Child Soldiers

For my child soldiers, I decided to look at A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, because some people used it in class for their projects and I feel like we've heard a lot about it. There is an excerpt from chapter one on the book's website, so I went ahead and read that. It seemed a bit like what Laokole saw while she was hiding in the bushes at the side of the road in Johnny Mad Dog, only more depressing because you know the little boy seeing this will soon become one of the people responsible for this kind of horror.

One of the many many unfortunate things about child soldiers is what happens after the wars or if they are released from the army. Some do recover from this severe psychological trauma, but others remain in chronic depression and suffer from other psychological disorders. There are groups that run centers to educate these children, but I imagine that it must be an extremely difficult thing to do as well as experience for the people who work there.

According to Amnesty International of Australia, "a 1993 UNICEF survey of 1,505 children who lived through the war in Sarajevo, Bosnia, found that 29% felt unbearable sorrow and 20% had horrifying dreams. Child soldiers, who have seen terrible things and may have done them too, are often severely affected. When asked about the future, some in Sudan began by saying, 'If I am not dead... ' or 'If I am alive...' "

It seems to me that everything happening in Africa, wars and disease and food and water shortages, are taking the greatest toll on children. Either their parents die and they are left vulnerable and helpless, or they are directly affected, such as being taken into the army. I hope a lot of effort is being made to help children in Africa, otherwise ten or twenty years down the road, things might get a lot worse because when these children become adults, they will not have skills or education to step into the government or professional positions.

Johnny Mad Dog

I finished Johnny Mad Dog several weeks ago for class, but never blogged about it, so here it is...

This was a book that I really enjoyed reading. While the majority of the story is very disturbing and not pleasant at all, it was still written in a way that made it very easy to keep going. I think my favorite character was Laokole's mother. I think a lot of people when reading stories like this might want to see a maternal desire to keep her family together, but I really respected this woman for realizing that it would be impossible to keep her family together, and that her children would honestly be safer without her.

I chose to use Laokole for a significant part of my second paper, because I think she represents a lot of girls in similar circumstances in Africa. We aren't even sure which country this story is happening in, which is, I think, another way they author shows how girls like her can be in any country or any conflict. She did kind of bother me at times, but she did handle her circumstances in a much better way than many sixteen-year-olds I know would have.

I also looked up Johnny Mad Dog on IMDB, but it looks like it's only been released in France, Belgium, and Liberia, with some screenings at film festivals in other countries. Maybe Dr. Webb can pull some strings and get this for his next class...

“For us African writers, writing is also a matter of survival”

For my final project, I chose option #3, to develop a plan for my own further study of Africa. Since I am a social work major and a French minor (and everyone says, "what the heck are you going to do with those two?"), I decided to look at African francophone countries and discover how different cultures and the colonization and decolonization of African countries by the French affect Africans' lives today.

I found four francophone authors that interest me very much:

Ahmadou Kourouma- he wrote a novel called The Suns of Independence that has earned reviews in Europe as a masterpiece, but is largely unknown outside Europe and Africa.

Tanella Boni- she writes poems, novels, essays, and plays, and is very involved in philosophy prgrams and humanitarian efforts.

Marie-Charlotte Mbarga Kouma- she is a playwright, actor, and dancer.

Yolande Mukagasana- she survived the 1994 Rwanda genocide and published 3 books to raise awareness and in memory of the events.

I decided if I could, it would be very interesting and beneficial from a social work perspective to be able to talk to these authors or their contemporaries, families and children, and officials in francophone African countries. One idea I discovered while writing this paper is that in order for cultures to have defining characteristics, they need to have other cultures to distinguish themselves from. I think it is an interesting idea that the colonizing countries neither withheld their culture from the people whom they were colonizing, but neither did they willingly allow the colonized population to have full access to all the colonizer's culture. One thing I would be interested in exploring is how the combination of cultures, French and traditional African societies, resulted in the characteristics of today's African countries.

World AIDS Day

Today is December 1st, World AIDS Day. I started to look at the World Health Organization (WHO), but quickly got extremely overwhelmed by the amount of information on the main website, but when I remembered that today is AIDS Day, I focused on a few things about WHO's involvement with AIDS in Africa.

About World AIDS Day, WHO says

"World AIDS Day on 1 December draws together people from around the world to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS and demonstrate international solidarity in the face of the pandemic. The Day is one of the most visible opportunities for public and private partners to spread awareness about the status of the pandemic and encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in high prevalence countries and around the world.

There are now 33.2 million people living with HIV, according to 2007 figures released by WHO. An estimated 2.5 million were newly infected with the virus and 2.1 million died of AIDS the same year. Eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa now account for almost one-third of all new infections and AIDS deaths globally."

