Beninians denied, but Taiwanese Accepted!

Well, we couldn't get our Beninians, but we did end up with the honour of hosting 2 Taiwanese women from the the University choir.

I've spent the last two days trying to get the house acceptable, despite working 9 hour days, and ended up at the shopping mart in pink sweat pants (sans undies!), a swim top, and a towel on my head because I couldn't seem to fit shopping, bathing, and dressing into seperate time slots.

After I was completely exhausted from all that, plus prep cooking for tomorrows dinner, I decided I needed to just relax and unwind, so I plopped in front of the couch and watched "Shake hands with the Devil". If you have never heard of the film, or the book, or the documentary, let me elaborate: it is based on the memoirs of Lt. Gen Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the hopelessly underfunded, understaffed, and cut off at the knees right from the word 'go' peacekeeping mission to Rwanda during the 94 Hutu/tutsi genocide, which saw 800'000 people killed in 100 days. It wasn't actually the best choice to end a long tiring day with, being a thoroughly taxing emotionally, but by God, what a film/reality.

I remember in '94 hearing very very little about it at all. The first time I read up anything on the slaughter, it was in Jared Diamonds "Collapse", which explored the socio-economic basis for the genocide beyond simple racial bias. But an exploration of the "externalities" of war fails to reveal the true horror of, holy shit, I can't drive on this road cause it's block up with dead bodies.

Despite the wealth of evidence for human evil offered up by the film, I don't believe that the existance of such atrocities is incontrovertible proof that human beings are a wicked pile of evil bastard bastards whose depravity knows no bounds. Rather, they are clear illustrations that human beings are extremely adaptabe (perhaps 'pliable' would be a better word) to either end of the spectrum and, under the right circumstances, are capable of just about anything, good or bad.

Here's to trying to engender the best of human nature, even though it is hard to get a good taste with the starting ingredients. We just need to find a good recipe for sugar, spice, snakes, snails, and puppy dog tails.