By Shirin

Durban: From grade 6, I went to school in a school bus and came back home in it too. Going in a school bus was more exciting than school in many ways because we got to talk!

In school, we were not allowed to talk much and every time we broke that rule, the teacher told us that the class sounded like a fish market. We had to “stop talking” in order to establish “pin-drop silence.” In the bus however, we could talk as much as we liked. We talked about everything under the sun, from the upcoming family vacations to the classes we didn’t like to which flowers we liked best to which heroines looked the prettiest to which siblings or cousins annoyed us and basically everything that we wanted to talk about.

It was 45 minutes of absolute bliss. I was one of the first people to get on the bus in the journey to school and almost the last one to get out on the way back. So, I got more time to talk compared to others.

As I had more time or perhaps because my parents were in the habit of discussing strange things like history and anthropology, my contribution to our bus conversations often pulled them far away from where they started.

One day, we were discussing how a girl was reprimanded for swinging from the bus rails (which was not allowed). A girl from the 12th grade said that although it was so much fun, it was hard to understand why we did it because “it served no purpose.” That got me thinking of a recent conversation at home about evolution. I said, “of course it serves a purpose.” Now I had to explain myself. I was about 11, so instead of using the more sophisticated terms like “evolution” and “apes,” I explained things in more general terms. I said something like, “if we look at it from the point of view of monkeys, using branches to go from one place to another makes perfect sense.” The 12th grader looked puzzled so I said, “After all, your ancestors were monkeys.”

What followed was totally unexpected. The 12th grader slapped me really hard across my face. I was stunned. People around me were also in shock. We hardly ever had any physical violence in our school or bus. As everyone stared in disbelief and I stood there frozen, the girl said, “My ancestors were not monkeys. Don’t you have manners?” The word she used for manners is tameez which can be described as the correct way to behave. The bus had arrived at her stop and she got off.

I have always thought about that incident. I have wondered what caused this girl to hit me. She was obviously very angry. Did the word “monkeys” for her ancestors made her feel so insulted that she couldn’t help hitting me? Is it right to hit someone because we feel insulted? Did I really insult her or was my statement a general observation? I certainly thought it was the latter. Did she think differently? I also thought about the age difference.

The girl who hit me was in 12th grade and I was in grade 6. No one reprimanded this girl. There was no concept of bus monitors in my school but even then, wouldn’t it have been natural for people to question her action as to why she had hit another student? I don’t remember anyone except my friends coming to talk to me afterwards. I also did not complain to the school or tell my parents. I felt embarrassed to talk about it even though I was the one who had been hit. I even tried to think of it as a funny incident.

In more recent years as my understanding of peace education has grown, I have wondered why after the incident, no one sat us down – this girl and me – and attempted to unravel the situation. Why did no one work on healing us – both of us because even though I was hit, she too needed to heal from whatever had made her hit me.

A first step would have been to make sure that the 12th grader understood that she could not hit others and be asked to apologize to me. The next step would have been to make sure I understood that I did not deserve to be hit. Then, it would be important to talk about communication, insult and conflict resolution.

When homes and schools do not help us understand and deal with conflict in a proper manner, we create long-term problems. Peace education is needed, right from the beginning. It makes peace a practical reality and not some farfetched ideal that only exists in books.

I am sharing my school bus story with you on Holi. This festival of colors has historically been used as an occasion to mend relations with “enemies.” Holi gives us the chance to act on the possibility of improving relations. Conflict does not have to end in enmity. Sometimes, there may not be a conflict at all! It may just be an illusion that appears accidentally like a misunderstanding or is created by someone else. Equally important is how we react to it. There are options. Hitting should not be one of them. Peace education can help us understand these options.

We hope that you will continue to support our peace education efforts.

Happy Holi. May you always find the way of dialogue, understanding and harmony.

Peace is possible. Peace Needs All of Us.

(Shirin, who is in her 30s, is co-director of peaceVigil.net. She and her husband are peace activists and teachers, based in Durban, South Africa. They have worked for many human rights groups)