Life is short, and the world is a pretty jacked up place. These two depressing yet important realities have both shaped the way I think and have encouraged me to direct my life towards the service of others. Based on who you ask, “serving others” is a term that can mean pretty much anything. For some, it means volunteering at the local soup kitchen on Sundays. For others, it means tutoring a friend with their college physics homework. For me, it means that one day I’ll be doing humanitarian work in war zones— places where human suffering and social injustice are rampant yet go by unnoticed by the western world almost every day.
 

            I realize that my pursuit of social justice in war zones is rather unique for someone with my particular upbringing. How exactly did I go from being a stereotypical kid from suburban southern California— whose day-to-day ambition was revolved more around surfing than it did about helping people— to becoming an activist? Well, there are a few key elements of my background and my life experiences that influenced me along this path.









 

     


           First and foremost, I can credit the fact that I grew up in a Christian community for instilling in me the importance of serving others. I wouldn’t describe myself as an overly “religious” person, but as a teenager I truly admired both the time and energy that Christians from my hometown church had always put into serving others. While most of my school friends used most of their free time to satisfy themselves (by smoking pot and playing videogames, for example), my Christian friends were out every weekend doing community outreach events at the local homeless shelter and similar service projects. They weren’t doing it for “college credit” or to fulfill probation obligations; they were using their free time and money to help people simply because it was the right thing to do. The importance of serving others is of course not unique to Christian faith, but it is definitely something that inspired Christians where I grew up— and it has definitely impacted me for the better. It was through my church I was able to do service projects in LA’s “skid row,” the roughest neighborhoods of New Mexico’s Navajo Reservation, and Costa Rican slums. While these church-affiliated projects were not in war zones, they definitely encouraged me at a young age to make positive change happen in the world.
 

            A major experience that introduced me to the prospect of pursuing justice in war zones were the eight months I spent in Africa. Eight months is not a long time in the grand scheme of things, but the experience was very significant for me because it was the first time I spent an extended period of time living outside the confines of the gentrified, Californian safety net I grew up in.
 

          I spent my first month in Africa living with the Maasai tribe of southern Kenya and serving as a volunteer teacher in a rural village where very few people spoke English. I was challenged to adapt quickly to my new environment as I learned the basics of both the Swahili and Maasai languages. During this time, many of Kenya’s neighbors (specifically Uganda, Sudan, and Somalia) were experiencing high levels of instability as political conflict spilled over into Kenyan borders. With this in mind, I spent the majority of my free time in Kenya asking locals about how the influx of refugees or insurgent groups was affecting Kenya and how Kenya has grown despite its own violent history of militant tribalism. As a political science major, I was compelled to learn such things but physically being present in Kenya completely revitalized my interest altogether. Kenya may not have been a war zone in 2014, but due to regional conflict in eastern Africa, I got a closer look at the terrible issues facing people escaping conflict and extreme poverty.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           


       My first-hand experience in Kenya received its academic counterpart when I studied abroad at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. Cape Town is probably the farthest city from a war zone in Africa, but the education I received there was paramount to my understanding of life in places of conflict. It was at UCT that I enrolled in my favorite course ever, titled “Conflicts in World Politics,” which was taught by the woman who drafted the international relations segment of the South African Constitution. On top of learning tremendously about conflicts in Africa (such as the Rwandan genocide and failed UN intervention in Somalia), I was sitting in class with refugee students from these places of conflict. Talk about eye-opening!

        No longer were the stories of heroism or the injustices in war zones something I only saw on a syllabus or heard about on BBC News— they were real. Politics wasn’t something that just came about every four years in America during election season— it was real, and it really affected people daily around the world. When miners in Johannesburg went on strike, we actually felt it in Cape Town the next day when the government cut out the city’s electricity to meet the national budget. When I heard about South Africa’s violent history of institutionalized racism, I actually saw its effects every day when I tutored Xhosa-tribe kids from the local townships. My time in Africa was most valuable because I was physically exposed to people facing political injustice, extreme poverty, and who were escaping the ravaging effects of war zones.













