Thursday, March 28, 2024

To the Teachers and Educators of All US Schools

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I had worked in Africa for close to nine years. Some, in Nairobi, referred to me as Mazungu Mafrica, (White African), a moniker of honor bestowed upon me by those working in the public market as they had seen and talked with me so many times over the years prior. This trip was special however, as there had just been a “Genocide” that occurred in Rwanda and I was now with my crew and another complete crew in Bujumbura, Burundi. I was an Airline Captain flying for Southern Air Transport, a former CIA entity out of Miami, Fl.

I was walking, out exercising, as I passed through the streets among the throngs of the city on one of my days off, with its hustle and bustle as I noticed two men, although younger, maybe 25-40, I wasn’t sure, arguing. The one sitting on the back of a truck with several others, reached down and punched the other in the face and the punch’s recipient started to cry. I almost cried myself at his humiliation and pain. The one was a Hutu and the other a Tutsi. Don’t ask me to describe which was which because both or either was the same to me. I didn’t notice a shade or color distinction even though some local, nearby, told me this racial difference was the case. The war had ended with somewhere between 500,000 to one million now dead as Hutu’s had decided their Tutsi neighbors were less than themselves and had instigated the worst mass executions of men, women and children, with machetes, the modern world had ever seen. A bloody, brutal insanity had permeated their society. A whole generation on a killing spree. The most horrific story I’ve ever heard was of Hutu soldiers who had emptied an orphanage and sat the children, over 300 in the grass and held them captive as they preached to them for several hours on why they had to die. As the children cried out in horror, they then took their machetes and murdered them all.

One part of this Rwandan society had determined they were more righteous, more intelligent, more worthy of life and should for no apparent reason other than there were fewer Tutsis than Hutus and the Hutus had accused the Tutsis of shooting down the plane of their former President and for their vanity and prejudice and blind hatred murdered hundreds of thousands in horror. This small infraction I witnessed was a peace time encounter.

The one part of the society of Rwanda, a country I had been to many times along with flights into Kigali, Bukavu, on the border of Zaire and Goma, Zaire, now called ‘The Democratic Republic of Congo’. During this relief effort, Goma, where many of the surviving children had escaped, wept themselves to sleep as relief workers brought their expertise to their aid from all over the globe. The Israelis, the Swiss and many throughout Europe, like we ourselves, had arrived too late.

These children along with few adults having witnessed their parents and siblings and friends murdered found temporary respite from the horror they had recently experienced. We were flying famine relief, mainly from Luanda, Angola to Bujumbura where many of the war refugees had fled and where we were temporarily based. We had been recruited by our company to remain in Africa for over a month on this mission.

I only have a two-year college degree myself, having opted to work instead of continuing college endeavors, although I hold five Heavy Aircraft Type Ratings, any one of which has been compared to a Bachelors Degree. My education is not as refined as many school teachers and government workers and experts that have determined that we as a society now should start to differentiate between those who are more entitled, those who have or have not had privilege in their lives.

I remember when I was approximately ten years of age walking down the street of a small town and both seeing and hearing a young boy that had not before seen someone like me that had freckles, an enormous amount of freckles, say to his mother, “Mommy, did you see that man, what are those things all over him”. I felt like a freak. I wasn’t angry at the boy or his parent, I simply had been dealt a perhaps weaker immune system or anatomy than some? A melatonin problem? I don’t know, but maybe that helped me gain a love and respect for nature because I would rather be out hiking the woods than dealing with, man or men or people and their judgements. I didn’t have a clan or family or group that shared this imperfection, my brother ‘tans’ beautifully on the first sunny day of spring, one wouldn’t even guess we were related. My simple point is “a tiger cannot change his spots,“ and neither can we.

I’ve read “Auschwitz”, a book which literally brought tears to my eyes. How could men do such things to other human beings? How could those who lived and grew up together turn and hate and murder one another? Does it start by pointing out their differences or accusing one generation of the atrocities and prejudices of the former? The divisions we have as a society cannot be reconciled by a new racial prejudice or an old racial prejudice being magnified toward the former group or the former groups offspring. The Germans were perhaps the most intelligent, educated people of their time in history when they fell for and gave into one of the most racial hatreds ever known by mankind. All the pains and failures of Germany were placed upon the Jews. We, in America pride ourselves as being the most aware, hip, technocratic society ever to walk on this earth. We understand all errors and failures of past generations and societies and we have now declared that we will correct it all and put those who have caused all past ills of mankind to the knife of social engineering. Will we destroy all sacred cows and emerge as those who murdered our fellow men, women and children? I say drop all this hatred and assumption that we understand it all. We do not understand it all. There are things hidden in mankind’s thoughts and hearts that only the Divine will someday bring to Perfect Light. I say take off our mask and return to life and freedom and quit accusing one another and start forgiving one another. If we persist in dividing ourselves from one another we stand on the dangerous precipice of social madness. We stand on the precipice of hate and murder. The Rwandans finally had their days of healing long after many had fallen to their swords, machetes. The Rwandans finally forgave. Do not let this happen to our children.

Carl Rice

Leavenworth

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