Dr. Luis Sambo, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, spoke today about AIDS in Africa and the treatment of the epidemic:

"This global theme is of particular importance to sub-Saharan Africa, the Region hardest hit
by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, accounting for more than two-thirds (67%) of all new HIV
infections worldwide and for three-quarters (75%) of all AIDS cases in 2007. We also note with
deep concern that an estimated 1.9 million new HIV infections occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in
2007."

He noted that access to antiretroviral therapy is increasing in sub-Saharan Africa, and he also said that prevention and treatment need to be increased, HIV counseling as well as couple counseling should be emphasized, as well as safe sex practices.

There is obviously a huge need for help for treating and preventing AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, but despite the statistics and figures against him, Dr. Sambo and WHO seems to reflect a positive message of hope about the state of AIDS in Africa.

Water Access and Sanitation

The reason I chose this topic is because of the group I was invited to on Facebook - I know we've all gotten those "I'll donate $___ to ___ if 23452478657345 people join!" invites, but this one looked a little more promising: The H20 Project (you might have to log in to see it, but that shouldn't be a problem for anyone) suggests that you give up every beverage but water for two weeks and then donate the money you save to the H20 Project. This actually makes a lot of sense, it's a pretty easy way to donate, and it's healthy! I already drink water all day anyway, but if I didn't buy my gallon of milk or coffee for two weeks, that would easily be $10.

It's so depressing to think that the grocery store I work in has a full aisle of soft drinks, another of juice and milk, and two aisles of alcohol (yep... that's a college town for you), and my job at the coffeeshop is just to make drinks, while people in other parts of the world can't even get a class of clean water every day.

Living Water International has a lot of information on their site, but here are some clips about access to water, lack of sanitation, and social effects:

"Water, the stuff of life and a basic human right, is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by more

than one billion of the world's most vulnerable people.

Nearly half of all people in developing countries are suffering from water-related health problems. The annual number of deaths from water-related diseases is six times greater than the number of deaths from armed violence.

One-third of all deaths in developing nations are children under the age of five. Some 1.8 million of these children die each year as a direct result of chronic diarrhea—that's 4,900 every day. That is directly related to the water they drink.

Almost two-thirds of people who lack access to clean water survive on less than two dollars a day, and one-third live on less than one dollar a day. Some might lack water because they are poor, others might be poor because they lack water, but the statistics show a two-way relationship between poverty and water deprivation.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, the money lost from missed work opportunities due to water-related illnesses exceeds the amount of aid and debt relief to the region.

In Africa and Asia women are generally responsible for collecting water for their families. On average, in rural Africa, women spend 26% of their time collecting water, which often means having to walk five miles or more to the nearest water source. In the dry season, when water becomes more scarce, this distance can double and it can take hours just to fill up one container as the water slowly filters through the ground."

Living Water International's site has many other news stories and information, there are several other links on the Introduction page and a seperate page for their mission statement and history.

Overall, I think this organization looks incredible. I've heard of the Living Water group before (organizations like this get a lot of spotlight time over in the College of Health and Human Services), but this is the first time I've been able to think about it and know some of the cultural context for its purpose. It is important to remember that every time we get depressed in class because of what we read, there are already groups like this that exist to help, there are people in the world who care.

(I found this last map from Columbia University's site, if you ever want a map of something really random and hard to find, they might have it)

The Bleeding of the Stone

I enjoyed this book for how different it seemed to be from anything else we've read so far; but after finishing it and thinking for a minute about what to write about, I realized it's not as different at what I thought.

The first thing that stood out to me after reading this book was how alone Asouf seemed to be in comparison to the extended families that have been the central characters of other books. Asouf is a "desert man," but he has plenty of memories of his family and comes in contact with the outside world a significant amount. So he is alone, yes; but any of the characters in other books were alone, even if not quite so literally- people like Lomba were alone in their beliefs or their practices.

Another thing about Asouf that stood out to me was his direct contrast to Cain - Asouf does not eat any meat, but Cain literally lives for meat (and how disgusting was his character? Ew.)

And of course, I went off to Wikipedia to find out just what was so special about the waddan, or the moufflon. Apparantly "the mouflon is thought to be one of the two ancestors for all modern domestic sheep breeds," and it's subspecies are all vulnerable or extinct (I suppose we have people like Cain to thank for that). I couldn't find anything about the religious significance of these sheep, but the connection between these animals and Asouf is an interesting literary device.

