We really don’t care — enough

15th January 2013:

Sitting in the back of a rickety van, my husband and me were in a heated discussion. We had just left the gut wrenching genocide museum in Phnom Penh. Troubled by the endless stream of young, innocent faces staring back at us we sat in silence for a long time.

My husband is German. A country that has had to man up and plead guilty for one of the most talked about human right violations. He spoke about how they as children were made to feel the burden of their past in school. Feeling German was celebrated for a long time. German flags didn’t dot the backyard. Something was amiss about it all

In his view, his grandmothers generation had a lot to answer for. The said generation was alive and young at the same time as Hitler, and had the misfortune to be in the same country.

How could they have not known? How did they allow it to happen? As a whole generation they did nothing about it! How could they not have known? Secret camps; rubbish. They saw the baker go or their butcher and did not react. Self preservation resulted in a genocide! They should have done something — anything.

3rd April 2016.

I am his grandmother. Only worse. I am aware, informed everyday of the genocides taking place. Isis ensures they market themselves well. I know, you know and we care — but like our grandparents we or I don’t really care enough.

As a working mother in my 30’s there are a string of excuses ready justifying why I can’t care. Scratch the surface and the truth is sadder, more pitiful. A cocktail of emotions jostle when the news of a terrorist strike reaches me. Fear has made a mark. Worry that my city may be next. Helplessness at being a target. Lost at what to do about the situation. Hope that some President somewhere has arsenal that can take care of it.

Armed with hope and belief that it shall go away, the morning news gives way to packing lunch boxes, catching the school bus and getting busy. Life carries on.

Sitting alone in the balcony, the news rears its head again. I imagine handing over my baby to someone else. Or, being a doctor and starting life at 56. Or, carrying my 3 year old daughter for miles with no answers for her non-stop loop of why’s.

I hug her tighter in the night as I put her to bed. Thank the god one more time for the fact that we sleep safe. Say a prayer of hope for those that are struggling with the war. But. I do nothing everyday to help.

Two generations down. Maybe by great grandchild shall look back and say the exact same lines. They knew. They did nothing. And it shall be true.