These past months, after watching the film ‘Shake Hands with the Devil’ detailing the accounts of the Rwandan Genocide, I have become fascinated with learning more about Africa, as I was shocked at how ignorant I had been up till that point in regards to the circumstances of African countries. Poverty in Africa of course is a well known fact, however I never really truly understood why the countries in Africa are the way they are today. Watching this film then reading the book based on this film really opened my eyes in many ways, and I hope by sharing this with you girls it may serve to do the same for some of you Those who maybe like me were/are unaware of these circumstances. Anyways recently I have been researching on current events in Africa reading up about Darfur and such and I stumbled upon this video on youtube which once again expanded my view of the world. Whenever thinking about situations like Darfur and Rwanda my initial response was always how can we/could we have rescued these people maybe helping them seek refuge elsewhere etc., yet I never really thought about those who did manage to seek refuge in other countries, how their lives would/could even improve. And this video showed me that their situation is even more severe than I had realized, as even the lucky few who manage to seek refuge outside their war torn country, really don’t manage to find better lives. It just got me thinking and feeling completely powerless in helping situations like these…and I guess I just wanted to discuss them with you girls and hear your outlook on these situations so that maybe it could help me put things into better perspective! The link to the video can be found below, let me know what your thoughts are on this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmlsJV4SyjU