Keep The Peace



International Day of Peace

This is a special day,

not a crazy day.

 

The 21^st of September

is International Day of Peace.

The United Nations established

this day in 1981 and it was

first celebrated in 1982.

Here, in Australia,

a plane flying overhead

is not frightening…

no bombs are being dropped. 

 Kids have the freedom t

o receive a good education

and our roads are free of landmines.

 Not everyone is as lucky.

I’ve walked through

the tiny tunnels in Vietnam,

and wondered how the local people

 lived in them for so many years…

 I wandered through Aki Ra’s

landmine museum in Cambodia

and heard of the amazing work

he does, clearing landmines

every day

with very primitive equipment.

 Red Hands taught me about

the induction of children

into armed gangs,

where they are supplied drugs

 until their addiction ensures they

 remain with their captives.

I’ve wandered the streets

of Northern Ireland,

and seen the remains

of overnight battles.

I’ve seen fear and worry

in the eyes of children

from war zones

and heard their incredible stories.

 Sometimes, it’s good to be serious…

 

International Day of Peace is also

Global Ceasefire Day.

This day allows everyone,

everywhere to have a day away

 from violence.

It is hoped war and conflict

 can cease for a day…

and relief workers can finally reach

 areas they are otherwise

unable to get to. 

People in these areas can be

 provided with the care

and supplies they need.

 They can enjoy a day

free from the drone and whistle

of falling bombs

and the sound of gunfire.

 

A few facts and figures on

The Impact of War

2 million children…

killed in conflict

in the last ten years.

(That’s almost ten times

 my town’s population

killed each year… all children.)

Over a million children

have been left orphaned…

(and many then fall into Child Gangs,

 where lives are filled with killing

 and mixed drugs

or are abandoned

and left to scavenge

for food on rubbish tips.)

Over 6 million kids have been

seriously injured

or have been left

with permanent disabilities

or scarring.

Many of these children have no

 access to the equipment

and resources our children receive

 to assist with their disabilities.

Over ten million children

are left with serious

psychological trauma

after living through conflict.

They are just children…

they were unlucky enough

 to be born in dangerous places.

Conflicts cost us in other ways…

 environmentally – the hills of Vietnam

 are still struggling to overcome

the effects of napalm…

Women are often abused and raped

during times of conflict…

Financially, conflicts are expensive…

And, carelessly dropped

and forgotten war equipment

 and weapons can lead to

 further damage – especially

when children try to sell these

 for scrap metal

and lose limbs from explosions.

I almost feel like I am in

 a beauty contest…

“and, I want world peace!”

I’d love to see a day

where no battles were fought…

imagine.

Today is also

World Gratitude Day.

I’m grateful to live

in such a beautiful country.

Pictures from the

International Day of Peace

facebook page.

 

40 Years Ago... The World Was Burning

40 years ago,

a little girl ran down the street...

40 years ago,

a village was burned...

40 years ago,

napalm was dumped on the villagers...

40 years ago,

a photographer was on a road,

as children ran, screaming past...

40 years ago,

this photo was taken:

The little girl

ran past the photographer. 

 She was naked

because the napalm

had burned the clothes

from her back. 

 She ran past the photographer

and collapsed. 

He carefully picked her

off the road

and carried her to a hospital.

  It was claimed she was too ill

 and would die. 

 The photographer flashed

his American press identification

and demanded she be treated. 

 And so, the little girl, lived.

Ut, the photographer

and Kim Phuc,

the girl he photographed

are still in contact.

Her webpage is here.

40 years ago today...

ANZAC - Lest We Forget

Anzac Day 

Australian & New Zealand

Army Corps

They shall grow not old...
as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them,
nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun,
and in the morning,
we will remember them.

A beautiful story,

told to most primary children

during Anzac Day discussions

 is that of

 Jack Simpson Kirkpatrick

and his donkey. 

Born in England, he fought as an Aussie soldier, dropping the Kirkpatrick from his name.  He was a field ambulance stretcher bearer and carried wounded soldiers from the field... And then he saw the donkey.  For 24 days, Jack and the donkey walked back and forth over the battlefields, whistling and carrying the wounded, bullets swiping the air around them. 

