It's been a fucking long time...oh how I love the F word
Good morning dear friends-
I was downstairs a minute ago and heard the closing song to Hotel Rwanda coming from my friend Steve's room so of course I went in, as I believe that everyone and their mothers and their neighbors and their pet fish should see that movie...So I see my pals, all guys and they've just finished watching the movie and we're talking about it, and I look at Zach and I see his eyes glazed over and he's trying not to look at anything or anyone-he's just thinking and processing it all...I asked him was that your first time seeing it? He said it was. I said It hurts doesn't it? He nodded, It does.
I saw that movie the first weekend it came out and I sat watching it with my knees to my chest and I cried silently into my sweatshirt sleeve and my heart hurt...it was such a different kind of hurt, you know there's the broken hearted I'm so sad I broke up with this boy hurt, there's the disappointed hurt when something you had your heart set on falls through, there's the shit I did something really bad hurt, but this hurt was different, it was deeper...
It hurt so badly because I was sitting in a safe place in a relatively safe country...and shit like that, genocide, insane violence was happening, is happening now...and the parts that stood out to me most in that movie were how white people like me dealt with it...The tourists who happened to be in Rwanda at the time were ushered to safe buses to take them out of harms way, hotel workers holding umbrellas over their heads so they wouldn't get wet during the 5 foot walk from the hotel to the bus...and at this same moment, children and nuns and priests and people of all kinds come running onto the property of the hotel, they have nowhere to go...and some white dude on the bus pulls out his camera and takes a picture, and then he's driven away to saftey...
The second part that stood out was when Don Cheidel was talking to the journalist, thanking him for getting the word out that such atrocities were taking place hoping that some action would be taken to stop the violence, the journalist looks at him and blatantly says yes it will be newsworthy, and people will look at it and think oh how awful...and then they will go back to their dinners...
And that is what is going on right now as we speak...In Sudan people are dying, being brutally raped having children resembling those who so carelessly violated them...and what are people doing? Many people do not even know what is going on there. This world is a crazy place-it is so unthinkable for so many of us who have grown up in relative peace and comfort to imagine a world of such chaotic violence...But we have to realize it-we have to open our eyes and see it, and it hurts, but it hurts about 1/467832509874632 of the hurt that the people we see in the movies are feeling in real life...When I looked at Zach tonight I saw that he was thinking about it, storing away all that he had seen into his mind...and he said to no one in particular, in my Africa class we learned about it, but not like this-all we learned was that there were Hutus and Tutsies...we never learned about this stuff...
What would be different if we did learn about this stuff? We have to open our eyes if we really wish to see...
I was downstairs a minute ago and heard the closing song to Hotel Rwanda coming from my friend Steve's room so of course I went in, as I believe that everyone and their mothers and their neighbors and their pet fish should see that movie...So I see my pals, all guys and they've just finished watching the movie and we're talking about it, and I look at Zach and I see his eyes glazed over and he's trying not to look at anything or anyone-he's just thinking and processing it all...I asked him was that your first time seeing it? He said it was. I said It hurts doesn't it? He nodded, It does.
I saw that movie the first weekend it came out and I sat watching it with my knees to my chest and I cried silently into my sweatshirt sleeve and my heart hurt...it was such a different kind of hurt, you know there's the broken hearted I'm so sad I broke up with this boy hurt, there's the disappointed hurt when something you had your heart set on falls through, there's the shit I did something really bad hurt, but this hurt was different, it was deeper...
It hurt so badly because I was sitting in a safe place in a relatively safe country...and shit like that, genocide, insane violence was happening, is happening now...and the parts that stood out to me most in that movie were how white people like me dealt with it...The tourists who happened to be in Rwanda at the time were ushered to safe buses to take them out of harms way, hotel workers holding umbrellas over their heads so they wouldn't get wet during the 5 foot walk from the hotel to the bus...and at this same moment, children and nuns and priests and people of all kinds come running onto the property of the hotel, they have nowhere to go...and some white dude on the bus pulls out his camera and takes a picture, and then he's driven away to saftey...
The second part that stood out was when Don Cheidel was talking to the journalist, thanking him for getting the word out that such atrocities were taking place hoping that some action would be taken to stop the violence, the journalist looks at him and blatantly says yes it will be newsworthy, and people will look at it and think oh how awful...and then they will go back to their dinners...
And that is what is going on right now as we speak...In Sudan people are dying, being brutally raped having children resembling those who so carelessly violated them...and what are people doing? Many people do not even know what is going on there. This world is a crazy place-it is so unthinkable for so many of us who have grown up in relative peace and comfort to imagine a world of such chaotic violence...But we have to realize it-we have to open our eyes and see it, and it hurts, but it hurts about 1/467832509874632 of the hurt that the people we see in the movies are feeling in real life...When I looked at Zach tonight I saw that he was thinking about it, storing away all that he had seen into his mind...and he said to no one in particular, in my Africa class we learned about it, but not like this-all we learned was that there were Hutus and Tutsies...we never learned about this stuff...
What would be different if we did learn about this stuff? We have to open our eyes if we really wish to see...