COMMENTARY: Africa Can’t Be Ignored

c. 2000 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is the author of five books and the mother of two children.) (UNDATED) Last week an American journalist was killed in the West African nation of Sierra Leone. By all accounts Kurt Schork was a highly respected correspondent and a really nice guy. He was doing the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the author of five books and the mother of two children.)

(UNDATED) Last week an American journalist was killed in the West African nation of Sierra Leone.


By all accounts Kurt Schork was a highly respected correspondent and a really nice guy. He was doing the job he had chosen to do, knowing well the risks involved in reporting on a war without rules.

Some of the obituaries described him as loving the thrill of front-line action. Most alluded to the fact that he became so immersed in the situations he covered he became almost obsessed with the stories he had to tell.

Judging by the way Schork was described by friends and colleagues, he would probably find the coverage of his death an ironic twist on how he spent his life. His own obituary grabbed more attention and claimed almost as much coverage as the deaths of thousands upon thousands in Sierra Leone.

Kurt Schork was one of the few journalists willing to go into one of the worst situations on the face of the earth and try to convey to those of us in our tidy houses just how untidy the world can be. No one knows all of his motivations, but at least part of what he was trying to do was wake us up to what was happening to our neighbors.

Neighbors is how Schork would have wanted us to think of the mutilated people in Sierra Leone. Not people so different that we have no interest in their plight except to gasp at the horrible sight of children without limbs before we move on to something more pleasant.

My guess is that Schork came to understand what peacekeepers and relief workers and journalists the world over have come to understand: Americans are not so different from West Africans or any other group of people.

It is an unsettling thought to most Americans who like to think we are somehow beyond the barbarism that seems to affect so much of the world. It is especially difficult for Americans to identify with the problems of Africans.


Some see this as evidence of racism. Others say the problems of African nations are too complex to explain to sound-bite loving Americans.

Whatever the reasons, despite the work of Schork and other reporters, Americans give surprisingly little thought to the plights of those in Sierra Leone or Ethiopia or the Sudan or any other African country. This continental denial is something that may serve our generation but imperils our own children.

AIDS is devastating Africa. Civil wars are further dividing nations. Oil, diamonds and other natural resources are fueling destabilizing foreign interests. Meanwhile, the world is getting ever smaller through advances in transportation and communications.

Can we really believe that turning our backs will simply make the problems of Africa go away?

We may be able to avoid dealing with a country like Sierra Leone for now, but chances are our children will have to cope not only with its problems, but also explain their parents’ indifference to them.

So far America has refused to become involved in Sierra Leone because _ like so many other countries in Africa _ it is not in our national interest. But how long can Americans see images of limbless children without wondering where our national interests begin? How long can we shield our own children from the reality they will inherit?


It is a tragedy that an American journalist was killed last week. But it is an even greater tragedy that for all of his reporting, Americans in general still care so little about the problems of Africa.

The greatest tragedy of all is the problems we are deferring to our own children who, undoubtedly, will not have the ability to turn their backs on an entire continent.

DEA END BOURKE

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