Oblivious: Not aware of or not concerned about what is happening around one.
This is how I have felt at times on this race. This month we are in Rwanda. As some of you may know (or may not know) in 1994 there was a genocide that happened here. A genocide that killed over one million people. Now I don’t know about you, but if it wasn’t for the movie Hotel Rwanda I would not have known anything about this genocide until I actually got here to Rwanda.
A few months ago we were in Cambodia. And in the 80’s there had been a genocide there that killed millions. Where have I been?! I had never even heard of that. We could visit a place called the Killing Fields that was just a landmark of so much killing that happened. You could still see bits of bone left in the ground if you look hard enough.
Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t think it’s okay for me to be completely oblivious to these things. I think it’s awful that these things weren’t taught to me growing up in my history classes. Why were they not taught to me? Why leave such an important part of our world’s history out? I don’t have the answer, and I probably never will, but it makes me wonder what else is being hidden from us. It makes me wonder what genocide is going on right now that we don’t know about.
A couple of weeks ago I went to the genocide memorial here in Kigali, Rwanda. That was hard. There was no way I was going to hold back my tears. There were pictures of beautiful children with their cause of death. Some dies of gun shots. Some died by machete. Some were clubbed until they died. It was so hard to read those. These were innocent children that were being killed.
I am not writing this email to start an uproar against new stations and history book writers. And I am sorry if that last paragraph was too graphic. But going on this journey has shown me the value of being sensitive to other cultures. Just knowing what goes on in the world is so important. How can we learn from the mistakes of the world if we don’t know what the mistakes of the world are.
I guess I’m writing this blog to challenge people (including myself) to be more aware of what goes on in the world. I’ll be the first to admit that this has been a weakness of mine. But this is an area that I truly plan to work on. I pray to God that learning more about different cultures hels make me sensitive to them, and also helps me see the mistakes that those before me have made so that I can truly try to stop those same mistakes from happening again.
Thanks for reading.
Much Love,
Raj Mahal
PS. My teammate Kaleena still needs about $420. If you could help keep her on this race I know it would mean the world to her (literally). God is not done with her here! She has so much more to give and to experience! Just go to: kaleenaeichstadt.theworldrace.org and hit the support me link on the left!
