Somewhere out there, the world needs me.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Some excerpts from the book I'm reading "Emergency Sex (and other desperate measures) - Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, Andrew Thomson"
I'm taking ages to read it.. but slowly I'm getting through it, as I savour every bit of it..

So unreal, so unbelievable, so sickening..

on the genocide in Rwanda...

"What we are trying to piece together is quite straightforward, just as in a murder investigation anywhere, only here it's multiplied by five hundred...
Graves like this one are everywhere. My map of Rwanda is covered in red dots, one for each location with over five hundred corpses. It looks like a map of a cholera epidemic, starting with a handful of cases, then spreading unchecked in malevolent concentric circles through a nonimmune population. The epidemic was never contained and burned itself out only when it ran out of victims...
These were unarmed civilians, mostly women and children, almost all of whom died of blunt or sharp-force trauma. They were hacked or clubbed to death or both...
This is an average massacre by Rwandan standards, unremarkable in scale or circumstance. Several thousand civilians had gathered in the church grounds, promised protection by the Hutu governor. Hutu militia went methodically through the crowd instructing other Hutus to leave, and government soldiers cut off the escape routes. Then the governor fired his weapon in the air as a kill-the-Tutsis signal and young men drunk on banana beer hacked them all to pieces. It's hard work killing that many people in a confined space with only machetes and clubs, so the killers returned home to their families each night to rest and drink before the next day's work." - Andrew Thomson

"A new priest has arrived, sent down by the archbishop to take control of what is left of the church property. He's young, well-educated, and suspicious of digging. I'm proud to introduce the team and explain the work; some of the world's top forensic experts are here and we have nothing to hide. Later he calls me up to his office, crucifixes on all the walls, and insists we pay rent, in cash to him will be just fine, because we have installed our equipment and mobile morgue on church property. It's to help the survivors he adds, looking me in the eye.
I explain that we have the written permission to be here from both the prime minister and the interior minister and want to return bodies to families for decent burials. He insists. The church's man on the spot asking for money to dig up corpses. I ask him how much rent he wants and on what terms, whether he'd like to be paid on a per corpse basis or on a daily rate; we could work under floodlights to keep our costs down. How about the per pound of flesh method, with a discount for the infants and children? I tell him to put his proposal on paper so I can send a copy to his archbishop.
From near the bottom of the grave, we pull out the body of a young male dressed in full priest's regalia. If this is the man we've heard about, he was with the people in the church, comforting the soon to be dead and refusing offers to be evacuated by boat at night to safety across the lake. Instead he chose to stay until the end. We treat him tenderly as we strip the body, wash the brilliantly coloured robes, and dry them in the sun. Two priests, same church. One pays with his life, the other wants to be paid for the exhumation. The wrong man is in that body bag." - Andrew Thomson


humans are weird creatures..
albeit amazing too (both in the good and bad sense)..


Funny how just a few years ago, I swore I'll never work for the UN (especially cos they appeared defunct), or any institutionalised humanitarian organisation, but now have an urge to..
(no belief in "never".. or "forever".. but that's another topic altogether)


On a different note, there's a hot-air balloon right in front of my window.. no wait.. there's THREE!! no FOUR! (Okay, maybe not right in front, but close enough!) Just hanging there, against the blue sky, littered with white puffy clothes, and streaked with pink.. This is pretty..


From anothers' blog.. something i find very close to my heart..
"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." - Camille Pissarro -


heids

by Heidi at 5:41:00 AM |