I was around 15 years old the first time I was forced to think about political violence, when I realized that the stick poking me awake as I slept in my seat near the back of the bus was not a stick at all, but the barrel of a rifle. Fabrique Nationale, bullpup style, held by a man in a balaclava demanding to see my passport. Suddenly, I was wide awake and wondering if this mission trip to the mountains of Peru was about to take a dire turn. Thankfully, it did not: the armed men – members of the Shining Path insurgency, I figured out later, based on when and where we encountered them – were maintaining a checkpoint in their ongoing struggle against the central government, and we had blundered into the middle of it. Eventually, they let us go on our way, but I have never forgotten waking up to the barrel of a rifle.