Monthly Archive for April, 2006

When I moved out to Vancouver in 1996 I was nineteen years old, naive, unaware, unaffected and completely oblivious to what was really going on in the world outside of my ignorant bubble.

I moved here with a man of Yugoslavian decent, the majority of his family resided in Belgrade, Serbia. I knew there had been a war but at the time I was too self-centred and un-educated to have realized much more.

Shortly after settling into big city life a request came from *Jeff’s mother to go visit a family that had recently escaped from Serbia and were living in the lower mainland.

Jeff had told me countless stories. Before we left Terrace he had spent a month in Belgrade. This was after Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia had signed the Dayton Peace Accord to end the war in Bosnia- but us all, as fellow beings know- well before there was any actual resolve in the regions.

We went to visit the family, two parents living in a tiny two bedroom apartment with two kids. They had almost nothing, I remember they were so happy and thankful to merely see us I had an instant anxiety attack, I didn’t know what to expect, didn’t in truth understand why we were there and what his mother expected from us. Why would these people want to visit with a nineteen and twenty year old?

I knew that it was Jeff’s grandparents that had done whatever was necessary to get this family out and although it was very painful for Jeff’s mother, his relatives had decided to stay, despite their daughters endless pleas for them to leave.

We only visited this family once. Mine and Jeff’s relationship ended, he returned to Terrace and I went on to surviving with my own version of nothing.

A few years a go I took an interest in Africa. I feel very strongly that no matter what your financial situation we should all support causes and organizations that mean something to us. The Terry Fox Foundation, The WWF and the continent of Africa are the places where I concentrate any support I can offer.

It wasn’t until I took an interest in Africa, reading about Somalia, Rwanda, learning about what was really happening over in these countries, that I realized right in front of my face a family, a man I loved at the time had been and was dealing with a massacre of their own people, members of his family had been forced to toss bodies into mass graves and I somehow had no idea just how severe the situation was.

The realizations came in a flood, he had shown me books made to document the massacres, stuff you don’t see on the news, and I held stories in the back of my head but nothing that I wanted to think about. When the cloud of ignorance cleared I felt like I had missed an amazing opportunity to have learned from this family and to have done a fuck lot more than visiting them ONCE. I know I did learn from them but I realized the lessons years too late.
—
There is a genocide taking place right now as I type these words in the African country Sudan if you don’t already know the main area is called Darfur.
I’m no preacher, I’m no expert. But this is not America’s problem, it is not Canada’s problem it is the world’s problem. After WW II, after Yugoslavia, after Rwanda how in the 21st century can we allow this to continue to happen? Over 400,000 women, children and men have already been slaughtered. This is a genocide we can stop.
Every single one of us has the power to do something no matter how big no matter how small.
This weekend ALL OVER THE WORLD there are groups getting together in support of stopping the war in Sudan.
Here is how I’m participating: End A War [this is just one of many organizations with plans for this weekeknd]

*name changed