I ask you to look to the East. I want to re-introduce you to a nation that sits just beyond the reach of the American tongue. If your local news station has spoken of our topic, it has most likely been to inform you that Clooney, or Jolie, or some other member of the beautiful people has just returned safely from a trip to our destination.
For this sin alone, our every hand washing should rinse pink into eternity.
Noting the collective American ignorance about geography, humor me for a short “where in the world is--?”
I know that YOU know where Sudan is, but many people don't. You’ll need a globe, or map. Open a separate browser window, and load up a map of the world. I’ll wait for you.
* * *
First, find Egypt at the northeast corner of the continent of Africa. Point to it. Now drag your pointer south. On a modern map, the first border you touch symbolizes the northern edge of “the Dark Continent’s” largest country.
Don’t move your hand just yet.
You are symbolically fingering the historic land of Nubia, ancient Egypt’s silent supplier of goods and knowledge that helped the land of the Pharaohs cast an exceptionally long shadow across time--through history, myth, legend, and lore.
One of the cradles of civilization, Nubia is the ancient link between tropical Africa and the first great international trading zones. In its heyday, the many caravans carrying gold, ivory, diamonds, and knowledge to the world’s first international trading ports on the Mediterranean Sea and River Nile walked its soil. It too boasts pyramids.
It has been Eden, and Kush, and Egypt, and British colony.
It is Sudan.
In that all too human way we cast aside history for shiny things and pretty people, Sudan’s soul has been pillaged for pennies—it is today the scene of what our descendants will know to be our greatest crime.
As we speak, Sudan is reaping the results of a tattered history of war, famine, and corruption. By the hundreds of thousands, Sudanese have walked away from the burning remains of their homes and lives. To the west, neighboring Chad, is straining under weight of hundreds of thousands of pedestrian refugees who cross the borders in groups of 10,000.
Perhaps some of the 2 million people who have fled their homes and villages have settled in your community. Unfortunately, as the first generations of immigrants from other places have discovered, America, my home, can be a very inhospitable place during the transition.
These huddled masses are unquestionably the lucky ones.
To whatever degree there is a spotlight on Sudan, the point of focus is Darfur. This region of Western Sudan is believed to have slightly fewer than eight million people. Believed, because Sudan has been too dangerous to gather accurate census data since 1993.
Darfur is embroiled in a conflict that pits an Arab Muslim militia--the Janjaweed, against the largely African Muslim population. Like most problems, their dispute is too nuanced and complicated to adequately describe in generic terms, but it stems at least in part to a squatter’s rights quarrel between nomads and farmers.
In a disagreement that stretches back a dozen generations, the nomadic tribes believe they have a right to graze camels on the available arable land. No problem, except that the agricultural groups believe they have a right to own, farm, and develop the land.
A series of famines has made arable land scarce. That land is now rare enough to kill for.
On a different continent, in a different age, this dispute might have ended up in court.
But this is modern Africa, and the dispute—complicated by a thousand political and economic facets, assisted to various degrees by such famous bad guys as Muamar Qadafi and Usama Bin Ladin, has become an ethnic genocide.
Turns out the government, the group of people you’d expect to take a role in protecting citizens—any nation’s greatest resource, has instead turned on them.
Not turned on them like … refusing to count their votes. No, no, turned on them like--allowing them to be slaughtered.
The U.N. has settled on a death toll of 400,000 and counting in Darfur. An estimated 2 million people have been forced out of their homes, had their villages burned to the ground, and suffered unspeakable horrors in the name of war.
In a conflict that has literally turned rape into a military weapon, the Arab militias have made it their life’s work to rid the nation of its African blood.
Sadly, Darfur is one of a NUMBER of conflicts ravaging Sudan.
I won’t berate you into feeling sorry for these people of the great past. I am capable, but it’s counterproductive. I’m a much more practical man than that.
I will however, put my considerable pride aside to kneel on both knees, touch my forehead to the floor, and BEG you to take a few moments of your time to do three things:
1: Choose to inform yourself about Sudan.
Media criticism aside, this is the information age. You don’t need CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, or the Wall Street Journal to tell you what is going on. You and I are engaging in this conversation using the most powerful research tool in the history of civilization.
http://www.wikipedia.com/
Start here. Search Sudan, and follow the links that address whatever questions you have. Don’t worry how far you wander from your starting point. Search “the Darfur conflict” and read what’s been written. You don’t need a globe, or map, or any books. You have everything you need to find out EXACTLY what’s going on.
