Where where you on April 5 1994?
Can anyone remember what happened on April 5, 1994?Some of you might remember this as the date in which Poland's application for accession to the European Union was written, but probably not cause that didn't make headlines news for very long.
Others might remember it from what I recall as "breaking news" as the day in which the lead singer of Nirvana killed himself. I remember the day rather well actually because my best mate Kristen was in tears when she told me that Kurt Cobain had died. I remember thinking she was over reacting at the time, but none the less tried to comfort her in the only way we at our age of 16 knew how. Seeing as I had just gotten my driving license 2 months earlier and since I'd borrowed my mom & dad's Lumina APV van that day, Kristen & I drove around town with no real destination, just thinking we looked cool cause we were driving (BIG deal when you've just turned 16!) and blasting Nirvana music!
And to my amazement, I don't recall hearing on the news or in the classroom anything about what was going on in Africa. Now some of you may recall more details about this day than I do, but I think my generation was a bit side tracked with one of our favourite musicians have just killed himself. I just wonder how I completely missed the fact that in Rwanda a genocide had been going on for FIVE days & yet I never had heard a thing about it. I was in a good school and obviously history was taking place all around me, yet our teachers never mentioned it, on Sunday when I went to church we didn't pray for victims of the genocide - how did I miss this? Within 100 days nearly 1 million people died & for me the worst thing was that I wasn't sure how Nirvana was going to cope - that seems a bit petty compared to what was REALLY going on in the world!
As today is my "Thanksgiving" dinner, I felt it necessary to watch, Sometimes in April which sort helped to make me even more thankful! That might sound a bit sadistic, but I still feel that even though we're all thankful on Thanksgiving, we are normally thinking about "issues" we're having in the US - like thankful we could get a new car this year, thankful we're able to go to Hawaii on holiday, and we breeze over the things like being thankful to have a roof over our heads, clean drinking water, etc.
Today I am thankful:
- I have never had to experience first hand the acts of a genocide
- none of my family was raped, mutilated, or killed in a genocide
- I did not have to live in a swamp for nearly 100 days waiting to be saved without food & drinking only the dirty contaminated water which had rotting dead bodies floating in it
- that America has elected a new president who I hope would never sit back like our government did in 94 and let some like the genocide in Rwanda go on!
In case any of you are feeling generous today, please drop by Itafari's website & consider purchasing a goat for a child headed household in Rwanda, a brick to build a secondary (high) school in Kigali, or give any monetary amount you can spare today AND remember to be thankful that you have the freedom to choose to give or not to . . . not all have that choice in the world!!
Labels: donations, itafari, rwanda, thankful, thanksgiving
posted by Sara @ 11:26 am
4 Comments:
I am overwhelmed by you and can only say how proud I am that you are my (our) daughter. Thank you for being you.
Love and a big hug,
Mommio
Yet one more reason I'm so very happy to have you as a friend.
wow...cooking for 13 and still time to give us a poignant essay on thankfulness contrasted with man's inexplicable, yet continung and continuous, cruelty to fellow man! also a stunning contrast of the suicide of one musician and the genocide of millions!
likewise impressed and proud of our daughter. love dad
Cool thoughts big sis! You are very cool to me. I had no idea about the Rwanda genocide at the time - but i do remember kurt cobain's death.
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