Wall Street

First, I'd like to begin by saying I had an amazing time in Manhattan! With the exception of my sister's wedding, they were the best five days of my life. There wasn't a single moment I regretted going. Thank you to everyone who went, you are all amazing! Thank you to Ross and Morag, and also to Colin for everything he did organisation-wise in Liverpool. New York is an awesome place and I can't wait to go back -- there's so many things left to do!

I've been trying for days to write a decent blog entry. I've given up. What follows is only a brief description of a scene I witnessed on the Friday. Feel free to draw your own meanings and significances from the scene I describe.

After we had got back from Ellis Island, we went down Wall Street. Most, if not all of us, were there. No district of Manhattan is the same as another, and the financial district is no exception to the rule. I really enjoyed walking down there, among all the tightly built skyscrapers. The blustery wind was threatening to seize control of the umbrella Ruth lent me, but we battled on. I love the architecture of the Trump Building in particular:


Not far past the Trump Building, there was a worn out, scruffy, homeless women. I didn't get a good look at her, but she appeared dazed and confused, lost in her thoughts and her bewilderment, disorientated by her fear and drowning in the skyscrapers all around. She stumbled on by us, struggling to walk.

Did anyone else notice this women?

All the major economies of our world look to Wall Street, to the New York Stock Exchange, to the financial district of Manhattan -- they all look because it's the financial district of the developed world. And there's a broken women there. With no where to go. With nothing to eat. With no home to go to. And no bed to sleep in. Wall Street cannot accommodate for this women.

All I can do is make assumptions based upon what I saw. I don't know that women's background, and I don't know the stories behind every self-made man walking down Wall Street. But I saw a homeless women stumbling down Wall Street. That remains the most important most significant thing I saw in New York.

Everything I saw and experienced in New York has a degree of realism. Everything has a characteristic of some sort which made it 'real' to me. Even this:

What I saw reminded me of what Bob Dylan sang:
There's a-mighty many people all millin' all around,
They'll kick you when you're up and knock you when you're down.
It's hard times in the city,
Livin' down in New York town.
This song is also an absolute choon and everyone should have a listen (it's somewhere in the depths of Blackboard).

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

A Correction Regarding The Post "Genocide: Fergal Keane's Account"

My instinct that Fergal Keane was, in the chapter 'Limits' shielding his reader from the true horrors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide have been proved correct, for in the following chapter 'Valentina', his descriptions are far more shocking.

He describes in thorough detail the events in the (predominantly Hutu) town of Nyarubuye, where a corrupt leader (Mr. Gacumbitsi) promises the Tutsis protection if they gather in the church, before ordering the slaughter. Horrifying. But two factors make this an effective piece of writing.

Firstly, this particular narrative is personalised through familiarisation with a girl called Valentina. Suddenly the people being massacred in the church have names, relations, souls. I shall spare the gory details.

Secondly, the truly shocking parts are told to us in quotation marks by Valentina. They are presented as her words. She is eight years old, with her head hacked open as she has to live among the rotting corpses of the church for four weeks. If she leaves, Gacumbitsi will slaughter her, she being the only Tutsi to survive in the Nyarubuye church massacre. Believe me, I have spared you the gory details.

Half way through the chapter, Keane goes through a transformation from journalist to philanthropist. He is deeply moved by the state he finds Valentina in. She is couped up in a makeshift clinic, her hand bandaged where she no longer has fingers, and something else I cannot bring myself to describe. He is deeply saddened. he wouldn't be human if he wasn't angry by what he saw.

But he gives her no chance. She will die. There aren't the treatments there in rural Rwanda to save her. She will die.

Two and a half years later, Keane is back in Rwanda, and he heads straight for Nyarubuye. The miracle of miracles has happened -- Valentina was taken to the capital where a foreign doctor carried out the procedure to save her life. By the end of the day, he has met up with her again. By the time he has to leave, she is sad to see him leave. He says he will stay in contact, and he does. He still keeps in touch with Valentina, who by now is a beautiful young women, with high hopes of becoming a doctor herself.

If every foreign journalist who had covered war zones kept in touch with every injured women or child they came across, they would have more friends than anyone else in the world. it is a fact that John Simpson, probably the most experienced and most travelled of any BBC hack ever, has tried to not get 'involved' with the stories he covers, but he still has friends scattered across the face of the Earth. Fergal Keane's pleasure in seeing Valentina go from being needy survivor to aspiring doctor emphasises no reasonable man's occupation can ever get the better of him. Humanity always comes before work.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright