Not on Our Watch (4 page)

Still, I was as nervous as a sinner in a Sunday service.

‘Let’s go smoke a cigarette, Sophie. This is ... ’

‘Too right.’

We stepped into the lobby and did our best to smoke and not care, but we failed miserably, comparing notes on the audience’s reaction and rushing back in, our being outside of the screening proving harder than being in. We braved the remainder of the film with me almost chewing a hole in my bottom lip the entire time.

In the box next to Terry, Sophie, and me sat Paul and Tatiana, hard to read, quiet and reserved, their behaviour, even now as their lives played out on screen, consistent with what I had come to know over the last year. During our time together I would often watch Paul and Tatiana when they weren’t looking, checking for signs of post-traumatic stress to break through their pleasant veneers. But I only ever caught the aftershocks of their horrific experience rising to the surface twice: once while they were watching the actors who portrayed the Interahamwe (a Hutu militia) rehearsing their parade at our base camp and then again at our first cast/crew party.

During rehearsals, Paul and Tatiana had been asked by Terry to observe the Interahamwe parade to ensure the authenticity of the scene. Drawn by the drums and singing, Sophie and I made our way to the narrow road outside to watch as well. I stood next to Paul, who again was a cipher, quietly watching, though it quickly became clear that Tatiana wasn’t comfortable with the demonstration. After only a few moments of the processional’s passing, she shook her head, saying, ‘I can’t, I can’t ...’ and retreated inside. Paul stayed behind, his lips almost imperceptibly moving, quietly muttering to himself. The actor in me was burning to ask him what specifically he was feeling, but it felt too rude at that time. Paul spoke up without prodding.

‘It looks very good,
hey
? Very real.’

‘Um ... yeah ...’ was all I could muster. Paul had opened the door, but I was still too cautious to step through.

Then Paul was shaking his head and saying, ‘I don’t like it. It is hard to watch.’

But watch it we did as it passed by, South African, Burundian, and even Rwandan extras singing songs of intimidation and Hutu dominance. (We later learned that some of the members of the parade were actual members of the Interahamwe who had participated in the genocide of 1994. No wonder it looked so real.)

The second time I witnessed how close it all was to the surface for Paul and Tatiana was a few days later at our cast/crew party. Antonio Lyons, the actor playing Tatiana’s brother (and nearest in resemblance to his character out of all of us), came up to her full of enthusiasm, introducing himself: ‘I’m Thomas!’ Tatiana burst into tears, as if the ten years since the deaths of her sibling and his wife had not passed. It took a half hour to calm Tatiana down and persuade her to rejoin the party. To her credit, and a testament to her and Paul’s resilience, they were soon dancing with the rest of us—all outward signs of sorrow gone, which is the way I remember them 99% of the time—pleasant, open, and happy. Paul and Tatiana, along with Odette Nyiramilimo and Jean Baptiste Gasasira, two of their closest friends in Rwanda at the time, survivors of one of the worst massacres in human history, shared their stories with us freely and more often than not displayed a gentle kindness and a genuine love for life that I initially didn’t expect from survivors of such horrors. I expected much more rancour, bitterness, a desire for revenge even. In retrospect, however, I have come to understand another equally natural reaction to their tragedy—relishing every moment and celebrating life.

As the final credit rolled over the screen to Wyclef Jean’s song, the crowd began clapping very enthusiastically. Sophie and I were grinning from ear to ear. I looked over to Paul and Tatiana. Their expression was the same as it had been at the top of the screening: a cipher. Terry jumped up quickly and moved to the edge of the box, waving his arms at the crowd for them to quiet down. It took a minute, but finally they calmed to hear what he had to say.

‘Thank you, thank you ... I just wanted to say that we have special guests here, the two people whose lives were featured in the film tonight, Paul and Tatiana Rusesabagina.’

