Meeting a Hero

Many times in my classes, students would ask me whom I considered to be a modern day hero. Someone to look up to like Martin Luther King Jr. or Oscar Schindler. As the years wore on, it became harder and harder for me to come up with a living human being whom embodied the qualities that I would consider heroic. That is, until I began to teach about the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

The hero who arose from that horrific event is a flawed, human hero who, under unimaginable stress and conditions did the best he could to save as many people as he could while battling a bureaucratic nightmare that essentially crippled any effective actions he could have made. His name is General Romeo Dallaire; he was the leader of the United Nations mission to Rwanda and effectively had his hands tied by said organization forcing him to stand by and watch as 800,000 ++ people were slaughtered in 100 days. Yet, I consider him a hero.

Dallaire did have choices; in Holocaust Education, we call them "choiceless choices". Either way, the outcome is bad. Yes, he could have disobeyed orders. How easy is that to do for a man of integrity who had given his oath to the military? So he obeyed and stood down. The orders he received from his superiors forbade his troops to actively interfere in the genocide unless they were being directly attacked. So he stood down. For that, he has been condemned in some circles. The man who returned from Rwanda has his own demons to battle.

He details those demons in his third book, Waiting for First Light. His first book, Shake Hands With  the Devil told the harrowing story of the events that unfolded in Rwanda from April to July 1994. He was particularly impacted by the use of child soldiers by both sides in the genocide which led to his second book, They Fight Soldiers; They Die Like Children, a powerful treatise exposing the enormity of the problem. This led to the establishment of The Dallaire Initiative for Child Soldiers based out of Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS. In his third book, however, we meet the human being who has to live with the horrors that he witnessed and the toll that PTSD has taken on his life. I respected him immensely before I read this book; his personal struggles and his honesty in sharing them only increased that respect.

So, I was thrilled when two of my students ended up working with the Dallaire Initiative. Allyssa got a summer position which has been indefinitely extended and Reeves took part in the training to be able to negotiate to get child soldiers released. Most of the people who take this training are former Veterans, so he was the youngest one in his class.

Just before I went to Kenya, I was able to attend two lectures being given by the Dallaire Initiative. The first one was on Child Soldiers; the second was on Peace Keeping in the 21st C. I was a bit star struck to finally hear the General speak in person, and so proud of Allyssa and Reeves; I was a bit like a giddy school girl. But this was the first time I had ever met someone that I really believed modeled qualities that we need so badly in our world today: humility, integrity, compassion, stubbornness, dedication, critical thinking and the ability to overcome tremendous personal issues to go on and create something to better the world. I met him briefly after the first lecture; I guess I was a bit over eager to shake his hand because upon my formal introduction to him after the second lecture,

                              


he recalled me as the "lady who accosted him", fortunately with a good humoured twinkle in his eye. He is an amazing person, role model and now mentor to two of my "minions" I believe that being involved in this Initiative has shown Allyssa where her passion, and hopefully, her future lies. Reeves has so many doors open to him, he can take his pick of one or several! And I got to meet a modern day hero!