However, Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general in charge of the UN peacekeepers, refused to obey his orders to leave and remained with a couple hundred soldiers. He was a brave and moral man, but he was also alone in a sea of killers. We heard him often on the radio begging for someone, anyone, to send troops to Rwanda to stop the slaughter, but no one listened to him. Belgium, our country's former colonial ruler, had been the first to pull its soldiers out of the country; meanwhile, the United States wouldn't even acknowledge that the genocide was happening!