AmeriCorps/Nonprofit Blog
I have the day off! Unthinkable. I, an AmeriCorps volunteer, have the day off. Hooray! Finally, time to put my life in order.
I HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE! Praise God, Allah, Buddah, whatever. I have a place. A nice place. A clean place. A place without sleezy college boys looking for an easy hook-up.
Let us all now take a moment to do the I HAVE AN APARTMENT DANCE OF JOY.
And--and this a big and--I am on my way to straightening out the whole doctor's bill/insurance thing. See, I got a bill saying I owed $317.60. But I say that's crap and the insurance should pay for it. So, having this lovely day off, I finally had time to untangle all of it.
Sigh of relief.
So what does an AmeriCorps do on her day off? Besides apartment search and deal with insurance bureaucracy?
Well, I am currently visiting the lovely Worcester Public Library. I'm checking out two movies (Bullets Over Broadway and Take Me Out to the Ball Game), Isaac Asimov's I, Robot on CD to listen to while I take my walks, and a novel by Les Grossman entitled Codex. I'm already enchanted because the main character is called upon to unpack and catalogue an old aristocratic English family's library. It's fun.
A sensible person would perhaps start preparing for the move, but why would I waste my time off doing that? I already did far too many sensible things today.
I think I might go catch a movie. See Harry Potter or Spiderman 2.
OOH, but I am excited because I got a call from Whitney, and Rep. Jim McGovern will be visiting my playspace during my shift. This won't be for a couple of weeks, but I am very, very excited. :-)
And I have decided upon my future: I'm going to Clark for their Community Development program. Sarah and I have my project all figured out: take an old building (probably a brownfield) and work with a coalition of organizations to clean it up and turn it into affordable housing.
Yesterday after work I went to Barnes & Noble to spend my $15 gift card I had gotten as a present from Lori (I guess from traveling so far to be there!). I bought We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.
The title caught my eye, and I think I had read or heard about it before. Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer at The New Yorker, wrote it about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But he does more than relate stories told to him; he delves into the history of the country--of that whole region of Africa. The Tutsis and Hutus used to live in peace; in fact, they hardly differentiated between the themselves (they shared the same language and religion).
However, when the Western world entered the region, everything changed. Europeans thought the Tutsis were superior to the Hutus and the natural rulers. The Hutus, who made up the majority of the popularion, resented it. And that resentment just kept building and building. Of course, the Tutsis did do a bit of lording over of the Hutus; it wasn't as if they were saints by any means. However the Hutus systematic attack against the Tutsis was more than just retribution. It was insane and inhumane. Tutsis, and Hutu oppositionists (those opposed to the Hutu Power movement and the killing), were killed by the hundreds of thousands--mostly by machete during one hundred days of massacre. This was not the inhumane, machine-like killing of gas chambers or bombs being dropped from planes. No video-game artifice with nameless, faceless vicitims. Most of it was face-to-face, neighbors killing neighbors, usually with a machete. All of this was promoted by the government with the aid of the state newspaper and radio station.
Half way through, I closed the book and threw it across the floor. I'm surprised I made it that far. The rest of the world didn't care. They knew--of course they knew--the UN was there to "maintain peace." And they did nothing. And the UN forces on the ground did nothing. They were useless. In fact, during the genocide, the number of troops in Rwanda was reduced! The United States wanted the UN to pull out of there entirely! Nobody did anything. In fact, France was sending shipments of arms to Rwanda!
Without saying anything directly, the author lets his feelings show plainly. He notes that there was a conspicuous lack of dogs around. Everyone he asked answered the same way: "The dogs were eating the dead." And so they were shot. The section ends with this:
Even the blue-helmeted soldiers of UNAMIR were shooting dogs on sight in
the late summer of 1994. After months, during which Rwandans had been
left to wonder whether the UIN troops knew how to shoot, because they never
used their excellent weapons to stop the extermination of civilians, it turned
out that the peacekeepers were very good shots. The genocide had been
tolerated by the so-called international community, but I was told that the UN
regarded the corpse-eating dogs as a health problem.
When I started reading about the rest of the world's disinterest, or rather, their interest in not getting involved, it just made me so mad that I threw the book across the room. And not only did the US not want to get involved--in any UN peacekeeping mission, for that matter--they also urged other countries not to get involved either. If this was the current administration I would understand--I would vehemently disagree, but I would understand. But this was the Clinton Administration, and while I know it was far from perfect, I would have thought it would have acted better.
But I'm also mad at myself. I was 14 years old at the time, and I knew nothing about it. I did not learn of it until I was in college. I'm upset with myself, with my school, with the media, even with my parents. Sure, genocide is "unpleasant". It's not good party small talk. But nearly a million people died in the course of three months. That's it, that's all it took. Three months, less then the length of one school semester. About the length of summer break.
And the whole world just looked the other way.
As I sit here typing this, I wonder what else is happening in the world right now. What other atrocities is the world not paying attentiont to because it's summerk, and the US is in Iraq and in the midst of an election year, and the Olympics will be starting soon, and Spiderman 2 just came out. Let's not forget the Sudan, people. Or that mess still going on in Cote D'Ivoire, or all the contres still running around in South America. Or all the people dying every minute from Aids or starvation or malnutrition.
But I'm sure we all have perfectly good reasons to not pay attention....
I've been asked to write a grant, but the party who did the asking didn't really specify what I'm asking for, which is a bit of a problem. I need more imput. Much more. I also need to find another possible grant source so that we can fund the ridiculously expensive cost of getting a cable modem. Charter said it would cost $4,500 in order to install the cable line. We live in a small technoglocial desert surrounded by a much larger oasis of 21st century capabilities.
Absurd.
Speaking of absurd... just kidding. My best pal Laura has a website, mostly to show off pictures of her new car. Congrats on a car with a radio! :-)
So the United States Congress has decided that the events in the Sudan are genocide. The UN protests, the Bush Administration won't agree, and the Sudanese government says it's part of a continuing plot to put down Arabs and the Islamic faith. Nevermind that the population being subjected to these genocidal acts are Muslim--they just happen to be black. We've got lots of talk about sanctions and the possiblity of intervening, but as yet no action. If this was Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of people would be dead before they got around to doing anything. And does anyone really believe the Sudanese government when they say that they're not involved and that they're trying to stop it?
Oh please.
