Some interesting articles/items in the local paper I thought I would share – I have added my own commentary/thoughts on selected pieces. My comments follow the news, which is in bold.
Maj. Ntuyahaga was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgium court for the murder of 10 Belgian Peacekeepers early genocide. Belgium’s Prime Minister was quoted as saying, “Had the peacekeepers stayed, thousands of lives could have been saved”. [A brief review; the capture, torture, and murder of these ten Peacekeepers resulted in Belgium (Rwanda’s colonizers who were responsible for creating the ethnic divide between Tutsis and Hutus) pulling all of their troops out of Rwanda] This comment is completely ignorant of the reality in Rwanda, 1994. Peacekeepers in Rwanda were on a Level 6 mission, meaning that the Peacekeepers could not use any force. This Level stuck throughout the entire genocide despite the Canadian leader of UNIMAR, Romeo D’Allaire’s, NUMEROUS attempts to persuade the UN change the mission to a Level 7. There was nothing the UN Peacekeepers could do but watch the violence unfold around them. Here is yet another national leader who fails to acknowledge the cowardness and incompetence of the decision making processes within the UN.
“Renowned Pastor Rick Warren’s missionary team here”
….to fight “poverty, diseases, illiteracy, spiritual emptiness, and lack of servant leadership”….. I wonder if the fight against poverty, disease and illiteracy comes with the price of conversion in order to solve the ‘problems’ of spiritual emptiness?
Poverty last dictatorship in Rwanda
“In developed countries, poverty is a sin. Only in Africa states are the poor ‘blessed’. Such a saying should be discontinued. I’m not changing the Bible, but politically, economically, and socially, blessed are the rich because they enjoy the treasures of the world. I absolutely support the fight for richness and prosperity.” I am confused as to what this means….I am seeking clarification from anyone who has insight….
‘Good customer care will move Rwanda higher’;
This article is an editorial written by Josh Kron (who Iassume is an expatriate)….He complains about waiters ignoring him in restaurants and generators not ‘kicking in’. He expresses frustration with the overused disclaimer, “This is Africa” – apparently the solution to all of Africa’s problems –
“The happy-go-lucky phrase ‘This is Africa’ will be the downfall of this country….it is obnoxious for a Westerner to come in, plop down at a desk in the middle of everything that is happening in this country, and just start complaining,…but the thing is…this isn’t a capacity problem. Work ethic and state of mind have nothing to do with capacity…when Rwanda says it wants to be a leader in tourism, air-traffic, cinema and telecommunications, it really has to understand what that entails….when a Kigali internet café owner says proudly that Rwanda is an IT powerhouse, yet the Canadian at the table is slamming her hand over how slow the computer is, we know there is something missing”. We know this experience well as last Sunday it took 15 minutes for the Yahoo page to come up to check my email in a café...I ended up just paying and walking away without checking my email before my bloodpressure when through the roof. This topic is something I will write about more on a later date as I am still attempting to determine how work ethic is going to help/hinder this country's development.
Full page advertisement; picture of a child in black and white with the caption, “Sex with a child is not a cure for AIDS, it is murder”; this advertisement lead me to reflect on a teenage girl in town we see on a regular basis. Since our first interaction (she approached us and asked if we would take her home with us) with this girl we realized that she was a child with special needs; however, it wasn’t until Sunday that I realized she is also pregnant. So many questions about her situation entered my head: does she have family to support her; does she even know she is pregnant; did she contract HIV when she was impregnated; who would do this to her; how will she raise the child; will she raise the child…
4 comments:
Hey Carissa,
Sorry for the delay in posting a hello. Hm ... where do I begin? Where can I begin? :)
If there's any solace that I could share, it would be to remember that we are not in control of the things done in the past. However, we are in control of ourselves and the choices that we make. You'll drive yourself crazy by trying to undo past wrongs - I know. But the present and the future is yours; and from what I see, you're fortunate enough to be given the opportunities to at least make a small dent in someone else's life. Imagine the pothole that could be made if everyone walked a moment in someone else's shoes and did just one thing a day to make their world a better place!
I continue to be extremely jealous that you've been awarded the gift to return to what I felt was "home".
Keep questioning ... keep learning ... keep writing ...
As MLK once said "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"
Big hugs and lots of love,
Selm
hey carissa,
ex-pats are more or less foreigners working for their home-country's companies, but living abroad.
I simply work at a newspaper, so expat im not.
maybe the post about poverty being a blessing has to do with missionaries and the whole "blessed are the meek" thing. But in the real world the rich are blessed because our lives are so incredibly easy. I mean, we are rich enough to have "Doggy Day Care"! I'm sure poor people around the world would love to have the kind of richness that allows them to care about idiotic crap like that.
Hey Carissa,
I suppose that being an IT powerhouse is a simple matter of perspective…. Or rather a matter of looking at the local competition. So basically, I would argue that Rwanda may strive to be an IT powerhouse for West Africa much like California is the IT powerhouse of the US. But I would think it unreasonable to compare Rwanda and California directly. Before that could happen, Rwanda would need to raise the level of their engineering programs to that of the top US schools (MIT etc…) or to the level of the top schools in India (the IIT’s).
But if the want to actually make money in the world of IT, I would argue that there are only 2 sure fire business models to actually make money on the internet. Gambling and porn.
As for the frustrations with outside communications, I suspect that it has much to do with the physical infrastructure. Unless there is a physical connection in the county to an international fibre optic network connecting to North America, Europe and Asia, all data signals must bounce off a satellite. As a result, the best-case communication speed is that of your old dial up modem (about 56k). You can accelerate that a bit by doing some fancy tricks with software but you will never get what we experience here at home as a basic high-speed service. Now in an internet café, I’d suspect they share this one “dial up” connections with many computers and hence the really slow network.
Finally something on your blog I can talk about.
XO,
me
Post a Comment