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Archive for October, 2006

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Genocide

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

I have struggled with my Rwanda visit since I was there in early August. As I was entering the country, I was quite concerned about what kind of people I was going to meet. Basically, we have two groups – Hutus and Tutsis. Many of the Hutus massacred many of the Tutsis as well as Hutus that supported Tutsis (“moderate Hutus”) only twelve years earlier. Somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 people were murdered mainly by machete in a hundred day period. If you think modern technology is needed to carry out a genocide, think again!

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Posted in Africa, Travel | 1 Comment »

Two Appeals for Contributions

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

First, I’m back! The extended stay in California has been very good for my well-being and I am ready to start the Central and South America leg next week. In fact, I am as excited about this next leg as I was about Africa in May. It will “start” with a detour back to Vermont and then to Los Angeles to see Chris’ family before flying to Puerto Escondido, Mexico by way of Mexico City. I want to tie up the loose African strings before I get on the Mexico-bound plane on November 6th.

I have been in touch with folks in Tanzania since my return. As I had mentioned in an earlier posts, my opinion is that the West should just help Africa with education and health and let them run their own countries the African Way. I saw way too many instances of uneducated groups and a lot of it just comes down to lack of money at the family level. Some of the countries like Kenya are moving towards mandatory education and Kenya is even starting to prosecute parents who do not send their kids to school, but this is far from the norm. Look, in Africa the children often exist to tend to the cattle, goats, crops, etc. and school can only take them away from doing the jobs that keeps the family alive. It’s a totally short-sighted view, but isn’t it nice that we have it easy enough to not have to worry about day-to-day survival and can see the long-term view? I saw many families caught in the middle where they really need those kids working, but they also know that they are better off scraping by so the same kids can get educations. I would say that Africa is where America was in this respect about 120-150 years ago. Not all that long ago if you are offended by five year olds tending the cattle kilometers from home each day.

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Posted in Travel | 1 Comment »