Actually, that started a bit different from what I am used to, the announcement was made in Norwegian and I heard it in English (translated for us by one of the volunteers here in Vest Agder Red Cross).

I looked around seeking for reactions, everyone looked unsure, expecting something: that’s the first natural reaction in this activity, the one I’m used to. But then, I missed the usual excitement about the ‘war’ situation and coming ‘battles’. The teams are seriously reading the directions for the activity and discussing the route they are going to make.

I was facilitating one of the posts called ‘The wounded’, where the participating team is challenged to help the wounded left in the battlefield: both from their own and enemy armies. The teams were coming and leaving my post, and I stayed behind with my evaluation sheet (which says 10 points from 12 possible, for all the teams that had been in the post) and big surprise at the right order the guys help to the wounded: the trick here is that the ones with more serious wounds are ‘your enemy soldiers’.

The Norwegian students, obviously stood the test, won the battle between personal feelings and duty as a citizen of the world! That was not really similar to my experience with Armenian youth, there young people know a lot more about war and most of them not just from history books or international news part of the daily news…

Further there were the other posts: a bit of frustration over ‘being killed by the sniper when you are a peaceful civilian and all you’re trying to do is to get home some food’, Norwegian students’ protests against being treated so bad as war prisoners: ‘there must be something to prevent this’ (that wasn’t much the case with youth back at home who were sure that this really happens and all you can do is to try to escape the prison).

There are many things, different or similar, and some things are true for some people, some things are not. Yet what is true for everyone, I think, is that all the young people, wherever they are should be taught that the wars do exist and in those wars no one is guaranteed from appearing, be it as a soldier or a civilian or an aid worker, but what we can do is to learn and teach that even wars have limits and rules.