Blood Diamond

Blood Diamond let me in on a new perspective to Africa, and poor war-torn countries in general. So what do we think of whenever we mention Africa? Likely, it’ll be pictures of starving kids with bloated bellies and flies flying all around. It makes our heart feel a tinge of sadness. The generous ones would probably open their chequebook and donate some money over. It’ll probably makes us feel less bad and feel like we’ve done our part already.

The more noble ones would probably dream of becoming a humanitarian and help out in these war-torn countries when they graduate from school. I don’t deny that I’ve thought of becoming one such too. This is one of the quote that Leonardo Di Caprio’s character said to a journalist who was in Sierra Leone to do a cover story for a magazine.

You come here with your laptop computers, your malaria medicine and you little bottles of hand sanitizer and think you can change the outcome, huh?

The thought of becoming a humanitarian with all the noble causes are over-glamourised. Perhaps the feel-good factor of ‘having done my part by helping’ is the bigger driving factor. Perhaps it sounds good to have a caring job that is supposed to alleviate poverty. Yet at the end of the day, despite being on the same ground as these people, are we truly in their shoes? Do we truly understand and are able to help them at all?

And all the donations we give. How does it help the situation at all? Any chance of it ending up in the fat pockets of corrupted officials or be used in the civil wars by rebels? Well, money is everything ain’t it? It helps to curb starvation yeah? But with civil war so rampant, and lives being lost to gunfire and stray ammunitions, ain’t death due to starvation a rarity in itself actually?

Too many of these questions started flooding my mind after watching this brilliant film. Too many of those that begs answers that probably no human being can answer. Only God knows.

This line below, I wept. What they needed more is probably peace than money or food.

Danny Archer (Leonardo Di Caprio): Sometimes I wonder… will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other? Then I look around and I realize… God left this place a long time ago.

I wonder how can I help. I wonder if my help will change the situation at all. And I wonder there will ever be peace in this lifetime. A film like this might change my opinion about diamonds, the same way how a national geographic documentary will change someone’s attitude towards eating sharkfins. Yet the same question with no answer begs: how does it help and has anything changed??

…the people back home wouldn’t buy a ring if they knew it cost someone else their hand.

Yet at the end of the day, I’m sitting at the comfort of my armchair, typing at the luxury of my laptop. Pathetic, contradicting, helpless cynic asking rheotorical questions.

November 4, 2007

Posted in Leben.