Student Demonstrations

Sometimes when dealing with anything related to Africa, I feel extremely overwhelmed because of how big Africa is geographically, how many people are involved, and how many conflicts that seem to be impossible to keep straight. So, I tried to narrow down some information on student demonstrations in Nigeria, but I also found a few handy websites: Africa Action is a U.S.-based group that fights for political action, policy change, and international awareness for Africa. I found a few pages about Nigeria from their homepage, including a timeline of Nigerian political history. The "Abacha years" section starting in 1993 seem to be particularly relevant to the events in Waiting for an Angel.

Part of Abacha's regime included banning student and faculty unions, which were legally recognized groups. The military violence against these student groups sounds like it would be something like our College Democrats and Republicans groups being attacked for peaceful demonstrations, like the sidewalk chalk or encouraging voter participation. Even though Nigeria is currently under a civilian government for the longest stretch of time since the beginning of its independence, there are even still instances of student leaders being arrested for false charges.

Nigerian Politcal Prisoners

In Waiting for Angel, Lomba is held in a prison for a "crime" he did not commit, the "crime" of organizing a demonstration, when he says he was only a reporter covering the demonstration. I wanted to understand a little bit more about Nigerian political prisoners, so I turned to Google, which is always ready to answer my questions.

First of all, Wikipedia says Nigeria is a federal presidential representative democratic republic - ok, if you have that many words in the name of your government, I'm pretty sure something is bound to go wrong if you can't even decide how to narrow it down to a word or two.

A series of articles from the LA Times followed the promised release of political prisoners from Nigerian jails and detention centers in 1998 and 1999. Nigeria lost its place in the British Commonwealth after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, whom we just read about.

Chinedu Karl E. Uchegbu, of the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the Niger River delta town of Port Harcourt, noted that Nigeria’s government, by releasing all the remaining political prisoners, would simply be fulfilling its obligations. “These are people who were actually not meant to be in jail anyway,” Uchegbu said.

One of the prisoners to be released was the man who had fought against Nigeria's tyranny and apparantly won the 1993 presidential elections, Moshood Abiola. In order to be released, he agreed to relinquish his claim to the presidency and join Nigeria’s latest military efforts in working toward a peaceful transition to democracy. However, Abiola died of a heart attack in the summer of 1998 before he was released, and many worried his absence from the Nigerian government would raise tensions and human rights would be violated again without the prominent activist.

Riots did break out when news of Abiola's death was released, and stalled negotations and business surrounding the formation of the democratic government. The government did release more politcal prisoners, but it was seen as merely a gesture to anti-government militants who continued to riot over Abiola's death, which they viewed as suspicious, and the lack of progress made in the transition of the government.

I think all of this is relevant, as tomorrow is election day. Events like these in Nigeria and in other parts of the world make me feel very grateful for having a stable political system, and knowing that I can go vote (even if I do have to stand in a line all afternoon) and not worry about myself or whoever I vote for being jailed because of it.

Oil!

Reading the articles from National Geographic and Slate and talking today in class about the scramble for this particular African resource made me think of Oil! by Upton Sinclair and that recent, really boring yet award-winning movie (that I've forgotten the name of) that was based on the book. The plots in these take place in California or Texas (I think the book and the movie differ a lot... surprise.), and obviously do not have the same large-scale effects as the events in Africa. It's interesting, to me, at least, that the discovery of oil can connect different people and different parts of the world, whether through trade or just the common effects on the surroundings, social and ecological.

Something that stood out to me in the article from Slate is the settlement town, Atan, across the street from the Kome drilling base for ExxonMobile. It seems to me that the presence of the impoverished, dirty town of Africans hopeful for a job in their own country directly next to the big, shiny, base of foreigners is an example of what all of Africa has become. A report on oil drilling fields in Chad and Cameroon even mentions Atan, but only to reassure that the population has not increased.

A blog titled "Only in Africa" brings up a lot of good points, and references John Ghazvinian's Untapped. It's worth a look if you have a few minutes.

This map also makes me think of what was mentioned in class a few times, about all roads leading to the coast instead of internal African cities. Instead the oil pipe going north or east to cities who could refine it an use it, guess where it goes? Southwest, to the coast.

War In Sierra Leone/Africa

On April 27, 1961, Sierra Leone gained its independence from Britain. Between then and October 1990, a one-party Constitution was in place and there were many military coups, some successful and some not, to overthrow the government. In October 1990, a multi-party system was approved by Parliament and subsequent events began to occur that we saw in Ancestor Stones.