I’ve never witnessed a four-minute standing ovation before. I’ve been in a two-minute and changer before that was really more like two minutes, ten seconds strong, with the last ten being a mix of polite the-performers-can-still-see-you applause and people making for the aisle. This was not that. When Paul and Tatiana raised their joined hands, the crowded house literally threw its applause and shouts toward the two. They both stood there politely soaking it in, framed by the spotlight from the front, outlining them in a very fitting halo when viewed from behind. After about two minutes (
real
60-second minutes—time it for yourself; it’s long), in a completely unplanned gesture, Paul reached over and took my hand, Tatiana found Sophie’s, and they pulled us both into their spotlight. I didn’t know quite what to do. I was embarrassed to have been brought into a moment that was so clearly a display of affection and gratitude meant for Paul and Tatiana, but I knew of no way to remove my hand from Paul’s without looking like an ungracious jerk. The feeling of having that much concentrated energy pouring out at you is hard to describe. My emotions ran the entire gamut over the next minute I stood next to Paul feeling small. The overriding sensation I had, however, was one of joy for Paul and Tatiana finally seeing their story on the big screen and knowing that even if only these few hundred gathered here witnessed it, the tale was told. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore and sheepishly backed out of there waving to the people whose applause didn’t subside for another full,
real
minute.

Our film was quickly picked up by an overseas distributor and everyone was talking about February: Oscar season. I started getting calls from the US, from people who had heard the buzz and couldn’t wait to see the film, including a congressman from Orange County, Ed Royce, who believed
Hotel Rwanda
could be a rallying point around which to draw attention to the recent troubles in Darfur.
Darfur? Where’s that? There’s genocide occurring there as well?
Then closely on the heels of the question, I got that feeling again, coming more sharply into focus. I am far from done with Africa. Or was it Africa that wasn’t yet done with me?

December 2004

Los Angeles, California

I met with Congressman Ed Royce at an MGM screening, and he invited me to join a congressional delegation travelling to Darfur to see firsthand the fallout from the weekly attacks by the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed on the civilians of western Sudan. Ed proposed that we visit refugee camps and speak with local government leaders as well as members of a far too minimal and largely ineffectual African Union security force. Despite coming together to protect the refugees in and around the camps, the AU’s toothless mandate prevented them from using force against the marauders, relegating them to little more than observers, reporting to the UN about incidents they could do nothing to stop. And all of these incidents occurred in an area roughly the size of Texas that the AU’s 2,000 or so members were far too few to adequately patrol.

On the face of it, the situation looked hopeless and I was not exactly sure why I was being asked along. I mean, I understood that being a ‘celebrity’ (still feels ridiculous to refer to myself as one) carries with it the ability to draw the public’s attention to various issues, but this wasn’t promoting the hottest new hip-hop artist or fashion line we’re talking about, this was bearing witness to murder on a mass scale. What could I do to stem this current tide of oppression that ranking members of Congress on both sides of the aisle had been unable to stem? All I did was act in a movie. However, I agreed to go, apprehensive about what I might see but relieved to finally identify what had been eating at me all this time. I was about to get ‘involved’.

January 2005

Washington, DC

The CODEL (congressional delegation) flies first thing tomorrow morning, but tonight is spent with my sister Cindy out and about in DC. I don’t get to see her very often to my great regret, as her busy teaching schedule and my sporadically busy filming schedule are in heavy competition. Cindy is older by 13 months and funnier, smarter, and wiser than me by about 13 years. We have lived on opposite sides of the country now for about ten years, though she spent approximately one year in LA with my family in a failed ‘nanny’ experiment—a job too small for her many talents. Cindy also spent that year alternately teaching at a local school and tutoring elementary school students, several of them with special learning challenges. I love it when I’m tooling around town and get stopped by someone who I believe to be a fan and it turns out to be a parent of one of these children who could care less about me but heaps praise on my sister for the work she’s done with their child. That’s a
real
review.

After about an hour of meandering due to indecision—a Cheadle family trait—we settle on Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Over drinks we discuss our very busy separate lives, Africa in general, and Darfur specifically.

‘What are you going to do when you’re out there?’

‘Visit several refugee camps, meet with some of the displaced leaders there as well as the AU. The congressmen and women are then going on to Khartoum to sit down with some government officials, but John and I are going to stay back on the Sudan-Chad border. Paul Rusesabagina is going too.’

‘That’s cool. What’s your goal?’

‘Well, to get a firsthand account of what is happening there from the people suffering from it every day. Hopefully, we can then put our collective minds and the congressmen and-women’s collective powers together to come up with some kind of strategy to present to the current administration that will stem the tide of this genocide.’

