…since I have held the hands of a Darfuri friend living in the refugee camps in Chad. I know that I am lucky enough to have even been able to go once, but there is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish we were about to go back. I know the time will come, and hopefully soon, when our team will begin to prepare for yet another i-ACT trip. I know these trips are not just important to me and you as part of keeping us going, but so important for the refugees to know that we haven’t stopped our work for them. I can’t imagine what it must be like to feel as if the world just might have forgotten.
My days in Southern California are sometimes like a dream. I wake up and fall asleep to the sound of waves. I get to coach and play soccer when I need that escape from reading the news of more bombings and the visions of horrors that the LRA could unleash on the already terrorized people of Sudan. I have choices about food, and my family is safe. Not just my immediate family, but I have the opportunity to share a meal with my mother and grandmother, and my grandmother’s sister, and their cousins. I don’t feel forgotten in my world, but my heart aches knowing that many might have that sinking feeling of desertion.
We have not been able to make Darfur or genocide, for that matter, a political issue. I know that had we not stood up and brought attention to what began in Darfur 2003, more would be dead then the hundreds of thousands estimated. I just wish our leaders would for once take a daring step within their political careers to make humanity and the preservation of all of us as one a priority. Maybe this year we can garner their attention and demand they act on issues that are important to us.