Inspiration Amid Exhaustion

Here it is nearly 11:00 pm, and I'm tired and plain worn out from the past week.  I'm still getting over a nasty cold, work is busy, and I'm juggling several charity projects, all amazing and also another reason why I'm tired, mentally. 

Photo by Marcus Bleasdale (source)

But, now my mind is abuzz after reading the October 2013 National Geographic which features the work of Marcus Bleasdale, a photographer who has been capturing the conflict in eastern Congo for over a decade.  This article compels me to get out of my cozy bed, boot up my computer and pound this out, because it's the only way my mind will ever find enough peace to call it a night. 

I'm inspired, and feel a kindred spirit in Mr. Bleasdale:

"When I first went to the Congo, I realized that a hundred years after Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, nothing has changed.  People were still being exploited, only now it was multinational corporations sucking up all the resources.  A report in 2004 said that more than four million people had died in what is now called Africa's first world war, and I just couldn't believe that no one was talking about this horrific death toll.  That enraged me.  At one point I was spending eight months a year photographing this war, and yet only a couple of international reporters were covering it from Kinshasa.  So I keep bringing back these images because I want to make people as angry as I am.  I want them to know the minerals in our mobile phones or computers or cameras are funding violence.  How can we make the horror stop?  It begins with a photograph." ~October 2013 National Geographic

And, so thank you Mr. Bleasdale for so eloquently explaining why it is that the Congo has changed my life.  I simply cannot bear to live in a world where nearly 6 million people can die, seemingly unnoticed, simply because their blessing is a curse, and where I am an inadvertent cause for the continued curse. Indeed, I want to live in a world where living in one of the most mineral rich regions in the world doesn't mean that you must live amid horrific violence. 

I am honored and humbled to be a part of a movement sweeping across the country, and in fact across the world, to shine a bright light on the situation in Congo, because the fact is that, "...your laptop--or camera or gaming system or gold necklace--may have a smidgen of Congo's pain somewhere in it." (October 2013 National Geographic)

And so, no matter how tired I become at times, I will persist on, and keep working to highlight the beauty of Congo, and to educate others as to the horrors which threaten to snuff out this beauty.