The Darfur Heroes program, started in 2007 by the coalition, highlights individuals and groups who play a crucial role in helping end the violence in Darfur through awareness-raising and other efforts. This month, Save Darfur is honoring Carl and Teresa Wilkens for their unwavering commitment to fight genocide and to equip other activists with the tools and resources to build sustained political will to end genocide. Check out their story below:
I remember first reading about Darfur from Nicholas Kristof. As he described a mom and her now fatherless children fleeing the killers it brought back all kinds of memories… no, no… not again… You see in 1994 my wife Teresa and I along with our 3 small children were living in Rwanda involved in development/relief work.
As I write this it hits me that it was 15 years ago today, 15 years ago just a bit after 8 in the evening that we heard an explosion. We were settling in for the evening in our home in Kigali and were completely unaware that the president’s plane (a sweet little jet, courtesy of President Mitterand) had just circled over our house, landing gear down, when a couple of surface-to- air missiles streaked up from somewhere, fired by someone, as it approached the airport and killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, along with everyone else on board. This was the detonator for the worst killing spree of the last century. Not a random killing spree, but a genocide that had been in the making for years with specific plans being meticulously put in place over the previous 2 years.
The killing started that night. The lists of Tutsi and moderate Hutu had been prepared. The machetes, clubs, and guns were ready. And thousands of youth had been trained for this very moment. They quickly joined in the wave of soldiers, with orders to kill, kill, kill, till there were none left to tell.
We all slept in the hallway that night and the next day, amid the cries and machine gun fire in our neighborhood, it became clear that this was like no other crisis we had ever faced. Three days later I closed the door of our homemade camper with Teresa, our children and my mom safely inside and waved goodbye to my dad who was behind the wheel of our Toyota pick-up (what a time for Mom and Dad to be visiting from the States). They followed a white UN tank down the street to the evacuation assembly point where they joined more than a hundred vehicles fleeing the country.
After much prayer and discussion about the 2 Tutsi young workers trapped by the killing at our home, Teresa and I had both decided TOGETHER that I would stay and she and the kids would evacuate. These 2 young people very much put a face on the people targeted for extermination in Rwanda. We didn’t know that we were on the tip of a genocide! We didn’t know how long the separation would last. We didn’t know if we would see each other again… but what we knew was that we had a chance to make a difference. Perhaps a life and death difference, and we had to do something.
So here we were again, after reading Nicholas Kristof’s article on Darfur, with the opportunity to do something… something with life or death consequences. What would we do? For 88 nights throughout the Rwanda genocide I had slept in the hallway of our home wondering if the rest of the world gave a rip… and now here I was the “rest of the world”.
From 2004-08 I traveled for 3 or 4 days each month speaking on the Rwanda/Darfur genocides and finally in Jan 2008, with no end in sight for the Darfur genocide, Teresa and I again decided TOGETHER that I would quit my job and shift to full-time traveling/speaking against the Darfur genocide. That has since grown into the founding of a small educational non-profit, worldoutsidemyshoes.org.
And so today, here in Kigali, Rwanda, at the invitation of the government of Rwanda, I’m contemplating what I will say at the 15-year commemoration ceremony tomorrow. What can I say to the people of Rwanda: survivors, perpetrators, bystanders, and those who have returned home to find so many family members taken from them…taken from us?
I can share my experience and hopefully they will gain some hope and join me in my commitment to never give up, to never give in to cynicism and rationalization, to never stop believing in the power of other-focused-love – the selfless love I saw demonstrated by some Rwandans during the genocide and by my wife during and after this difficult time. I hope they will join me in my commitment to fight with everything I have against “US and THEM” thinking.
To each of you taking the time to read this…. Thank you…thanks for what you are doing for the people of Darfur… thanks for your commitments… thanks for taking the time to think on who the “Other” might be in your neighborhood, in your country, in our planet. Thank You really…it means a lot to me, to Teresa and to so many others… You probably already know that this life of service with/for others is a wild ride… the best ride ever!
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