"A military intelligence source who has extensive experience in West Africa described the regional warriors as follows: 'These guys form part of a regional militia I call the insurgent diaspora. They float in and out of wars and operate as they wish. They have no one to tell them where, when and how to behave. They’re been incorporated into militias and armies all over the place – Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire – and are really the most dangerous tool that any government or rebel army can have.' "

The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was created with help from Liberia, a neighboring country involved in its own civil war. The main reasons war finally erupted was because of government corruption and the corruption in the diamond business; yet, the leaders of the Liberian forces who aided the RUF were paid in diamonds. At first the RUF was popular in Sierra Leone, as the people thought these rebels would stop the government corruption, however, due to the atrocities we saw in Ancestor Stones and Blood Diamond, the RUF quickly became hated and feared. From 1991 to 2002, the RUF continued to fight for control. After the RUF gained control of the diamond mines, it focused on protecting this economic resource and while the economy of Sierra Leone fell apart, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, another group of rebel soldiers, allied itself with the RUF to protect the economic and political power gained from the diamond trade. The RUF was finally defeated as a military force by an invasion led by Nigerian troops that reinstated Sierra Leone's president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

After RUF troops were evicted from the capital, it became a political party for the 2002 elections. It won 2.2% of the popular vote and no Parliamentary seats. The party then merged with the All Peoples Congress, which is one of the two major politcal parties in Sierra Leone (the other is the Sierra Leone People's Party).

Ancestor Stones

For the most part, I really enjoyed Ancestor Stones. This is a book I can actually imagine myself reading outside of class, something I could enjoy while sitting on my couch with some hot chocolate instead of my desk with a pen and notebook handy.

One quote that really jumped out to me and almost seemed to sum up each woman's journey was in Abie's section at the very end:

"I was no longer a stranger. I knew just where into all of this I fitted. Because in this small world [the village], everybody had a place, meaning they all knew how they came to be here. A story of which every detail was cherished. And I had mine."

In my previous entry, I wondered if I would every see a happily-ever-after in any of the stories, because each woman had a dud for a husband, or left her husband, or had too many husbands, or did something or had something happen that caused her to be unhappy. But I think the above quote could be applied anywhere in the novel: literally in the village, which is what Abie was talking about in context; but also where each woman eventually found the end of her story, and in the family structure of this book, that is, the three or four generations that this novel chronicles.

My intent for this blog was to write about the dynamics of the women in the village, but when I went to trusty Google to find "Rofathane," I couldn't find anything about this village. I did, however, find an article from Aminatta Forna's website about Rogbonko, the village her grandfather founded and where he planted coffee foundations and grew rice - sound familiar? It is how Asana's story starts, with her father planting coffee beans in their "oasis in the forest," named Rofathane.

So, since I discovered Rofathane is apparantly based on Rogbonko, I took a look at the pictures on Forna's page about Rogbonko, which are definitely worth a look because it makes the stories in Ancestor Stones a little more real, to know that the village of Rofathane and the people who lived there are based in fact.

So, to wrap up my tangent and back to African women and Ancestor Stones: ultimately, it is important to remember that Rofathane and the women in Abie's family have their own niches and their own history that we may think we might not understand, but with the help of books like Ancestor Stones, we can.

I am really enjoying reading Ancestor Stones. While it is a bit difficult to keep track of the characters and how they are related to each other, reading this book is not boring because it is like reading several smaller stories, one after another.

The differing roles the women play is an interesting element of this book to me. Asani's mother, one of the first women we hear about, is respected in her family and her husband's favorite; Hawa's mother was so important that the other women do not dare start their fishing without her. Other women throughout the stories are respected by their husbands, loftily ignore lesser wives, and have varying degrees of responsibilities and titles.

On the other hand, we also see women who are not respected. In Mariama's story, she says "a woman has no religion... she changes her faith to marry and worship to please her husband... Mother would not yeild. And to this day nobody has ever come to me and said she was noble and righteous to do so." We also see stories of women being divorced and left by their husbands.

The many stories of polygamy in Ancestor Stones all relate in some way to either Things Fall Apart or Xala, or even both. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo's wives lived with him and cared for each other's children and affairs as if they were their own, which really, they were because they were in the same family. In Xala, El Hadji's wives and children are their own seperate units, and clash whenever they are forced to come in contact with the other wives or children. El Hadji's wives are jealous of one another and his children do not see him as a personal father figure, but rather as a source for money and have a distant relationship.

Honestly, I expected the women's rights in Ancestor Stones to improve as the timeline progressed; but it looks like I am turning out to be very wrong. Hawa's story in 1965, decades after stories of the women who were so respected and loved amongst the other wives and their husbands, is possibly the most depressing so far. After she married and then left her first husband, she marries a man much younger than her. Because her tubes were tied by a paternalistic doctor (also, my health care ethics class would rip this doctor's act to pieces) and Hawa had to find another wife for her husband so he could have children, they both leave her.

