The Screams of Future Generations

I went to a talk by Romeo Dallaire on Friday at which he emphasized the importance of our generation and the need for us to lead. He told a story about a specific five year old boy in Rwanda who he saved from being killed when he was the UN General in charge of Rwanda during the genocide. This five year old boy was like his own son back home and any other five year old boy… innocent. That boy, based on the timeline of Rwanda, is now roughly the same age as me, as is Romeo Dallaire’s son. But don’t you think those two took different paths? And are that Rwandans’ friends that are the same age much worse off than the guys that I went to school with? This is because the world is not made up of the innocent and the guilty. We all have shades of grey in us, nothing is black and white.

I agree that our generation is extremely important, but haven’t leaders been trumpeting the importance of the next generation for decades? Isn’t this bit getting a bit stale? This type of view is, to me, really easy to fall back on; we are doing okay, the leaders today are just using the same old political rhetoric as always. But that is a dangerous way of thinking. We can either sit on our haunches and do nothing or we can do what the leaders of all past generations did and try to make the world a better place. Some were successful, some were not. Some were greedy; others were altruistic and died penniless. But each of us needs to strive to be the best that we can be for ourselves and our communities to become leaders.

Dallaire’s message for the university students in the audience was simple: shape the future. He also stressed that we, as citizens of the middle power of Canada, have a responsibility to protect the less fortunate in the world, whether in our own country or others in the world. To which I add that we need to connect with them and hear their stories before we protect them.

My last blog was about food in Kenya and I referenced a guide book to write it, The Rough Guide to Kenya. This reference caught the attention of the book’s author, Richard Trillo, who lives in London yet was reading and commenting on my blog because of the power of the internet. It is amazing how connected we can be, how I will be able to easily mail and call my family and friends while across the world in Kenya, how Obama can be taking a tour of Rio de Janiero and be receiving updates on Libya at the same time. We overlook the power of the internet because our generation grew up with it but the connections it can foster can cause great change. Imagine if you had a pen pal that you sent an email out to every week, but instead of sending letters to the United States or Great Britain, you were sending emails to Ghana or Mozambique. We could learn about the world, learn about poverty and ways to help those most in need. Wouldn’t this be a better way to use the advances in communications technology then sending videos of talking cats to friends (something I am quite guilty of)? We need to use our increasing technological knowledge to make the world better, not be sucked into a fake one.

In the movie The 11^th Hour, a line that really hit me was regarding “the screams of future generations, asking us to change”. I am trying to make sure that I try my hardest to fix these problems because I do not want to feel that I did nothing to change the world for the better. That is why what Dallaire was saying is so important. He is an extremely influential figure: a retired Lieutenant General in charge of UN operations in Rwanda, he twice ignored direct orders to leave with his troops from Rwanda to safety during the genocide because he had a moral duty to protect as many innocent lives as he could. He is also a Senator working in Ottawa right now to serve Canada, trying to make the government work smoothly. And he is telling our generation that we need to shape the future because his generation will not be around much longer. Among our generation are the leaders of tomorrow and if we strive to solve global problems and live in a better world, then we need to start working now on coming together to cooperate. I personally do not want to sit back in fifty years and know that I did not listen to the screams of future generations about global problems, from the poverty and the environment, and know that those are my children that will be harmed. So I will listen to what everyone has to say this summer and try to find out the best way to connect with everyone I meet and find out ways to help fix global problems and protect the many vulnerable and innocent people on the planet.