual performances, our school track team won the overall district title. It was like he couldn’t lose. The next day, I woke up and saw Delvin’s picture on the front page of our town newspaper, running as fast as he could. The headline was something like “Martinsville take district crown”. I was so proud—of Delvin and of my school. But as I opened the paper, I noticed that wasn’t the only picture of Delvin in the paper that day. It wasn’t even his only picture on the front page. At the bottom of the page was Delvin’s graduation picture. The headline above it read “MHS athlete slain”. After the track meet, Delvin ran into some members of another school’s football team. They had gotten into a fight on the field during football season. They still held a grudge, and another thing about Delvin is he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t back down. The coaches of the track team had to separate them, but the guys from the other school followed the bus taking Delvin and the team back to the school. Again, the coaches came to the rescue by calling the police. They met the bus at our school, and the car following turned around. But later that night, the car came back. I can imagine Delvin walking around his neighborhood with five gold medals around his neck, showing off, and hanging out with friends. As he went home, the car probably pulled up beside him, and someone rolled down a window. Delvin again wouldn’t back down. Whatever they said to him, he probably reacted, saying something like, “Come on! If you wanna fight, let’s fight!” But they didn’t fight. One bullet in the chest was all it took, and 19-year-old Delvin died at the scene.

I don’t tell you this story to scare you. All it takes is watching the news to know that things like this happen every day—even in Belize. That’s of why I told it. Violence that occurred as a result of a senseless conflict affected my life, the life of my school, and the life of my community. Delvin might not have started the fight, he might not have gotten in a car and gone after anybody, but his anger, his reactions, and his refusal to back down were as much a cause of his death as anything those other boys did. So please, take control of your anger; claim your emotions; and protect yourselves, your school, and your community. I hope and pray that you do. Thank you.

That's it this time. Leave a comment, send an e-mail, and I'll talk to you soon.

Peace,

Cisco

Pictures

This is a rather large tree that fell and blocked the entire road. Amazingly it was cleaned up with one of the two chainsaws in our area by the end of the day.

This is one of the stores on the main road, it is a printing and office supplies store. They lost their signs and parts of their zinc roofing.

These are the banana trees directly behind our house, many fell and the rest were so damaged they all needed to be chopped down. There is a lot less shade back their now. As you can see we also couldn't get out the back door because they were blocking it. The tarps on the right were the roof to a little storage shed for John that doesn't really exist anymore.

This is the top half of a rather tall Chinese Pear tree that snapped in half and missed our house by inches. Or bounced off our house but didn't do much damage, there's no way of knowing. This is after some of it was already cleaned up.

This is supposed to be a road but now it just looks like more jungle.

This is our neighbor's house straight across the road. A big tree fell on the left of their house and covered half of the roof. The roof had minimal damage but it did break a window when it fell and rain came in on the family, they said the were pretty scared.

This is our other neighbor's pig. His whole pen was broken but he stayed put and seemed unphased by the whole thing. There were several big trees growing straight up out of his pen but they all fell, and amazingly none of them landed on the pig.

This is our neighbor's house  a little way down the road. This is why most of the houses is Belize are made of concrete.

This is a tree in the park next to our house. This is a picture of its roots completely pulled out of the ground, my guess is this tree was 30-40 ft. tall. Pretty unbelievable it fell in a park nowhere near any houses! This tree is still being cleaned up a little at a time.

This is before the hurricane and a much more enjoyable event. We went on a vacation and traveled from Belmopan, to Dangriga, to Hopkins, to Independence, to Placencia and back home from Friday to Sunday.

Each of these towns are beach towns so we got to enjoy the nicest beaches in Belize, visit lots of PCV's, soak up the rays, and explore new places.

Stray dog having some fun with a coconut.

I love the colors in this country this is a billboard I really liked and below is an exceptionally colorful restaurant.

Aren't we cute?

Yes that is a very large mango margarita, I didn't realize until after I ordered it that is was $14.75, wowza but I truly got my money's worth I don't think I was walking quite straight for a few hours after that.

On the water taxi from Placencia to Independence on our return journey.

Fun fact we only had to pay for half the public transportation for this trip because we got a ride to Dangriga for a conference Cisco was speaking at, then we hitchhiked half the journey. Seeing new parts of Belize at dusk in the back of a pickup truck for free is really the best way to travel. Also, our accomodations included a night at Allyson and Clifton's house, and a night at KC Mcauliff's house, all fellow PCV's. Networking throughout an entire country makes travelling much cheaper and more enjoyable.