I expected the women to become progressively more independent and respected. I suppose they have become more independent, in a way, because there are more instances of divorce and betrayal. I am nearly finished with Ancestor Stones, and I wonder if, before the end, I will see a happily-ever-after marriage.

Xala

"Wolof is THE language of Senegal, and one of six national languages in Senegal given official recognition by the Government (together with Jola, Manding, Pulaar, Sereer and Soninke). Close to 90% of the population of 9 million of Senegal understand Wolof, whereas only 20% of men and 2% of women currently speak French, even though Senegal is officially a Francophone country."

While reading Xala, one topic presented in the novel stood out to me because of my interest in language. The conflict between Wolof and French was interesting to me because it is one of the first times we have read about the difficulties of language in a novel and not just in the articles.

I got this book from the library and while pulling it from the shelf, I saw many other copies of this novel, but published in French, which is it's original language. Even after seeing this and seeing the "translated from the French by..." on the cover page, I forgot that this book was not originally written in English and it caught me by surprise the first few times I saw the difference in languages noted in the story. For example, when El Hadji picks up his two wives for his wedding, when he goes to Oumi N'Doye's house, the text says "..she said in French." I had to stop and think for a moment, "well... what have they been speaking, then?" Obviously Wolof. There are also several other instances that are marked in the text that tell that the characters have been speaking in Wolof instead of French. Another example where language creates a conflict is when N'Gone, the third wife, speaks in French and Yay Bineta, the Bayden, responds, "brindling, 'I don't understand that jargon.' "

Because of the conflicts the French and Wolof usages create, I am curious as to what else the French left behind. Oumi N'Doye brags about having meat imported from France because "native butchers just don't know how to cut," and we discussed in class the French styles Oumi N'Doye loves and the episode between Rama and the policeman. Apparantly Senegal's currency was created to be linked rate to the French franc; and the Senegal government only owns 41% of the company that regulates transmission of energy in it's own country, while Canada and France own 34%.

The always-informative Wikipedia has a lot of interesting facts about Wolof, and one thing that is extremely interesting to me is that Wolof apparantly does not have any verb tenses; rather, verbs are unchangeable and pronouns denote different times, but there is only one pronoun for all articles, not different ones for masculine or feminine nouns. In case you can't tell, I am very interested in the French language and very glad to know enough of it to converse with someone (as long as it's a pretty simple subject... don't ask me any questions about physics), and it looks like Wolof differs from French so much. French verbs have so many different uses for their verbs - in my dictionary of French verb conjugations, each verb has it's own page and their are fifteen different forms that a verb can be conjugated in. Also, it is very important to know whether a noun in French is masculine or feminine because prepositions can be combined with articles.

If I had more free time (...or any... at all... ever.), this is one book that would be very interesting to try to read in French, because I feel like this is one book especially where nuances of the language would not translate very well. And that's assuming I would even be able to pick up on things like that... but truthfully, I probably wouldn't.

Lumumba : Prime Minister of Congo

Patrice Emery Lumumba was the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo after he helped Congo win it's independence from Belgium in June of 1960. Less than ten weeks later, he was overthrown, captured, and murdered. There were two key events that led to the coup against him: The first was a few days after taking office, he raised the salaries of all government employees except the military, which resulted in riots and rebellion by the military. The second was the independence of the province of Katanga, which Lumumba tried to subdue with Soviet and U.N. troops.


Despite protection provided by U.N. troops, a coup was staged, planned by a military colonel, Joseph Mobutu, and the C.I.A. (it is possible that orders came from President Eisenhower). He was captured, and even though the Soviets tried to pass resolutions in the U.N. to save him, Lumumba was ultimately shot, along with two comrades from the government, by a firing squad (Wikipedia).







This video is almost ten minutes long, but it has more detailed information than I would ever be able to find, and clips from speeches:








The first half of this short newsreel is about Lumumba's capture and unknown status, between the time he was captured and killed:








And his famous "tears, fire, and blood" speech - the first couple minutes are in French and just an introduction, and then the speech is read by another person. If you don't want to listen to it, the words of the speech are in the "info" section of the video.









And an interesting comment underneath a video:


"Il devrait avoir une rue/boulevard/avenue 'LUMUMBA' dans chaque ville de France."
("There should be a street named 'LUMUMBA' in each city in France.")

An Image of Africa

I rather liked this essay by Chinua Achebe - it tried to explain Heart of Darkness, and it picked on Conrad a little. When I read Heart of Darkness, I couldn't explain any of it and all I wanted to do was pick on Conrad.

In paragraph 37, Achebe explains "The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a thoroughgoing racist." Thank you, Mr. Achebe. I still do not understand how this book apparantly awoke the conscious of the West and alerted them to the "rape of the Congo" when the author/narrator/second narrator/whoever is telling the story, who knows, tells the story with the Africans in a demeaning fashion.

