Thoughts on the situation in Mali and living in ignorance.

I'd always been interested in world affairs. But being interested in something, and actually caring about something I think are quite different now.

I was interested. Before I moved to Burkina Faso I'd read what was being reported around the globe. I wanted to stay informed. Much like many other people I suppose. We read our newspapers. We watch CNN of Fox news in the mornings as we drink our coffee and get ready for the day. During lunch breaks we get online and go to our favorite news source.

We read what they tell us is important. We read what they show us. And that's usually it. If there is news happening else where in the world, we generally wouldn't know, because it exists outside the links we include in our daily lives.

And to be perfectly honest most people who read the news don't really care about it much anyways. We sigh and say "how terrible" and then click over to the next thing vying for our attention. Because it doesn't affect us. So long as our life and our world continue to function as before we feel very little need to let outsider news actually affect us. To stir us.

I remember when the tsunami hit Japan in March 2011, almost two years ago now. I remember following the news, glued to the reports of lives lost, uncomprehending damage, and then reading in awe of how three nuclear reactors were suffering meltdowns. It seemed like the world waited, on edge, to see how this story would continue to play out. And then one day I remember sitting down to my desk at lunch, and getting online to read the days reports on the developing nuclear crisis....and there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. No updates to be found. I thought to myself, "It's been one day, surely the crisis hasn't been averted! Surely the reactors are still leaking, surely there are still ongoing search teams for survivors. Where is the news?!"

But there was none. And everyday after that there was none either. After four weeks what happened and was still happening in Japan became old news. T.V. and newspaper editors move on and want reports of something fresh and current. And eventually people forget. They stop caring. They stop wondering. They avert their attention to whatever else it is that our society deems more news worthy at the time. And I am no exception. I'm no better than anyone else. I would read and then forget. I would forget and not really care, if I'm being honest, because what I read about doesn't really have anything to do with me and my life.

And even if we don't outright think that way...our lives dictate that to be truth.

It's not an American thing. It's a human thing. I can't sit here and blame American's for being self-centered because the whole world is that way.

Most people care only about what affects them. Most people rarely take notice of the suffering and crisis's in the rest of the world because it doesn't affect their life. We all have own jobs and families and hobbies and friends and burdens of our own. We have our life, and if something happens outside of that circle...we generally pay it very little attention, or at least enough to alter the way we live.

Since moving to Burkina I've been trying to change that tune in my life. Despite the incredible poverty here it would actually be quite easy to live blinded to it all. I see a lot of people who do it. They live there life for them and pay no heed to the suffering right under their feet. It would be easy, all too easy, to keep ourselves locked up inside our 8 foot wall, leave to go shopping, and spend our time socializing with others like us. It would be very easy to waste these next two and a half years and never let my life be altered to the suffering I see.

But I can't do it. I'm compelled to be altered. I'm compelled to see and to do and to take notice. I'm compelled to live an altered life and not just care in theory...but to care in reality. To do something. To see and not forget. To read and not be numb. To recognize that there is a world outside of my own and I can either choose to enter into it...or keep living unaffected by it.

Because regardless of what we may think....what happens in this world outside of our own lives still affects us. In some way or another it affects us. We may not see those effects this side of eternity...but we will someday. Our fellow human beings are being sold, raped, beaten, tortured, persecuted in the most barbaric forms, dying of hunger, dying of preventable diseases, being wrongly imprisoned, being orphaned, and widowed all over this earth. And it's in our power to take notice. It's in our power to step out of our circle and reach into someone else's.

There is a war currently going on in Mali, our neighboring country. The rest of the world may not call it a war, but to the Malians in that country and the others fighting with them, you can better believe...it's war to them.

There are soldiers and bombs and tanks and fighting to the death.

Northern Mali is the largest territory held by Al-Qaida. The same Al-Qaida we have been fighting against in Afghanistan. They have moved in and won't be moved out without a fight. A fight that is currently happening right now.

And Burkina Faso is not removed from it all. The effects of this turmoil have been reaching in for a while and as easy as it may be to pretend that it doesn't affect our daily lives and keep on living in the delusion of our privileged world....reality knocks and I can not shut her out. We have friends with the embassy here who were previously stationed in Bamako and evacuated last year when the coup happened. We know many missionaries who were evacuated from northern Burkina since we moved here and are now living in Ouaga because the north of our country is now too dangerous. There is a refugee camp not far out of the city where people displaced by this crisis came flooding into the country to take shelter. Our friends run a ministry there weekly to serve these homeless people. Isaak is working till past the girls bedtime because his job demands his attention to this issue.

There was an attempted coup in Burkina last year before we moved here and one of the things they have told us is to not be charmed by the calm. Things can turn ugly fast. It takes but one little spark to set a city on fire.

I love it here. I absolutely love it. And I don't live in fear despite the chaos happening in many other West African countries surrounding us. I don't live in fear despite the threat now present in our own country.

But I don't live in denial either.

Now is not the time to live in the denial that the suffering happening around us does not affect us, or should not affect us.

There are many who willingly live in a happy case of denial and don't even watch the news or read the paper because it's all just "too depressing".

Wake up people. The world is depressing. Closing your eyes to it all doesn't change that fact.

Now is not the time to be charmed by the calm. Not is not the time to be ignorant and keep living unaffected by the suffering around us and throughout the world. It doesn't matter where we live...chaos and war and persecution and suffering are just a knock away from all our lives. Now is the time to prepare for it. Now is the time to reach out and take hold of the hand of someone living through it.

Take notice world. That white picket fence is an illusion. 


*Good articles on the situation currently happening in Mali can be read 

HERE: Al-Qaida carves out own country in Mali
and
HERE: France will deploy 2500 troops in Mali.