The world’s been at it again. The old man’s been dancing the puppet strings, hauling out the scissors here and there. Yesterday, some 200 people were lost when a commercial airliner, landing at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, skidded off the end of a runway in a torrential downpour before smashing across a busy road and slamming into fuel depot and warehouse. All 186 souls aboard the plane, crew included, were killed, and a further 14 in their cars on the road that the plane traversed or attempting to leap out of the windows of the TAM Airlines building that the plane eventually hit.

On the other side of the world, in the war torn and arid Sudanese region of Darfur, scientists from Boston University believe that they may have found a massive underground lake that could provide up to 1,000 fresh water wells. Being that access to fresh water has been a significant factor in the region, the discovery could go a long way to aiding those dispossessed – over 2 million people. Now there’s just the little problem of the Janjiweed militias to contend with, who’ve been largely responsible for creating the genocidal conditions in Darfur in the first place, not to mention the actions of the UDFF and CAR forces that have only intensified the problem.

The United Nations believes that over 400,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict, with some 2 million having been driven from their homes.

Put into context, that would be like the population of my home town, Coquitlam, which, as of 2006, was estimated at 114,500 people, simply disappearing. Were the same rule applied to the City of Surrey, BC, only 55,000 people would remain.

Imagine, if you will, getting in a car at Coquitlam’s City Hall, now located down by Lafarge Lake, and driving through Coquitlam, up over Blue Mountain, and down the south slope to the Cape Horn bypass, crossing the Port Mann Bridge, and driving all the way to White Rock, encountering no traffic until reaching the south side of the Fraser River, and prior to that not coming across a living soul.

Now, remove the forests and the rivers, the running water in the houses that you pass, the parks and public pools, the convenience stores and gas stations, and even the roads themselves, and replace them all with an arid desert that reaches temperatures of above 40 degrees on a routine basis.

Put into context the problems that arose, and the complaints from Vancouver residents, caused by the heat wave that recently gripped the city. Remove from that experience the access to the ocean, to lakes, to swimming pools, to electricity, to powered fans, and to air conditioning. Remove from it the use of that weather to get a tan at the beach or sit on fashionable patios sipping on refreshing drinks, and replace it with the reality that, at any time, members of an armed militia could come upon you, kill members of your family, rape your mothers and sisters, and drive you out into the wilderness to either be killed by the elements, disease caused by numerous factors, or starvation.

The United Nations Security Council has been of little effect when it comes to confronting the problem in Darfur. The Chinese and Russians have blocked attempts to properly hold the government in Khartoum accountable, primarily because the Chinese, for example, do a considerable amount of business with Sudan, be it to do with oil exports of the sale of arms. And while the Bush administration has condemned the government there, and been forthright enough to categorize what is transpiring in Darfur as genocide, they are currently, in cooperation with the Sudanese government, using Sudanese nationals to infiltrate Salafi Jihadi extremist groups in Iraq.

Today, no matter where you are in the Lower Mainland, get in your car and drive to Coquitlam City Hall. Drive down Pine Tree and take a right on to the Barnet Highway. Drive down it and then hang a left on Mariner Way. Drive up it and take a right on to Como Lake and follow it until you come to Linton and hang a left. Drive down Linton until you reach Austin and hang another left. Follow it for a few blocks and then hang a right on Mundy. Follow Mundy south until you hit Cape Horn. And when you get there, find a place to pull over and look across the river.

Having done so, imagine that during that entire drive you saw no one, passed no one, and that on the other side of that river, and that congested bridge, there are 50,000 people, many of them orphans, many eldery - all in the process of fleeing towards Langley…

…on foot.