While the overall flow of Heart of Darkness will bother me if I ever read this book again (don't count on it), I am very appreciative of the way Achebe explained several things, in particular the idea of Africa being an antithesis of Europe. In paragraph 14, he sums up the meaning of Heart of Darkness with a quote from the book: "What thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity -- like yours... Ugly." It is the fact that humanity, though seperated by rivers, continents, man-made buildings or forests, is all still humanity in the end, that all the "inhuman" things another culture does is something any other culture is capable of because we are all humans.

"We have met the enemy, and he is us." - Kenya newspaper article

::edit:: I apologize if there are any layout problems when viewing my entry... I am not a fan of blogspot.

Heart of Darkness

The inside flap of my book says Joseph Conrad was one of the leading writers of the modernist movement. I can see how this little book is considered to be one of the greatest short novels- there is symbolism in here that my high school English teachers would love to just rip to tiny analytical pieces; unfortunately, that usually means this is not the kind of book I will enjoy. It always bothers me that the "best" movies and the "best" books are always the ones that make no sense at all. I feel like there needs to be a balance between basic understanding and critical reading, and the "best" books never have that balance.

But this is for Heart of Darkness, not how much I despise Modernists and Postmodernists.

If I had not read King Leopold's Ghost before reading Heart of Darkness, I do not think I would have understood Heart of Darkness at all. I did not understand Marlow's character at all; I could not decide if I wanted to feel sorry for him or hit him on the head for calling all the Africans and niggers and portraying them all as cannibals. I also could not understand his contradictory hate and reverence for Mr. Kurtz; sometimes he speaks of him as an excellent, learned man who brought in more ivory than all the other posts combined, other times Marlow speaks of Kurtz as an abominable character who has done no good to the Company.

There were several lines in the book that stood out to me, both as larger, profound thoughts, and examples of the characters' ignorance:

"Drums... with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country." This shows that Marlow at least understands there might be more than the "savage" appearance of the Africans.

"Fine fellows, cannibals." When talking about the Africans on his steamship, Marlow just shows his ignorance in this line, contrasting his hope of understanding in the previous quote.

"All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz." Even though this quote is explaing Kurtz's mixed heritage, it jumped out at me as an explanation that all Europe created the Congo and all sorts of European men took part in the "rape of the Congo," as Hothschild described it.

Finally, Marlow's description of his deceased helmsman as "a grain of sand in a black Sahara" was where I finally just decided to stay frusterated with Marlow's character. At first, I could see some hope in his character, his chances at understanding the Africans beyond the cannibalism, especially when he interpreted the cries from the forest before the attack as cries of sorrow rather than of anger.

At the end of this Hear of Darkness, I am just frusterated. Hothschild made this book sound like it was the single most shocking thing the Western world saw from the Congo, but I am just frusterated at how contradictory the characters are, and unable to understand how the Western world would want to sympathize with people who are portrayed as cannibals and polygamists and wild warriors.

King Leopold's Ghost- the finale

King Leopold's Ghost is one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is a history book, overwhelming filled with facts, people, stories, and pictures, but it reads as smoothly as a novel. It is one of the few books that I both enjoyed reading, simply because it presented historical fact in a story-like manner, but also had difficulty reading because of the vast amount of detail and the content.

The content of this book is what sets it apart from other books. I finished reading it and was left with thoughts of the details, the facts, people, stories, and pictures; not with thoughts busy analyzing how literary techniques worked in the writing, which is what I am used to thinking about during a book and after. I am left with not only the knowledge of the content, but the huge impression it has made on me. The one idea I cannot shake is how contemporary these events are.

I found a timeline of the events described in King Leopold's Ghost, which helps immensely because I started losing track of people and dates about halfway through this book. It was also interesting to me to read through the timeline and think about what was happening in American history at the same time. I have discovered in my Life and Culture in France class that I have a difficult time imagining the historical importance of something that happened before the 1600's, simply because I have learned mainly American history in my education, and we don't really have more than three or four hundred years of American history.

King Leopold's Ghost makes it easier for me to overcome the problem of struggling to comprehend the existence of the events of the Congo, because it narrates so many international events and issues that influenced and formed the Congo, and not just the isolated events in the Congo itself.

I found a travel guide website with a photos from Congo... tourist-geared, obviously, but it unconsciously shows what the Congo was...

... And what it became.

On a side-note, I recieved my copy of Heart of Darkness today, and discovered it isn't just the novel, it also includes Joseph Conrad's diary from part of his time in Africa and his "Up-River Book"-notes, illustrations, and observations on navigation of the Congo river. I love Amazon and its $1.87+shipping surprises. Does anyone else's book include these?

