Safari So Goody Day...Um I forget.

     After our exhausting trek through the bush yesterday, my faithful guide Paula and I decided that this would be a very good day to stay at base camp and rest up for the rest of this expedition on the morrow.  I figured that the day of rest would give me a chance to catch up on my notes and give my guide a chance to get some much needed and deserved rest.
     Much to my amazement, Paula awoke before me and went in search of forage for us to eat.  She returned with a few bits of bread that she traded a local for and some well cured and very delicious wild pig.  I tried very hard to convey my gratitude despite the language barriers that stand between us.  I am hopeful that my clumsy attempts at thanking her were interpreted correct.
     Now as I sit here trying to organize my notes, I am struck by the extremely militant and often warlike history of this strange land.  Almost every trail or village here bears a name that resounds with the beat of drums and the clash of arms.  Battlefields of almost unimaginable size and devastation dot the landscape and pretty much everyone here has some story about some ancestor that fought there.
     War in any form no matter the justification for it, is a horrible thing.  Brothers fight brothers and man dies by the thousands as blood flows over the trampled earth.  So, if war is so horrible and we fear it so then I have to wonder why we struggle so hard to commemorate so many aspects of it.  We carve monuments to the maimed dead and treat the places where they died with a solemnity that most do not give to places of worship.  If war is so horrible, one might wonder why we try to hard to remember it.
      Part of the answer might lie in the old quote, "Those who do not remember the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them."  Some might argue that we, as a race, are violent and cruel so we honor the scenes of the greatest blood shed  I think the answer might lie in a much simpler direction.
     We remember the wars and the horrible battles that took place as a way of honoring those who fell there.  We carve stone monuments to let us remember that so many sacrificed everything to keep our lands free.  We guard an unnamed tomb to remember that so many never made it back and so many will never be known for their sacrifice.
     In the end, we should never honor war.  War is a bloody and violent thing that any civilized man or woman should always work their hardest to stop from ever happening.  However, we should always do everything we can to remember that when war does come, many good men and women have and will lay down their lives.  WE MUST NEVER FORGET.

End of rant