My sister, God love her, never really one to play her cards close to her vest, gives me a look filled with both scepticism and sympathy. She and I are both aware that this particular battle will probably be fought uphill in a rainstorm with boots made of papier-mâché.

‘Well, at least we can give the people there a forum to air their troubles. And with
Nightline
tagging along, we can document their stories and put those all-too-ignored words and pictures in front of an American audience.’

She’s still unconvinced, so I go on.

‘You never know what will move people to respond. However hard it is, we still have to try to add our light to the sum of light.’

‘Wow.’ Impressed now. ‘The first part was kind of extra but I like that “sum of light” thing.’

I admit to her that I stole the phrase from the film
The Year of Living Dangerously,
and I can’t remember if they stole it or who they stole it from. She asks me if there’s anything she can do to help. Before I can answer, the waiter returns with our embarrassingly huge steaks, and the juxtaposition of these two medium-rare monsters with our conversation about genocide, famine, and poverty makes each bite a little difficult.

We soon shift into catch-up mode, and our talk begins to flow between family and friends, food and memories. But I’m just a little behind the whole time, words and thoughts not coming to me very easily. I’m stuck back on Africa and my papier-mâché boots.

When US Congressman Ed Royce first suggested the Africa trip, I thought it would be an amazing opportunity to smell, touch, and feel what I had only read about or seen on TV and in movies. And though that specific opportunity hadn’t changed, my sister’s scepticism was eating at me. The possibility that we could travel many thousands of miles in an attempt to make a difference, yet return no closer to realising our goals than when we left, hadn’t ever seriously occurred to me. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not Pollyanna-ish about how things work in the world. I wasn’t expecting instantaneous results in Sudan simply because the CODEL was making this expedition with Don Cheadle along for the ride. But the idea that we could make a very concerted effort for change and fail anyway, the spectre of it, threatened to push me from being a pessimist to being a fatalist, letting me permanently off the hook. Looking at that nearly made me sick. It was scarier to me than doing nothing at all.

I’d always hurt for Africa and her tortured past/present. Even if one had only cursory knowledge of the continent, you’d know that it is rife with stories of civil war, famine, and disease. Being a black man, I had always carried a fair amount of guilt, justifiably or not, for not having done a great deal more than I had for the motherland. But up until now, my perceived powerlessness had protected me. It buffered me from ever feeling too bad about my inaction when a call from the televangelists arose or when an invitation to a $5,000-a-plate dinner for Africa-related issue X came across my desk yet found its way into my circular file. Africa’s woes were overwhelming—far too big for me to grapple with. I imagine there are many like-minded individuals experiencing the longing to ‘do something’ for Africa but feeling too small to effect any real change given the scope of the continent’s problems. Others I’m sure have shared my scepticism regarding the conduits through which donations flow, having heard accounts of disreputable organisations skimming off the top or worse—donated money, food, and supplies falling into the hands of the very criminals and warlords who created the grave need for assistance in the first place. And the question of where to start is overwhelming to ponder: Whose need is the greatest? Which country, which war, what issue?

Before, I would have put away the porterhouse in front of me in a heartbeat, guilt-free, no problem. Can’t do anything about it. Why worry? Let’s eat. Not so easy now. I grinned, chewed, and joked my way through dinner and kept it all to myself. This wasn’t guilt that was eating me up now; it was the resounding drum of ambivalence starting to pound in me.

Later that night I was trying to buy some hand-crank radios to deliver to the refugee camps so that the people could listen to their tunes and news stories without needing batteries or electricity. We tried a couple of sporting goods stores before we found some at REI, but they only had about 25 of them. There was no conceivable way that would be enough radios, but some was better than none. The store owner recognised me and talked loudly enough to draw the attention of his employees, who began questioning me about what I was buying and what I was doing in their neighbourhood. It gave me the perfect opportunity to talk about Darfur and our trip and what we were hoping to do. A few of the guys had seen
Hotel Rwanda
and were interested in what I had to say about how a place called Darfur was in an eerily similar situation, how it was definitely reminiscent of the reluctance to act on the part of the international community toward what had been officially declared a genocide. This discussion ran all the way through the boxing of the radios and the swiping of the card.