 

          
          When I returned to the United States, I immediately sought to act upon my desire to pursue social justice in war zones. As a man of action, I never wanted to be someone that “talked the talk” but was too afraid to “walk the walk”— so I joined the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and accepted a legally-binding, 8-year contract from the Department of Defense. As a frequently-travelling surfer who is considered by my friends and family to be a “free-spirit,” this move was rather unexpected by those that know me. None of my family have served in the U.S. armed forces and besides having a few close friends in the military, I was pretty much on my own with this move. My logic was that by joining the Army, I would actually get to work in the dangerous places that NGO’s never actually get access to and gain real experience. My plan was to join Army Special Forces or Civil Affairs, and thus become a “warrior-diplomat” for the United States. Through ROTC, I learned multitudes about how the military operates in conflict regions and I also gained extremely-valuable leadership experience.














 

           Unfortunately, the love for others that initially drove my passion to serve in war zones through the Army was being steadily replaced by disillusionment with the bureaucracy of the Army and the not-so-rewarding antics that came along with it.  Once I realized that this career path could very well force me into a life stuck in Kansas filing paperwork instead of being “out there” in war-zones serving exploited people, I made the big decision to leave the Army only two days before heading off for my summer officer-training camp. While it was very tough for me to do this, the Army ROTC program left me with an even stronger passion to lead others and to save lives in war zones.
 

             I also must credit a particular role-model of mine, named Eric Greitens, for inspiring my path towards activism. Eric—a Navy SEAL officer, Rhodes Scholar, nonprofit entrepreneur, distinguished humanitarian, and White House fellow—wrote a very influential book that I read several years ago titled The Heart and the Fist. This book is about Eric’s experiences working as an aid-worker and photographer in some of the most terrible humanitarian crises of the 1990’s (such as the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides) as well as his military experiences across the Horn of Africa and Iraq. Eric draws from these experiences to argue on behalf of his unique theory of humanitarianism: that in order to really help innocent civilians caught inside war zones, we must not only be willing to provide “soft” aid like food to victims (the “heart”), but also willing to physically prevent those that seek to kill, steal, and destroy from doing so (“the fist”). I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Greitens in person at a UCSB Arts & Lectures event last year at Campbell Hall, and I’m now actually an intern for his campaign to become Missouri’s next governor. I’m excited to work directly for Eric and to gain more first-hand experience with public service through Eric’s campaign.













 

           As a college student who still lacks first-hand experience in war zones, I am still in the process of learning not only about the social issues plaguing such areas, but also how they can be addressed effectively. Two major problems I would like to explore is the issue of civilian casualties and human trafficking. Although I am new to activism, I’m looking forward to learning more on this matter and serving the civilians being pushed around in conflict areas.
 

            One particular method by which I think I’ll be able to influence positive change is through my writing. During my senior year at UC Santa Barbara, I joined the writing staff for the campus newspaper— the Daily Nexus— and I was also admitted into the professional writing minor. I am pleased to hear often from other students that they enjoy reading my Daily Nexus articles, many of which involve me explaining world conflicts in humorous ways to my fellow college community as to get them engaged with serious issues. Through the professional writing minor, I hope to build upon my persuasive writing skills and gain the valuable experience necessary to explore a career in conflict journalism.













 

       

           I have changed dramatically over the last few years from being a run-of-the-mill, Californian surfer to someone with a strong ambition to serve the oppressed in war-torn regions. My experiences in Africa and with the Army, coupled with lessons I’ve learned from great role-models like Eric Greitens, have challenged me to pursue this calling. While I’m not yet sure how this form of civic engagement will manifest itself in my future, I am very excited to get more involved in this fight and to use my writing to expand the public’s understanding of how they too can pursue social justice in war zones.