Today’s Action

Tell your friends about i-ACT.

Talk to at least five friends about the crisis in Darfur and invite them to participate in i-ACT.
Be a part of the solution. Let’s spread the word.

–Rachel

11/21 10:57pm

Hey everyone!

I just read comments from quite a few of you. It was good to hear from Redondo and North Torrance High! Andre, thanks for the support. JC, Gina, mi Zahara…it’s great to hear from you, and I take the words to heart. Clarity is Power, Gina, and I hope some of our leaders attain some of THAT power.

Sarah from MSM’s, you are showing what the power of one can do; you’re a great leader, and your friend Aida hit it right on the nail, on two nails actually. I also told Chris that the physical part of the city looked like some of the little towns in Mexico, but on other aspects it has a completely different feel. Also, we have to remind ourselves that this is the capital of the country. Aida, the other nail that you hit on the head, we should all feel that this tragedy IS happening to people we know because we do know them. They are like us, so if we know ourselves, we know them.

Jess, I do find myself looking around in disbelief. I did not really have a chance to let it think in that I was coming. It has been a one year race, and I was very much in the moment at each point, but knowing that there is a goal in the future that I wanted to reach. Chris says that it was like a self fulfilling prophesy, i-ACT, where we dream it and then make it happen (he also used the “build it and they will come” quote from that baseball movie from back when KC was still starring in hits).

Thanks to everyone else that has written. I do not have the comments here with me, but thanks Alyson, prima Liz, Mom, Tom, Josh, Myra, and all the others.

Please stay tuned. We’re working the system to get to the camps. When we get to Abeche, we’re rounding third (staying with the baseball analogy). Big hug to all.

Paz

11/21

For my paying job, I work with abused children and their families, doing in-home therapy. We are trained to look at risk factors and have a very low tolerance for anything that endangers a child. Seeing some of the poverty here (and I know that I only saw it through the window of a taxi yesterday) and the conditions in which children live is not at all easy for me. I think of how lucky I am at being able to see my two year old son and my nine year old daughter grow up healthy and happy, enjoying the luxuries that are so far from reach for a great part of the world’s population.

Chad has beautiful people, and I know that the father of that, at the most, five year old girl I saw walking with her even younger sister on the dirt roads of N’D and just barely missing being run over by a young taxi driver (that will just not slow down but would rather honk) loves his girls as much as I love my children. But, what are their hopes?

We’ll soon be going out to the camps. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have been pouring into this country, which itself needs support. I feel inadequate to talk about the problem or the possible solutions to the huge challenges a country like Chad faces, so I’ll just leave it at that…for now.

Paz