Quo Vadis?

Caught ‘Hotel Rwanda’ on the ‘plane, Wednesday night. Don Cheadle was excellent,
but I wasn’t sure how to react to the movie. Documentary? Drama? Somehow it
seemed to lessen the tragedy, to sanitise it. What I was supposed to feel? It’s
unimaginable, therefore I can’t feel. There are too many stories, too many
tragedies; is Darfur any less? Liberia? Somalia? Eritrea? And coming soon to a
news show near you…Northern Uganda. Imagine 19 years of Darfur? Imagine a
minimum of 12 500 kids under 12, acting as armed militia for the Lord’s
Resistance Army. It’s there now, today. You didn’t catch that one? Oh, yes
that’s right—no oil. So that’s why Kofi Annan went to the Sudan! So we can turn
our air conditioners on, that’s it. Silly me.
It’s too much. We’re sinking here. Donors cutting the aid to Kenya, because of
rampant corruption. Kenya was doing pretty well, too. Ethiopian famine again,
Quo vadis, Zimbabwe? We have to relay messages to the office in Spanish because
our phones and email are tapped. We are forbidden to distribute food, because a)
there is no starvation and b) the government will insist that only it may
distribute food--to its supporters, so Matabeleland starves. The list just goes
on. And there’s no good reason, no damned reason at all. One of our countries is
swamped with USAID money. How much can we get? A pittance. Why? Insane labour
law that encourages--nay guarantees--employment for life and therefore sloth and
indolence. How much to pay off the slackers? Oh, a mere US$1.4 million. At an
average of say US$240 a year to support a child--do the arithmetic.
On the other hand, I had a bottle of very good Rioja on Friday night with two
dear friends.
So one does what one can for the greater good.