Heart-rending.
Wheeled into our lecture today was a large television. A few of the student joked with the lecturer about porno films & there was laughter. After the lecture there was no laughter.
Before the footage was shown our lecturer informed us that the content would be shocking & told us there is footage of the worse of human nature. His prologue continued for fifteen minutes before suggesting that if people wished they could leave at any time during the lecture. No one left initially.
This was the first test of many over the course of the next few years designed to check the suitability of a person for the darker side of the work. It was designed for shock tactics & that's what it did. By the end of the footage two people in the lecture had walked out & I could hear people crying.
The footage included the risks aid-workers face with the aftermath of the five employees of Médecins Sans Frontières murdered in northwest Afghanistan on the 2nd of June 2004 & in 1996 six Red Cross workers killed in Chechnya having been shot dead as they slept in their beds in a hospital in Chechnya.
As we filed from the room my lecturer took me aside &, when everyone else had gone, said...
"Ani, today you've astounded me & I'm very proud of you."
He must have known I so wanted to walk from that room many times during the footage. At this time the only reason I can think that I didn't was because it would mean I'd fail & I don't wish to be a failure now. Maybe I'm a little more immune to death than my lecturer or I thought. I've seen someone after they've jumped from a tower-block. I was standing next to a guy in a nightclub as he had a broken bottle pushed into his neck & I've seen the bodies of drug-addicts in alleyways & squats. Despite the fact I seem emotionally fragile I do understand, having seen it for myself, that life has it's very dark & dirty sides. Of course, my lecturer knows very, very little of this.
Next week my speech therapy begins. This weekend I will start talking, out-loud, to myself. The first sign of madness maybe but in my case it's a huge step forward. Yes, I know, I'm very strange.
Love, Ani xxxxx
Before the footage was shown our lecturer informed us that the content would be shocking & told us there is footage of the worse of human nature. His prologue continued for fifteen minutes before suggesting that if people wished they could leave at any time during the lecture. No one left initially.
This was the first test of many over the course of the next few years designed to check the suitability of a person for the darker side of the work. It was designed for shock tactics & that's what it did. By the end of the footage two people in the lecture had walked out & I could hear people crying.
The footage included the risks aid-workers face with the aftermath of the five employees of Médecins Sans Frontières murdered in northwest Afghanistan on the 2nd of June 2004 & in 1996 six Red Cross workers killed in Chechnya having been shot dead as they slept in their beds in a hospital in Chechnya.
As we filed from the room my lecturer took me aside &, when everyone else had gone, said...
"Ani, today you've astounded me & I'm very proud of you."
He must have known I so wanted to walk from that room many times during the footage. At this time the only reason I can think that I didn't was because it would mean I'd fail & I don't wish to be a failure now. Maybe I'm a little more immune to death than my lecturer or I thought. I've seen someone after they've jumped from a tower-block. I was standing next to a guy in a nightclub as he had a broken bottle pushed into his neck & I've seen the bodies of drug-addicts in alleyways & squats. Despite the fact I seem emotionally fragile I do understand, having seen it for myself, that life has it's very dark & dirty sides. Of course, my lecturer knows very, very little of this.
Next week my speech therapy begins. This weekend I will start talking, out-loud, to myself. The first sign of madness maybe but in my case it's a huge step forward. Yes, I know, I'm very strange.
Love, Ani xxxxx