Stories
National culture of peace programmes
Missions for the culture of peace
The failure of the culture of peace programme
Brothers for Peace
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Then there's the story about the crabs.
I encountered a great deal of sabotage in the UNESCO bureaucracy. Many people were jealous of others and would do all they could to keep them from succeeding in their work. For example, they would deliberately throw away faxes or mail that arrived.
When I was in Mozambique, I found out that the same thing was happening in the Mozambique office of UNESCO. My friend was a very talented black Mozambican who was dedicated to peace and reconciliation and who seemed to know everybody in the country. But he had the misfortune to serve under a white Portuguese director (the Portuguese had been the colonial power before their revolution). The Portuguese man, being jealous, would not allow the black man to use a computer, to travel to meetings where he had been invited, or to contact headquarters without his permission. After a particularly important initiative in which my friend reconciled the two factions of the country's parliament, his Portuguese boss refused to allow him to send a report to headquarters so it had to be smuggled out instead.
But my friend told me the "crabs" story, so I could see it with a sense of humor.
As the story goes, some tourists met a crab fisherman in Mozambique and after watching him for a while, they offered him some advice. "Mr Crab Fisherman, you should change your crab traps. They have no cover on them, so that after the crabs are trapped, they can easily escape."
The Fisherman responded. "You obviously don't understand the behavior of crabs. You don't need a lid on the trap, because after a few crabs have been caught, they will grab hold of any crab that tries to escape and hold him in the trap, saying 'you can't do that.'"
So we had the joke at UNESCO that these bureaucrats were like the crabs in the trap, saying to everyone else, "you can't do that." And whenever one of them came into my office and tried to stop us from working, I would smile and push a little crab toward him. The bureaucrat didn't understand, but everybody on our team would laugh.
By the end there was a remarkable collection of crabs that people had found and brought in to put on my desk. There was even a baked bread crab found by Jane Whittaker and a wind-up crab that moved.
And when I left UNESCO, I didn't need them anymore.
On my final day at UNESCO, the entire team went to lunch and I made a little ritual giving away my crabs. Everyone present received a crab, since they were the ones staying in the bureaucracy and I was leaving.
Now I have no more crabs.I am free, working on the Internet day and night. Of course, I am not getting paid by anyone, but I am free to do the work that I want.
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Stages
1982-1986
American Peace Movement
1986-1992
Seville and Peoples Peace Appeal
1992-1997
UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme