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.