Dear John and Ina at Daigon Intl.
This is to inform you that with gratitude and great satisfaction the famous statue has finally find its way into my office. Despite working in the forwarding business during one decade in my youth I have never seen a more professional packing – excellent. The statue arrived in perfect order!!
A big thank you to all of you. If you incidentally of any reason are in need of an academic on your list of references list, obviously I’m a natural volunteer.
Sincerely Yours,
Hans
hans.abrahamsson@globalstudies.gu.se
Dear John,
The symbolic meaning that I find in the statue is to encourage people to disarm and instead work for societal change and improved life chances through the power of knowledge – to fight with the book and the pen instead of with the gun.
The value that this statue represents to me personally could only be understood against the background of my own involvement as a peace and development researcher in the conflicts in Mozambique and Angola during the 1980th and 1990th. On behalf of the government of Angola and Mozambique we carried out a number of workshops aiming to achieve some kind of reconciliation between the warring parties. States commanders participated and showed themselves willing to let their arms rest in order to take up the textbooks. As you can imagine, this was, at the time, a very strong experience for me that showed the power of knowledge to make a difference.
This – in short is the reason why I’m so happy that this statue finally find its place into my office here at the School of Global Studies and the Department for Peace and Development Studies at the Gothenburg University.
Thank you again for your excellent contribution to make this possible.