King Leopold's Ghost, part 1

I read most of the first 100 pages of this book, just like Things Fall Apart, leaning against a
counter and hiding behind an espresso machine at work. So far, King Leopold's Ghost has held my attention better than Things Fall Apart. I didn't like how Things Fall Apart would jump around to flashbacks or memories or the time of the story, so I was immediately grateful that Hothschild starts this book with a prologue, lots of character development, and a chronological storyline.

One of the first ideas that grabbed my attention was how the Africans thought the white men were ghosts, because they believed their skin turned to the color of chalk when they died. I then thought of the title of the book, and I originally thought it was titled to mean King Leopold's ghost as in what he left behind when he died (the "colonization" and destruction of the Congo), but I thought it was interesting that it could also mean what King Leopold would have been to the Africans if they had seen him, just another "ghost."

My first post for this class was about the early migration out of Africa, and I found a lot of information about the theory that the human race originated in Africa. Thousands of years ago, the first humans ventured out of Africa to Asia and Europe, to the Americas, and I started to realize that everything sort of came full circle and the rest of the world eventually came back to their homeland to colonize the land of their ancestors.

Portuguese Enslavement of Africans

When wondering who started the global enslavement of Africans, you might immediately assume Europeans in general, but more specifically, you could say Portugal was the first nation to start the scramble for the resource of African labor. According to the always-resourceful Wikipedia, the Portuguese became involved in the slave trade because in 1452, the Pope issued a papal bull granting the king of Portugal the right to enslave "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers," therefore legitimizing the slave trade under Catholic beliefs.

Even before the Church legalized it, the Portuguese port city of Lagos, located on the southern coast became one of the first slave markets in 1441, and the Portugues had been utilizing African labor for slavery long before that. The Portuguese had also colonized Brazil and needed the African human labor for the resources found there, such as sugar, coffee, gold, and diamonds.

While looking around for information on Portugal, I discovered that this little country was really quite active in the world trade market. It makes sense that a geographically small country would not have a diverse collection of resources in their own country, so I suppose the would need to reach out to the rest of the world for material and labor resources. I also found a timeline of Portuguese and Spanish activity within Africa and Brazil- the timeline only spans two hundred years but is five pages long in Word! I also thought it was interesting that many characters from King Leopold's Ghost are on this timeline, such as Afonso and several Portuguese explorers. Seeing cross-references of real historical figures always makes an event or time period more real to me, rather than just seeing it once in a novel or a textbook, so it is interesting to see other factors that we might have learned about in high school, such as Portugal's famous navigators and navy, involved in the ugly global history of slave labor, which is something high school generall glosses over.

First visit to Umoufia

Something that really stood out to me in the "village" of Umoufia was how decorative everything seemed. While reading the book, I imagined a lot of plain, wooden objects, but rarely anything like those shown in the pictures. I do remember a lot of mentions of the walls of the huts and compounds shining with red clay, and the painted patterns on the women's bodies, and the shaved patterns in the childrens' hair; but I am surprised at how little Achebe did not illustrate the details of so many objects.

The two decorated objects that surprised me the most were the walking sticks and the stool. I only remember the walking sticks from the scene where the men and Okonkwo walked with Ikemefuna outside the village to have Ikemefuna killed. I imagined middle-aged men walking down a rugged path with the aid of tree branches, like a sturdier version of what we use to cook marshmallows over a campfire. Instead, this is what was really used:

It almost looks like the top sections are little people, and I wonder if they represent idols, or maybe the owners of the walking sticks, or maybe they could each tell a story.

The other photo that grabbed my attention was the photo of the stool. Okonkwo and the other village elders would bring their stools to events like meetings and the wrestling match, but it was their eldest son who carried their stool and their bag. Okonkwo even let Ikemefuna carry his.

Again, I imagined a simple wooden object, and somehow my mind created the picture of a wooden version of our folding camping chairs. I think having this for a camping chair would be much more interesting, though:Again, I am astonished at how much we as readers are not told about the intricate decorations which obviously took some dedication- either this is stone or it's carved out of a tree trunk. I also wonder again what the face is- is it the owner, or the creator, or maybe an idol?

Perhaps this is slightly stereotypical of me, but I always imagined African tribes associated with things like lots of wooden and metal jewelry, brightly colored fabrics, and large pots. I could picture a man whittling something, a toy maybe, but not a walking stick for a grown man. I could imagine a simple log as chair, or a piece of cloth, but not a stool large enough to carve an entire face on one side, and then some. Seeing all these objects that are in the village and obviously a part of the Ibo's lives, I wonder why Achebe did not include descriptions and examples of these objects in his novel.

