The Consequences of Being Displaced

Prior to April 28^th, 2007, I was a quiet activist. I signed the One campaign, I said my prayers for world peace. I slipped a few bucks here and there to charity. I went to class and did my homework, went to work and told my stories. I rattled off statistics like I knew what I was talking about. I wrote songs on guitars I received as gifts, wrote my words in journals like I had the right to share them. I drove around the car I didn’t pay for and slept in the apartment for which I didn’t pay rent [thank you, Dad]. I lived the life of opportunity I was born into. That was my story.

On April 28^th, 2007, I participated in Invisible Children’s Displace Me with 67, 870 other people in fifteen cities across the country. My friends and I joined the ranks at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. We simulated our own refugee camp to bring media attention to the guerrilla warfare in Uganda that has brought unspeakable consequences to the nation. Millions have died. Thousands die each week. In the chunks of my life that I call semesters, 16,000 people will die unnecessarily at hand of treatable diseases and malnutrition at Ugandan camps alone. Keep in mind that Uganda is not the only place in which this is happening. When I parked my car at UCF, my friends and I said our prayers that the lives of those affected will change; that the actions of Americans will bring blessing to the needy in Africa. I don’t think I was smart enough to pray for my own life to change, but it did. I learned a few things this weekend:

1. Right now, at this very moment, millions of people are hungry, thirsty, and completely incapable of doing anything about it. When they can, their food has the nutritional value of saltine crackers [which I imagine gets old real fast] and their water is dirty. For this, their immune system is weakened.
2. Sleeping on anything less than a well-made mattress blows beyond measure, and your body will hate you for it. Particularly your lower back. Do it for one night, and days later you still will not have recovered. Do it for years and it will kill you slowly, namely through smacking your already weakened immune system upside its hurting head.
3. For us, eating a few saltine crackers, drinking limited rations of clean, bottled water and creating our own cardboard campsite to slumber party with 5,000 people was cool. We got to wake up and eat a lovely breakfast at Perkin’s with student discounts, shower when we got home in warm, running water with name-brand soap, shampoo and conditioner, and sleep in a real bed that night and every night thereafter unless we choose otherwise. Fabulous. For them, they eat crap and drink dirt and can’t farm their own land back “home” (a very flexible term at this point) and sleep on what I assume is at best a sturdy concoction of mud and straw, unable to work for income and largely dependent on charity. If it hasn’t already happened, it’s in the works for the UN to drastically cut this charity. [Tell them not to].
4. There is an entire generation of children orphaned by AIDS and abduction. The lucky ones still have at least one parent. They walk every night to centers to protect them against the Lord’s Resistance Army, who have taken it upon themselves to raid villages and kidnap human beings and essentially make them their slaves. Parents are separated from their children. Women are raped. Children are taught early on that innocence is not theirs to have. Young girls are raped before they know what sex is. Young boys are told guns are easy to use. I doubt they even know what they are fighting for, other than to not lose their own life to the cause. In many ways, I think they already have. I’ve read, at least in terms of sex slavery, that there are 27 million slaves worldwide. I don’t know if this also accounts for those abducted by guerrilla rebels. This is the stuff of movies. I still can’t process that it’s actually the stuff of real life, that as I write this, there is genuine weeping throughout the world. That as you read this, lives have either ended or dramatically changed for the worse at the hands of others. The opposite is also true, and it is hope that carries us onward.
5. There is a movement in the youth of America, and fortunately the music community is fostering its growth. Music has the power to move and change, and that’s what is required right now. Most of the participants this weekend fell into the youth of America. This is our cause, this is what our generation will be known for—our response to the world’s depravity.

On April 29^th, 2007, I returned home. A few things have changed that I think are indicative of a greater movement within me: I say grace before meals, just like before, but now I really mean it when I say “thank You.” I lay on my bed grateful for its existence. It's not even mine, to be honest with you. I appreciate my showers on a whole new level. I study for finals, joyful that I have the chance at literacy, let alone higher education. I drink my clean, bottled water aware of how quickly it takes for thirst to set in when you can’t quench it. I have so little to complain about, and all it took was one sissified attempt at poverty for fifteen hours for me to realize it. My story just started a new chapter.

This war has not ended, and the problem is not contained. It is global. Please join me in this plight. We cannot rewrite history, but we have the rest of the future. We have the world’s story to change.

www.invisiblechildren.com/displaceme