Rwanda hotel - Reflection

Hotel Rwanda is about the civil war between the Hutus and Tutsis that happened in Rwanda in 1994. For many decades the Tutsis controlled the Hutus by force. Even through they were the minority, they had the power, enjoying many privileges the Hutus could not. European colonization was partly to blame for the inequity between these groups, although it was historically based.  This of course made the Hutus feels very angry and unfair. So in the 1990’s the Hutus began to fight back and rebel. Unfortunately, the Hutus took their revenge too far and tried to kill every Tutsi, even women, children and the elderly, creating a full genocide. The UN tried to step in but didn’t do enough. In fact it seemed the West did nothing to help Rwanda.

I felt sad after I saw Hotel Rwanda because all the Hutus were killed by the Tutsis. The main charter, Paul, was a hotel owner who gave many free rooms to refuges on both sides. Even though he was a Hutu himself, he helped people from the Tutsi. I feel Western countries were afraid of Rwanda and also didn’t care about Africa. They wanted to see Africa destroy itself so it would be easy to go in and control things after.

Lions in Africa and the Maasai Tribe Summary

Summary- Jessica presented on lions in Africa and the Maasai Tribe. This tribe has a long relationship with lions going back for hundreds of years. Today lions are an endangered species with only 20,000 left compared to over 1.2 million in the 1800s. There are many reasons for this decline including climate change, human settlement and hunting.

My opinion is that we should change people’s mindset to not think it is fashionable to wear lion skins. We also need to create more national parks to give those lions a place to live. I don’t believe this tribe is the real reason for the lion decline because they have been hunting for hundreds years. Instead modern population pressure has almost killed all the lions in just the last hundreds years.

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/big-cats/lion-decline-map/

What I learned about Somalia and piracy

Somalia was a very wealthy trading center before Europeans arrived. Far before Europeans however were Arabs who brought Islam in the seventh century. They set up many gold trading posts in the tenth century including Mogadishu which was the most famous trading city and was very rich by the thirteenth century. The Somali people were so influenced by Arabs that they joined the Islamic holy wars against Ethiopian Christians.

The first British explorer was Sir Richard Burton in 1854. Europeans got more interested in Somalia after the Suez Canal was built in 1869. Shortly after, Europeans carved up Somalia with British Somaliland set up in 1887 on the north Somali coast, French Somaliland on the west coast also in 1887 and Italian Somaliland in south Somali including Mogadishu in 1889.

Today’s pirates are not like what you see on the movies. They are a real serious social problem in the world now, especially in Africa. As we will see, civil wars, poverty, location and a sense of injustice has made Somalia a perfect breeding ground for pirates:

Civil War

·        In Somalia there has been civil war for decades

·        This means they don’t have any effective government to protect their coast line

·        They had no effective coast guard or navy

Poverty

·        Piracy is also a great way to make money for poor people with few opportunities

Good location

·        They are on the horn of Africa and have a huge coast line

·        It is a very good fishing area and so they have a lot of chances to catch international fishing boats

·        It is also a major shipping lane through the Suez Canal

Sense of Injustice

·        In the beginning the pirates were simply poor fisherman trying to protect their coast from illegal fishing by international firms

·        They even called themselves the “National Volunteer Coast Guard (NVCG)”

·        However, this quickly degenerated into piracy due to poverty