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I thought the novel, "Waiting for an Angel" was a pretty good read; back in the 1900's, Nigeria was really not a part of the other African states because of its excessive violence and abuse of rights. I think that alot of people suffered as a mistake. I think that the stories of the characters lives, including the main character, Lomba, depicted the story to be more real. This is a novel of hope, I think Lomba's story is strong, and it represents strength, I think thats were the term "Angel" derived.
I thought the Heart of Darkness was a real difficult read... I didn't get a major part of the story. It was based on stories.. I can't really explain the writing, it was wrttten sort of wierd; I thought that the Image of Africa helped me understand a little bit of it though.. It explained how and why the story started the way it did, and what story was the past and which was the present.. It was hard to catch up because I didnt know what story was a story from the past and which was important.
Reading the Nigerian Oil article from the National Geopraphic, totally brought me down the the realization that the start for oil in Africa was totally a bad idea. I think that Africa was already being used for its natural resources; being used so excessively, it is affecting the lives of the people, and still not contributing anything to Africa itself.. Which sucks because, without them, we wouldn't have half of the things we have now, especially oil.
After the discovery of the Oil, everything went downhill from there. The plants are all pretty close to some villages; making it extremely hard to live and eat. The oil plants have killed many animals and fish the Africans need to eat. There were also many explosions that took place at the plants, killing and hurting many of the workers. That really hurt my feelings; to know that their are business thriving in Africa, yet, still keeping major villages in the slums... That was when I understood the extent of the Abuse of Africa.. Just horrible.
This particular reading more on the understanding of decolonization of Africa and how it effects the land. I thought the writing explained Africa's decolonization; "At whatever level we study it relationships between individuals, new names for sports clubs, the human admixture at cocktail parties, in the police, on the directing boards of national or private banks - decolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain 'species' of men by another ' species ' of men." It also explains how dangerous decolonization is. I think the writing was good, but, a bit confusing and long.. I enjoyed the fact that it explains Africa's pattern of decolonization and colonization.
Reading "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" definitely made me feel like America still has some type of hold on Africa. The person that wrote this gave an idea on the type of hold that is still on Africa. Because of the history; the strip of natural resources, the dehumanization of the people, and the control of products. There is a quote from the writing I felt explained everything..
"In order to understand present economic conditions in Africa, one needs to know why it is that Africa has realized so little of its natural potential, and one also needs to know why so much of its present wealth goes to non-Africans who reside for the most part outside of the continent."
So, for my analysis paper, I decided to research more about aids in Africa. I knew it was an extremely common topic and one of the largest issues Africa is dealing with now. I thought that I learned alot, some of the things I was pretty much aware of, but alot of it came as a surprise to me. There was one website that I used alot; it helped me with almost every aspect of my paper, I want to put it in my blog so everyone else can check it out; AIDS In Africa.
One of the most interesting things I read was the link between the spreading of AIDS and the intelligents.See, based on a couple of websites, AIDS was usually spread between people of the richer, most educated classes. It was hard to believe, but its because of the stigma on condoms. They feel that AIDS isn't a disease you get from having sex, so condoms are sort of useless, and the cycle repeats itself. There are alot of things being done to stop the drastic spread of it, eveything is contributing to the cause, and now there are finally signs or reduction. But the amount of deaths are the same becuase of the amount of people that caught it before.
Female Genital Cutting, also know as Female Genital Mutialtion or Female circumcision, accroding to wikipedia, refers to all procedures that is partial or the whole removal of the external female genitalia. It is usaually used in religious ceremonies; the parent has to give consent for their daughter to go through with it because its not their choice, usually the religious ceremonies take place when the girl is between 4 to 8, but it sitll happens to all ages. There are three types of FGM, the first type is the removal of the clitoris. I read somewhere that in Africa, the removal of the clitoris makes it to where women cannot enjoy sex, for it is not to enjoy, but to bear children... Which sucks ass. The second type is the removal of the clitoris AND the removial of the labia minora. The third type is the narrowing of the vaginal orffice, cutting off the labia and sewing everything up so there is just enough room for menstration. It wasn't until 2003 when the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocal, promotiong wemons rights and ending FGM, it was really recognized and sought to end. It was ratified by 15 members and finally passed in November 2005. Believe it or not, FGM is usually practiced in Muslim and Christianity, it is used to purify girls and keep them virgins. I think this is the biggest extent of keeping anything purified but I thought that was fairly intersting.
Johnny Mad Dog was creepy... I really liked it though. lol. It still blows me away when I think about those soldiers; some of them not even 15, as young as 7 or 8. At first, before, reading this book, I had absolutely no pity for the deaths of those young boys. I have had a change of heart. The novel was based on the life of one toy soldier, a sixteen year old boy who felt a conscious, but not really. They made him believe that with his gun, we was a man. His logic was corrupted; many of the things he did he tried to find a good reason for doing it, like rapping the reporter woman. He actually made himself believe she was enjoying it. Or shooting one of the reporter men because of some make believe story he created about him and ther reporter woman having sex. It was all just a big ball of creepyness. I was relieved to know he died at the end, but it still gave me a chill to know that he wasn't the only one. There were thousands more like him. High, violent, and unstable. The story itself might have been fiction, but there are thousands of cases of boy soldiers tourturing people in Africa. It was surely a smack of reality for me.
I thought that "Bleeding of the Stone" was an alright read. I thought the symbolism made the novel a bit confusing, but it put a powerful vibe in its context. I thought the characters were cool, everyone played a small part which converged into a certain wholeness. I liked how, in the beginning, they had quotes from different bibles in the world. I liked how it all came into this story. This wasn't my favorite book of the semester, but I'm still glad I read it.
My Project!!! YYYAAAYYY
I decided for my project to write out a curriculum high school students, AP students. This is the first time I have ever done any thing like this before, I had to do research a lot just to start up and decide what I was going to do. I thought it would be a good idea to do; I am an education major so I figured this would be a good exercise for me. So... Yea, If my curriculum sucks, I'll keep that in mind and take notes for the future.
I designed it for seniors, assuming the class consists of 26 students. In my syllabus I explained that because it was an advanced placement class, I will be expecting a whole lot of everything. The grades are spread out in points.. a total of 5oo. I thought it was pretty reasonable... But I could be wrong.
I didn't write out my quizzes or my test because I felt like it depended on the amount of information the class was retaining. I didn't want the class to be based only on the amount of work done, the the amount of information retained. Its all about Effort!!