Every soldier knew him. 

He was their hero... 

Rightly so...

He rescued over 300 men. 

 (and yet, faulty paper-work

and red tape mean that

requests to award him

the Victoria Cross

have been denied.)

Anzac Day is a great day

for Anzac biscuits! 

Anzac biscuits are so good. 

 They would be cooked

with love by wives,

mothers and girlfriends

and placed into tin boxes. 

They would be sent to the war...

 and the soldiers would eat them,

 thinking of their

loved ones back home. 

 Amazingly,

the biscuits would still

be fresh!

(apologies - crooked photos!)

Recipe:

1 cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons boiling water
³/₄ cup desiccated coconut
1 cup sugar
1 cup plain flour

125g (4oz) butter
1¹/₂ teaspoons bicarbonate soda
1 tablespoon golden syrup

Combine rolled oats, sifted flour, sugar and coconut. Combine butter and golden syrup, stir over gentle heat until melted. Mix soda with boiling water, add to melted butter mixture, stir into dry ingredients.   Spoon dessert spoonfuls of mixture on to greased oven trays; allow room for spreading. Bake in slow oven 20 minutes. Cool on trays. Makes approx 36 biscuits.

Pictures from here, here and here.

Angelina's Speech makes 20

I completed my 20^th speech at Toastmasters tonight.  This was tonight’s speech – it won me another trophy. 

This was originally Angelina Jolie's opening speech to the 2009 World Refugee Day  -  talking about tales of survival of those people she met and who touched her life.

We're here today to talk about millions of desperate families – families so cut-off from civilization that they don't even know that a day like this exists on their behalf.  I am here today to say that refugees are not numbers. They’re not even just refugees. They are mothers and daughters and fathers and sons – they are farmers, teachers, doctors, engineers, they are individuals all. And most of all they are survivors – each one with a remarkable story that tells of resilience in the face of great loss. They are the most impressive people I have ever met and they are also some of the world's most vulnerable. Stripped of home and country, refugees are buffeted from every ill wind that blows across this planet.

I remember meeting a pregnant Afghani woman in a completely abandoned camp in Pakistan. She couldn't travel when everyone else was relocated because she was too late in her pregnancy. She was alone with her two children and another woman. There was nothing for miles around the camp – not a single tree, no other people in sight. So when they asked me to come in for tea I said I didn't feel it necessary. But being Afghans, they take pride in how they treat their guests so they insisted and they guided me into a small dirt house with no roof to keep out the scorching heat, and they dusted off the two old mats that they ate, slept and prayed on. We sat and we talked and they were just the loveliest women. And then with a few twigs and a single tin cup of water, they made the last of their tea and insisted on me to enjoy it.

Since before the parable of the Widow’s Mite, it has been known that those who have the least, will give the most. Most refugee families will offer you the only food they have and pretend they're not hungry. And the generosity of the poor applies not only to refugees. We should never forget that more than 80% of refugees are hosted, and have been for years and years, in the poorest developing countries.

Pakistan, a country now facing a crisis with over two million of its own people displaced, is still hosting 1.7 million Afghans and has hosted millions of Afghan families for nearly thirty years. I remember before we said good-bye to the pregnant lady she pointed to a young boy. He had a dusty face, the brightest green eyes I have ever seen but such a sad look.  She explained that he's always asking for more food. And it hurts her to say that they have nothing. And she asked if we would consider taking him, would we take her son so he could eat. And she said it with tears in her eyes and with such desperation. A desperation unimaginable to every parent in this room. A few weeks later, a war in Afghanistan began and heavy fighting started right where they were. I've been back to that region three times and I looked for them every time.

The threat of climate change, the competition for resources, and ever growing global inequality has created deepening intractable conflicts. Whether it be Darfur, Myanmar, or Swat Valley or some as yet unknown crisis. Mass migrations will be a feature of our future, and we must adjust to this living reality. And again I would urge you to look beyond the simple number and look instead at the individual.

