Wilf Dinnick

Transcript

I was in Pakistan not far from the border of Afghanistan and this was just after 9 11. now as a foreign correspondent these were the places you'd want to be but sometimes dangerous a little bit dodgy and I needed to get to a place called the Northwest Frontier Province and it's a lawless place and I needed safe passage so I needed the permission from a local Shake so we went to his house I went with my translator we knocked on the door A young man opened it took us up a few flight of stairs and welcomed us into this big open room nothing in there

just a little rug so I sat down the young man came back and said the shake would be a little bit delayed but just to be a bit patient and he put down some tea and cookies for me he came back a few minutes later and put a little TV in front of me a little black and white thing then he came in and put a VHS player on top of that hooked it up and ran a court I I don't know where then came in with a tape and he plugged it in and pressed play and I thought uh what are we going to

watch here and through the static I could see it was Baywatch I said to my translator what is this and he said you're a Westerner he thinks that's what you like to do and how you spend your time it was a not so subtle message about how disconnected we all are there's Prejudice there even when people are trying to do something nice you see for the last 20 years I was a foreign correspondent and I've traveled to dozens of countries I've covered Wars coups natural disasters I had wanted that job for as long as I can remember I worked so hard because they had those

shared values that I admired so much truth and Justice right and wrong you shine a light here and maybe somebody back home would see something I don't know donate money vote you could make a difference I wanted that job so badly I wanted to belong to this group and there I was it was the peak of my career I was the Middle East correspondent for ABC News I was an international correspondent after that for CNN and it felt empty I felt really alone but what was amazing was I ended up finding belonging in the most surprising places on those front lines in the people that

I was interviewing you see belonging that thing that connects us all it's that ability to feel safe to be open and vulnerable with a community or your family whatever that means to you it's how we all connect it's that fabric that keeps us together and on those front lines where there's chaos and violence belonging is stripped away and only in its absence do you actually see how important it is in our lives and I saw it everywhere after that I remember coming up to this one scene where there have been bombing for three days there was a ceasefire and this woman emerged with her three

children she'd been in there for obviously too long and the first thing she said to me was you didn't hear us where were you you don't you don't see us as if somehow I could make a difference or there was the young man looking for his father who had so clearly been kidnapped and killed by government forces who wanted to have just an Earnest conversation to kind of make sense of it all as if somehow I could help him I really misunderstood belonging it it wasn't about striving to be a part of a group or an organization but the person who really taught it to

me was a little girl in Afghanistan I was there doing stories on uh these underground Schools they're funded by Western donors where little girls can still get an education under the nose of the Taliban and I went there and I was talking to the administrators and some of the teachers and I could see a little girl's hand go up in the corner and I thought wow that's pretty brave and she started asking me questions does everybody wear what you wear where you're from what what sports do you like and she really opened up and then a bunch of other kids gathered around I didn't do

much work that day we sat down and we just swapped stories and I thought wow even with these little kids this is what belonging feels like and I remember thinking wow I had worked so hard to be this tough correspondent and here's where I found the meaning of belonging and amazingly I still have her picture it's followed me around more than two decades and I wonder you know where where is she today what's she doing and would she be amazed of the incredible life lesson she taught me completely changed my life because belonging is something that is so critical and essential in all our lives

and it has to be embraced and that little girl really taught me that lesson thank you

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.