Next,
http://www.google.com/
Same search. Same drill. Give yourself half an hour. That’s more time than your local newscast can afford.
Do it while you’re hunting for your next 360-playmate, or checking your e-mail.
Follow the first five links that appear to have anything to do with the subject at hand.
Then, switch the upper tabs to “images” and look at some pictures of the damage done to ancient Nubia.
By the end of your 30 minutes, you will have a much better idea of what’s going on in Sudan. You will have started to develop some opinions about whether or not it’s a cause that deserves your attention.
You will have informed yourself enough to know whether you agree that Sudan is a crisis. You MAY conclude that Sudan should be an African problem to be solved by Africans. As an informed citizen, that is well within your rights.
You may decide that it’s no big deal, and doesn’t deserve to be given any more attention than it’s had to this point.
You may compare and contrast it to problems we have here at home and decide it doesn’t stack up. It may not touch you in the way it touches others. From my vantage point, those are completely acceptable outcomes—as long as you’ve taken the time to inform yourself.
2: Come back here, and share a little bit of what you’ve learned.
Or … find some other place where the topic is under discussion and jump in with both feet. Part of the apathy that mires Americans in inaction begins with a lack of viable conversation. We will not solve the Darfur crisis here. That isn’t the point.
The goal is for informed people to share ideas. We should stop underestimating the power of discussion. It is the source of consensus, which births action.
Every real change that has affected the globe began with groups of real people, talking about---and then DOING real things.
3: Act on your conclusions.
This particular blog entry was suggested to me by Zee, from Buffalo, New York. Her parish has taken up this issue, particularly as it relates to their community of immigrants from Sudan, in a tangible way.
For Zee, that parish movement has spawned action in real life. She has chosen to mirror that activity here, and asked me to help spread the word to my small circle of friends. She has posted a number of links to organizations that are taking an active role in having an impact on the daily situation in Eastern Sudan. I invite you to visit her, and consider the opportunities she presents.
I honestly hope that the process of informing yourself and sharing ideas creates in you a passion for a group of people in peril that you cannot immediately see, touch, or hear. I hope that passion manifests itself in action.
My action at this instant is to remove my forehead from the floor, stand to my feet, and conclude my appeal to your mercy.
You are only one person. You are free to do something, or do nothing. We all have that choice, one … by one … by one.
As we’re making that decision, people in Sudan are dying, one … by one … by one.
For this sin alone, our every hand washing should rinse pink into eternity.
Noting the collective American ignorance about geography, humor me for a short “where in the world is--?”
I know that YOU know where Sudan is, but many people don't. You’ll need a globe, or map. Open a separate browser window, and load up a map of the world. I’ll wait for you.
* * *
First, find Egypt at the northeast corner of the continent of Africa. Point to it. Now drag your pointer south. On a modern map, the first border you touch symbolizes the northern edge of “the Dark Continent’s” largest country.
Don’t move your hand just yet.
You are symbolically fingering the historic land of Nubia, ancient Egypt’s silent supplier of goods and knowledge that helped the land of the Pharaohs cast an exceptionally long shadow across time--through history, myth, legend, and lore.
One of the cradles of civilization, Nubia is the ancient link between tropical Africa and the first great international trading zones. In its heyday, the many caravans carrying gold, ivory, diamonds, and knowledge to the world’s first international trading ports on the Mediterranean Sea and River Nile walked its soil. It too boasts pyramids.
It has been Eden, and Kush, and Egypt, and British colony.
It is Sudan.
In that all too human way we cast aside history for shiny things and pretty people, Sudan’s soul has been pillaged for pennies—it is today the scene of what our descendants will know to be our greatest crime.
As we speak, Sudan is reaping the results of a tattered history of war, famine, and corruption. By the hundreds of thousands, Sudanese have walked away from the burning remains of their homes and lives. To the west, neighboring Chad, is straining under weight of hundreds of thousands of pedestrian refugees who cross the borders in groups of 10,000.
Perhaps some of the 2 million people who have fled their homes and villages have settled in your community. Unfortunately, as the first generations of immigrants from other places have discovered, America, my home, can be a very inhospitable place during the transition.
These huddled masses are unquestionably the lucky ones.
To whatever degree there is a spotlight on Sudan, the point of focus is Darfur. This region of Western Sudan is believed to have slightly fewer than eight million people. Believed, because Sudan has been too dangerous to gather accurate census data since 1993.