I remember in Tanzania, I met a child in a tent. He sat on the dusty floor; he'd been shot in the back and left paralyzed. And he crawled forward to shake my hand.  He was no more than fifteen. He had big pretty eyes, a big wide sparkling smile, and after all he'd been through, he was full of laughter and love. Later that night I asked whether he'd been taken to a hospital or at least given a wheelchair and I was told that the boy's entire family had been killed so there was no one to look after him. And he'd not been accepted for asylum. And the aid worker said they’d spent the money they could but they didn't have any more. And I thought about him all night and I wondered what I should do. I walked through the camp and I saw more victims of war. I saw small children full of hunger and fear, crying mothers, wounded fathers. I saw a sea of humanity - all desperate, all deserving.

There are hundreds of thousands in that camp and there are millions around the world. And at that time I felt hopeless and overwhelmed by the realization of the magnitude of the problem. Later on that trip, I met an eight year old girl who had seen her family killed in front of her and she grabbed her baby brother and she ran into the jungle and survived, terrified and alone for two weeks. She managed to find bananas and feed herself and her brother. And when I met her she didn’t talk, she just walked back and forth and I kept trying to tell her how brave we thought she was. She just stared at the window. And a year later I came back to that same camp and I saw her again. She was still very shy but she was beginning to speak and she was sweet and polite but she still didn't care about me or visitors she just wanted to know how her brother was. He was with the doctors and she was just checking to make sure he would be okay. She was his mother now. That little girl had a depth and a strength that I will never know. And on that trip, and many that followed, I came to know refugees not only as the most vulnerable people on earth, but as the most resilient.

If you see the individual, you see the education and knowledge the refugees pass on to their children, because often, it is all they have to pass on. It is why it's so important that we give them education. If you see the individual, you see the contribution that can be made by refugees to their host countries and how important they will be to their own land when eventually they return.

In the last nine years I have made many visits to the field with UNFCR. I do it to raise awareness for the plight of refugees but I also do it for me. The refugees I have met and spent time with have profoundly changed my life. The eight-year-old girl who saved her brother taught me what it is to be brave. The pregnant woman in Pakistan taught me what it is to be a mother. And the paralyzed boy who had been shot in the back with his big smile showed me the strength of an unbreakable spirit. So today, on world refugee day, I thank them for letting me into their lives. And I thank you for coming.

(Watch Angelina's version on you tube.)

Woohoo!!

No Housework Day 

Ok, Ok...

this is Every day at my house!

  There is another day today.

  A much heavier day. 

 Today is Day of Remembrance

of the Victims

of the Rwanda Genocide. 

 In 1994, Rwanda was ripped apart. 

 In less than 100 days,

800 000 people (mostly Tutsis)

were slaughtered. 

Politicians and people with the power

to prevent the slaughters

were killed first. 

 People were killed in their homes...

 on the streets,

wherever they were hiding. 

Most were killed by machetes,

clubs or knives. 

It is estimated that about

200 000 people

were involved in the killings. 

Not only were women forced

to watch as their families

were killed, many were also raped

 and mutilated.

Most women who survived

 were either pregnant

or infected with HIV/AIDS (or both)

 as a result. 

This lady’s name is Odette. 

 Her son was born after multiple rapes. 

 She is also infected with HIV/AIDS. 

You might remember the movie:

 Hotel Rwanda, which tells the story

 of Paul Rusesabagina. 

He owned a hotel,

was married to a Tutsi

and had three children with her. 

During the 100 days of killings,

 Paul manage to provide refuge

for over a thousand Tutsi refugees

and his family. 

 Some people took refuge

inside churches. 

The Nyarubuye Roman Catholic Church

was shelter to thousands of Tutsis

 – until they were killed there. 

 Kathy Reich (think Bones)

was one of the forensic scientists

 who worked at naming the victims.

The bodies of the killed

were not allowed to be buried. 

 They were thrown into lakes,

 rivers and streams. 

They were left on the road

 and inside homes.  

 There’s no denying

that this is shocking.

  100 days of bloody violence,

death, rape and mutilation. 

 The Rwandan Genocide

is something which should

never be forgotten. 

Photos from here, here,

here and here.