I read a book this week that seemed to be full of very familiar stories. I thought it was just that they are the same stories that I have read over and over, namely African Tragedies of the 1990s, but then I happened to see the opening quote and I remembered that, hm, I have used that quote on my blog before, and then it came back to me that I have read this exact book before, not just many books about the same era.
When I was in college and law school, I read book after book about Africa, and since most of the books were written between 1998 and 2005, most of them dealt with the 1990s, and most of them chose to write about some combination of Liberia, Rwanda, and the DRC. Having lived in two of the three of those places and visited the third (only for a couple of hours), I'm always interested to read the stories, even if I've read it before.
Lately, when I read the stories of Liberia, of Rwanda, of the DRC, I can't help but feel this sinking in my stomach at the thought of all the people living their lives, trying to improve their countries, who were about to be in the middle of war. I want to go back in time and warn them so maybe a few of them can escape.
One lasting result of having lived in both Liberia and Rwanda is that there is no place on earth of which I think: it couldn't happen here.
When I was in Liberia in 2000, I was talking with one of my mom's former students, who had lived in Liberia all through the then-ten years of the war. "I used to think people couldn't do those things to each other," he told me, "but now I know that there is no human being who will not do terrible things to other people."
It's easy to pretend that such things can only happen in other parts of the world. We like to think they happen only in places like Africa, which as the book I just re-read pointed out, is a comforting and racist delusion.
But it could happen here. It could happen anywhere.
When I was in college and law school, I read book after book about Africa, and since most of the books were written between 1998 and 2005, most of them dealt with the 1990s, and most of them chose to write about some combination of Liberia, Rwanda, and the DRC. Having lived in two of the three of those places and visited the third (only for a couple of hours), I'm always interested to read the stories, even if I've read it before.
Lately, when I read the stories of Liberia, of Rwanda, of the DRC, I can't help but feel this sinking in my stomach at the thought of all the people living their lives, trying to improve their countries, who were about to be in the middle of war. I want to go back in time and warn them so maybe a few of them can escape.
One lasting result of having lived in both Liberia and Rwanda is that there is no place on earth of which I think: it couldn't happen here.
When I was in Liberia in 2000, I was talking with one of my mom's former students, who had lived in Liberia all through the then-ten years of the war. "I used to think people couldn't do those things to each other," he told me, "but now I know that there is no human being who will not do terrible things to other people."
It's easy to pretend that such things can only happen in other parts of the world. We like to think they happen only in places like Africa, which as the book I just re-read pointed out, is a comforting and racist delusion.
But it could happen here. It could happen anywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment