Not on Our Watch by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast Read Free Book Online

present to the current administration that will stem the tide of this genocide.’
    My sister, God love her, never really one to play her cards close to her vest, gives me a look filled with both scepticism and sympathy. She and I are both aware that this particular battle will probably be fought uphill in a rainstorm with boots made of papier-mâché.
    ‘Well, at least we can give the people there a forum to air their troubles. And with Nightline tagging along, we can document their stories and put those all-too-ignored words and pictures in front of an American audience.’
    She’s still unconvinced, so I go on.
    ‘You never know what will move people to respond. However hard it is, we still have to try to add our light to the sum of light.’
    ‘Wow.’ Impressed now. ‘The first part was kind of extra but I like that “sum of light” thing.’
    I admit to her that I stole the phrase from the film The Year of Living Dangerously, and I can’t remember if they stole it or who they stole it from. She asks me if there’s anything she can do to help. Before I can answer, the waiter returns with our embarrassingly huge steaks, and the juxtaposition of these two medium-rare monsters with our conversation about genocide, famine, and poverty makes each bite a little difficult.
    We soon shift into catch-up mode, and our talk begins to flow between family and friends, food and memories. But I’m just a little behind the whole time, words and thoughts not coming to me very easily. I’m stuck back on Africa and my papier-mâché boots.
    When US Congressman Ed Royce first suggested the Africa trip, I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to smell, touch, and feel what I had only read about or seen on TV and in movies. And though that specific opportunity hadn’t changed, my sister’s scepticism was eating at me. The possibility that we could travel many thousands of miles in an attempt to make a difference, yet return no closer to realising our goals than when we left, hadn’t ever seriously occurred to me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not Pollyanna-ish about how things work in the world. I wasn’t expecting instantaneous results in Sudan simply because the CODEL was making this expedition with Don Cheadle along for the ride. But the idea that we could make a very concerted effort for change and fail anyway, the spectre of it, threatened to push me from being a pessimist to being a fatalist, letting me permanently off the hook. Looking at that nearly made me sick. It was scarier to me than doing nothing at all.
    I’d always hurt for Africa and her tortured past/present. Even if one had only cursory knowledge of the continent, you’d know that it is rife with stories of civil war, famine, and disease. Being a black man, I had always carried a fair amount of guilt, justifiably or not, for not having done a great deal more than I had for the motherland. But up until now, my perceived powerlessness had protected me. It buffered me from ever feeling too bad about my inaction when a call from the televangelists arose or when an invitation to a $5,000-a-plate dinner for Africa-related issue X came across my desk yet found its way into my circular file. Africa’s woes were overwhelming—far too big for me to grapple with. I imagine there are many like-minded individuals experiencing the longing to ‘do something’ for Africa but feeling too small to effect any real change given the scope of the continent’s problems. Others I’m sure have shared my scepticism regarding the conduits through which donations flow, having heard accounts of disreputable organisations skimming off the top or worse—donated money, food, and supplies falling into the hands of the very criminals and warlords who created the grave need for assistance in the first place. And the question of where to start is overwhelming to ponder: Whose need is the greatest? Which country, which war, what issue?
    Before, I would have put away the porterhouse in