(dave e)

holiday in rwanda

we saw hotel rwanda tonight. it hurts to watch, of course.

the problem is that all of us ought to know that already. we've had gourevitch's we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families and anne aghion's in rwanda we say... the family that does not speak dies for a few years, now.

i remember finishing the gourevitch book and feeling bottomed out by the sin--a word i do not use--of the genocide. then i rememember seeing the aghion documentary and being upset by the fact that this horror wasn't really haunting the world the way it ought to be. again, seeing hotel rwanda, the same thing.

i don't think it's western guilt or romantic hopelessness. instead, the book, the documentary, and the film begin to override the emotion of the individual and point to the absurdity of the human. that is to say, when i finish the book or walk out of the film, i want to give up the glamorous life of the grad student and sell my soul to human rights watch, to go to law school and work for unesco, to backtrack ten years and join the peace corps, to fuck all and go do something.

and then, two days later, even if i can easily articulate a three point memo on what-i-think-about-the-war-in-drc, it becomes background noise.

"what can i do?" what a ridiculous futile overwhelming question. if we have to ask...

for the record: darfur.

Posted by dave at January 28, 2005 10:42 PM | TrackBack