Darfur is embroiled in a conflict that pits an Arab Muslim militia--the Janjaweed, against the largely African Muslim population. Like most problems, their dispute is too nuanced and complicated to adequately describe in generic terms, but it stems at least in part to a squatter’s rights quarrel between nomads and farmers.
In a disagreement that stretches back a dozen generations, the nomadic tribes believe they have a right to graze camels on the available arable land. No problem, except that the agricultural groups believe they have a right to own, farm, and develop the land.
A series of famines has made arable land scarce. That land is now rare enough to kill for.
On a different continent, in a different age, this dispute might have ended up in court.
But this is modern Africa, and the dispute—complicated by a thousand political and economic facets, assisted to various degrees by such famous bad guys as Muamar Qadafi and Usama Bin Ladin, has become an ethnic genocide.
Turns out the government, the group of people you’d expect to take a role in protecting citizens—any nation’s greatest resource, has instead turned on them.
Not turned on them like … refusing to count their votes. No, no, turned on them like--allowing them to be slaughtered.
The U.N. has settled on a death toll of 400,000 and counting in Darfur. An estimated 2 million people have been forced out of their homes, had their villages burned to the ground, and suffered unspeakable horrors in the name of war.
In a conflict that has literally turned rape into a military weapon, the Arab militias have made it their life’s work to rid the nation of its African blood.
Sadly, Darfur is one of a NUMBER of conflicts ravaging Sudan.
I won’t berate you into feeling sorry for these people of the great past. I am capable, but it’s counterproductive. I’m a much more practical man than that.
I will however, put my considerable pride aside to kneel on both knees, touch my forehead to the floor, and BEG you to take a few moments of your time to do three things:
1: Choose to inform yourself about Sudan.
Media criticism aside, this is the information age. You don’t need CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, or the Wall Street Journal to tell you what is going on. You and I are engaging in this conversation using the most powerful research tool in the history of civilization.
http://www.wikipedia.com/
Start here. Search Sudan, and follow the links that address whatever questions you have. Don’t worry how far you wander from your starting point. Search “the Darfur conflict” and read what’s been written. You don’t need a globe, or map, or any books. You have everything you need to find out EXACTLY what’s going on.
Next,
http://www.google.com/
Same search. Same drill. Give yourself half an hour. That’s more time than your local newscast can afford.
Do it while you’re hunting for your next 360-playmate, or checking your e-mail.
Follow the first five links that appear to have anything to do with the subject at hand.
Then, switch the upper tabs to “images” and look at some pictures of the damage done to ancient Nubia.
By the end of your 30 minutes, you will have a much better idea of what’s going on in Sudan. You will have started to develop some opinions about whether or not it’s a cause that deserves your attention.
You will have informed yourself enough to know whether you agree that Sudan is a crisis. You MAY conclude that Sudan should be an African problem to be solved by Africans. As an informed citizen, that is well within your rights.
You may decide that it’s no big deal, and doesn’t deserve to be given any more attention than it’s had to this point.
You may compare and contrast it to problems we have here at home and decide it doesn’t stack up. It may not touch you in the way it touches others. From my vantage point, those are completely acceptable outcomes—as long as you’ve taken the time to inform yourself.
2: Come back here, and share a little bit of what you’ve learned.
Or … find some other place where the topic is under discussion and jump in with both feet. Part of the apathy that mires Americans in inaction begins with a lack of viable conversation. We will not solve the Darfur crisis here. That isn’t the point.
The goal is for informed people to share ideas. We should stop underestimating the power of discussion. It is the source of consensus, which births action.
Every real change that has affected the globe began with groups of real people, talking about---and then DOING real things.
3: Act on your conclusions.
This particular blog entry was suggested to me by Zee, from Buffalo, New York. Her parish has taken up this issue, particularly as it relates to their community of immigrants from Sudan, in a tangible way.
For Zee, that parish movement has spawned action in real life. She has chosen to mirror that activity here, and asked me to help spread the word to my small circle of friends. She has posted a number of links to organizations that are taking an active role in having an impact on the daily situation in Eastern Sudan. I invite you to visit her, and consider the opportunities she presents.
I honestly hope that the process of informing yourself and sharing ideas creates in you a passion for a group of people in peril that you cannot immediately see, touch, or hear. I hope that passion manifests itself in action.
My action at this instant is to remove my forehead from the floor, stand to my feet, and conclude my appeal to your mercy.
You are only one person. You are free to do something, or do nothing. We all have that choice, one … by one … by one.
As we’re making that decision, people in Sudan are dying, one … by one … by one.
(29 Oct 2006)
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