Things Fall Apart

This is my second time reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart - the first was three weeks ago, leaning against a counter at work with half an eye watching for customers (yes, I read books for school before the class started, go ahead and laugh).

While reading this novel the first time, a lot of things stood out to me, but three in particular: Okonkwo's aggressive character, the sad story of Okonkwo's son Nwoye, and the story of the evangelical Christians in the last section of the book. I remember studying in history classes some of the stereotypes of white Americans towards African slaves, and I remember one of the stereotypes of the African man as aggressive and someone all white women should fear, and I understand how someone like Okonkwo could fit in that stereotype. He was definitely aggressive and sometimes ruled by his temper; but now we as readers can see the other side of the stereotype and why he behaved the way he did, which was because he viewed his duty in life was to do everything his father did not, and not because he was a rapist of white women or whatever nonsense the slaveowners made up.

Nwoye, Okonkwo's son, was a depressing part of this story to me. One thing I am not sure about is in the scene near the end of the book, just before Okonkwo killed himself. Okonkwo killed one of the five messengers who came from the white man- the first time I read it, it immediately popped into my mind that the messenger was Nwoye- was it?

The third part that stood out to me was the role the evangelical Christians played. This was almost a two-personed argument in my mind, but when the Christians arrived in the story, I wasn't sure if I wanted the Ibo tribes to be the "good guys" and preserve their culture because I had been reading about them for the past two hours; or if I wanted the Christians to succeed, because I know exactly how and why the Christians did what they did in this story- what I did in France this summer was similiar, only we definitely didn't arrest anyone and no one's house or church was burned down.

That being said, when I read through Things Fall Apart a second time, I noticed a few other things... but only because they didn't stand out to me the first time, as contradictory as that sounds. One element I noticed (or didn't...hmmm...) was how capitalistic the Ibo people were. Dr. Webb might have said something about it in class, but I realized the Ibo people used cowries like we use dollar bills, and it seemed almost out of place. At first yams seemed to be the main capital, but then I realized sacks of cowries were being given, spent, and saved, just like modern currency.

The Black History Pages describe cowries and their uses, and the surprise of the Europeans at the use of cowries over gold, which has been the international unit of exchange. A single bag of cowries could weigh 60 pounds- imagine paying twenty bags of cowries for a wife! I also found some other information about the surprisingly capitalistic aspect of the Ibo people, and also that it is actually spelled Igbo, but the colonists spelled it wrong.

Migration Out of Africa

The migration out of Africa before colonization may be the most important migration of all human history - historians, archaelogists, and other experts believe that East Africa was the home to our earliest human ancestors. Other medical researchers agree that maybe 150,00 to 100,000 ago, and some believe even up to one million years ago, modern humans started to emerge from Africa, and some studies that compare genetics have found chromosomal variations that can link all humans back to Africa origins.

Africa is the most genetically diverse continent in the world, which further supports theories that Africa is, in fact, everyone's homeland. Whether due to shortage of land, climate, or tribal governments and conflicts, the groups of people living in East Africa started to move into areas of Western Asia.

Migration was further influenced by climate change, trade, the spread of the Islam and Christian religions, and many other factors. The AfricAvenir site has an excellent chronology of Ancient African civilizations, which tracks the developments of ancient kingdoms, people groups, and movements, including the Bantu Migration.

While not exactly a migration out of Africa, the Bantu Migration is still worth noting because of it's origins in the Central African area, and the vast movement, perhaps the largest ever, of the Bantu-speaking people of Africa from Central Africa to South Africa. Look at the above map and realize a single language group spread throughout and ultimately populated half of Africa. Compare that to the five hundred years it took Europeans to spread throughout North America, or the few thousand years it took the Romans and the Greeks to spread to Europe, and you will realize that this group of people could share the same ancestors that we all do- the earliest humans from East Africa.

Intro

Hi everyone! My name is Anne Morgan. I graduated from Rockford High School in Rockford, MI (near Grand Rapids) in 2006, and I am now a junior here at WMU. My major is social work, and I'm also working on a psychology minor and possibly a French minor as well. Also, soon I will have to start work on my Honors thesis - yikes!

I spent a month and a half in Nantes, France this summer with Campus Crusade for Christ, and that has made me very curious about other cultures and governments as well as globalization, which is one reason I think this class will be very interesting to me.

After my undergrad here, I'll have to continue on to a Master's program somewhere for social work, and I'm interested in the medical field or something international for possible career options, but that is all still a few years away. For now, I study and I work, I do a lot with Campus Crusade for Christ and the Honors college, I read for fun if I have time, and I'm a huge musical theater dork.