"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."-Albert Einstein
It's been almost two weeks since I joined several hundred people on my campus in a packed auditorium to watch a documentary called Invisible Children. I knew the subject of this documentary somewhat. Children, Africa, oppression. I went by choice, but I was pretty much ready for another documentary trying to make me feel guilty by showing me six million pictures of malnourished kids with bloated bellies. I tend to be skeptical. I tend to be sparing with my support. Why do I do that? Is my support, my love, really worth so little that I have to keep it to myself? What I ended up seeing was three guys going to Africa and being so surprised by what they saw that they couldn't just sit back and not try to do something.
An eight year old boy -- that's just a few months older than my nephew -- abducted from his home, taken into the bush, brainwashed, and then led back to his village to abduct his siblings and friends or even kill the family he was taken from. In Northern Uganda there's a civil war taking place that began before most of the people reading this blog were born. Twenty years. Twenty years of killing. If it's not bad enough that the majority of our country is completely unaware of this even though it’s been enduring throughout our lifetime, add to it that the children fighting this civil war also weren't born before it started. A war older than the soldiers fighting it. They don't know why it's happening. They don't support the cause, but still they're forced to kill. These are young, beautiful, real Children. Over 50,000 kids have been abducted from their homes by the Lord's Resistance Army and turned into machines. They watch as other children around them are killed because they said they were tried or they missed their home. So these machines learn to shut up and do as they're told. The children of northern Uganda who haven't been abducted are afraid to sleep in their homes. Because they fear the LRA, they commute to the city every night to sleep on a hospital floors along with hundreds of other desperate children. This is what was laid out in front of me while I sat miles away in safety. Kids who walk hours to obtain some semblance of safety just to sleep and then wake up to walk the same hours back home every morning. I was confronted, not by hundreds of pictures of malnourished children (although there's plenty of that as well), but simply by hundreds of children. Real children that I watched play soccer and dance so much like my nephews and every other great kid I know. Real children with names and smiles and dreams. Children that should be innocent, but instead they're forced to know more of humanity at the age of ten than I ever have to know if I choose to ignore it. I, the anti-crier, sat there watching this through the pools in my eyes.
The United States of America controls roughly half of the world's wealth. I was talking the other day with a friend, and we both came to the conclusion, obviously not for the first time, that even the poor in America are rich compared to much of the world. Don’t our freedom (true or otherwise), the power of our government and our economy give us a responsibility to people like the children of northern Uganda? Even before I saw Invisible Children I had been trying for some time to fit my head around the idea that the only reason I'm a middle-class, white American college student is because I'm lucky. Isn't that what it comes down to? I could be a child of northern Uganda. The only thing that stopped that was luck? Later tonight I'm going to turn off my laptop, change into my pajamas, walk down the hall to my community bathroom (the one I have a tendency to complain about), and then come back to my own warm bed in my room that I share with one other wonderful person who's not even here this weekend while there’s a boy named Ofonyo Innocent (yes, very fitting) in Africa that walks for an hour and a half when he’s ready to sleep, just to survive the night. I could spend a lot of time thinking about the fortune of my physical life. I could spend a lifetime (a lot of people have, in fact) thinking about why children with beautiful souls, beautiful people are forced to live surrounded by things like civil wars. I could think about it, and I do. The problem starts, though, when I get so caught up by thinking that I don't DO anything. There's so much more than just this civil war in Uganda. There are horrible things happening literally everywhere. You all know that. I know that. I can let this overwhelm me, or I can start doing something. Sitting around thinking, as vital as it may be to understanding, is not helping anyone.
I didn’t plan to give my heart away on February 14th. I really did, though, give it away on Valentine’s Day to these beautiful children. They have lost their innocence, abducted or commuting to safety, sooner than any being should have to. Guilt was not the point of the Innocent Children documentary. I think to stop at guilt is to cheat the world. Guilt isn’t what’s needed; Change is what’s needed. It probably seems a little dumb to blog about something like this, but it’s been on my mind for a long time. I didn’t mean to ruin your day if you’re reading this, or to say this is the best documentary in the world and everyone should go buy it. I just wanted to tell y’all what’s on my mind, I guess. You can tell me what you think about this if ya want. You can even call me phony or hypocritical or something if you feel like it. : )
Innocent Children, the organization that has formed since the making of this movie, has a website. www.invisiblechildren.com You can go there and see what it’s about. You can get the documentary there if you want, as well. If the only thing stopping you from watching it is the fact that you have to buy it, let me know and I’ll buy a copy and loan it to you. Honestly. I just think it’s really important to stop being so arrogant, as Americans. I think that’s what we’re doing whether we know it or not. People need help and we can give it to them. I’d be really glad to hear what you guys think about this. Maybe I’ve said too much for that. Don’t know.
