United: Nations, Faiths, and Futures

After a morning presentation on the place of Switzerland within yet outside of Europe, we met the venerable Genevois fount of knowledge, Monsieur Patané, at the Red Cross Red Crescent Museum. The United Nations plaza vaunts its place with pride and pomp, yet the mesmerizing focus of the mall is the Chair.

It is literally so big as to be invisible. I read its message, photographed it, and long after actually saw the Chair. This is a word play of the gravest sort that can not escape the bilingual visitor. The Chair stands on three legs, the fourth shattered, splintered, amputated. It stands as a mute testimony to the victims of landmines globally, the innocent collateral damage left by the warriors gone off to bloody battlefields elsewhere, leaving behind a Hansel and Gretel trail of mutilating munitions.

In French “chair” means flesh. The Chair bears witness mutely, following us with its imposing presence long after leaving its shadow.


Our winding way through the gardens of the Ariana Ceramic Museum is overhung with magnificent magnolias. Simply awesome, fragrant, enormous, a pathway lined with blooms, humming with bees, sweet with fragrance.


























And then the museum of the Red Cross Red Crescent looms on the hill above us. The new wing of the museum has a quiet marker, trod on to the point of effacement, where Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Gorbachev presided at the laying of the first stone. Overhead the red cross and crescent offer a protective shelter; the need for two symbols brings tension to the task.













Standing as if waiting their turn to enter are The Petrified. Plaque hidden behind them, these faceless victims of global injustice mutely discomfit the tourist. They appear again outside the cafeteria, waiting their turn quietly at the information desk. Unnerving in every way, they speak for those with no voice. It is a powerful witness.













The museum itself, on the contrary, cries out with the passionate power of human compassion and righteousness in the face of inhumanity. Epidemics of typhus, plague, cholera. Wars of succession, rebellion, aggression. Genocide. Documented with photographs, film, documents, instruments, files, and met with the staunch courage of human pity. Nurses under fire, doctors in the trenches, drivers on the battlefield, carrying the wounded, administering medication, bandaging, and touching. Holding a hand, caressing a brow, offering the support of a shoulder.

It seems to me that the visitor here has a choice, a point of view that in effect governs one’s view of one’s role in humanity: to see the suffering, the gaunt agony, the anguish of the grieving, the overwhelming flood of disaster, disease, and destruction, and to turn away scarred, grieving, shedding tears of horror, but turning away Or to reach out to the suffering, to see the hurt and want to heal it, to roll up sleeves and wade in, looking for the task appointed you.

The museum opens with a display of human value for saving life across cultures and time periods in writing and in action. Models of this choice gaze at the visitors: Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton, Nicolai Pirogov, Henri Dunant. This place reinforces for me once again, as have so many of the sites of this summer’s travels, the reasons I have to join in the effort to bring Congolese schools into the global conversation with my students. We each have windows open before us, paths to take or ignore, chances to make a difference in the world we live and leave. My short visit here has clarified for me the task set before me, small as it may be in comparison with the heroism enshrined here.

My afternoon free sent me to the movies – no way I’m going to pay $17.50, so that’s out! – to the bookstore where I limited my take to 3 skinny storybooks and 2 fat children’s collections for school and for this project (but at Swiss prices – yikes) and then to the Cathedral where I hoped to visit the Roman archeological site. Closed 20 minutes before I got there, so it goes on my list of next time sites. Looking in the cathedral for the elusive WC, I found instead this chapel, simply stunning in the richness of the decor, a flood of color, light, warmth, an embrace of medieval faith. Restorative.

As was dinner on my own, courtesy of the Swiss government, in a simply wonderful restaurant in the old city, Les Armures, actually the choice of President and Mrs. Clinton during their visit here. A fine meal, lovely service, diverse diners, and a good book.