Professor Wachanga was showing us pictures on his power point the other day in class and I just wanted to give my opinion on one of them. The picture of the little girl being stalked by a vulture really made me think. If I took this picture, would I have just walked away and do what I was being paid to do like the photographer did, or would I have helped her to get to her destination? I think I would have tried to help her out in some way. And even when they pointed out that what if there were a thousand little kids out there starving? Would I try to help all of them? Well no but if the red cross center was behind those bushes in the background, I would make sure that they knew there were thousands of starving kids being stalked by vultures. I read some more on Kevin Carter and a lot of his friends talked about the emotional toll his job was having on him. Something like this probably pushed him over the edge, but even if he would have helped the little girl out, would he still have committed suicide? Maybe, maybe not.

Sorry it took me so long to post something. This is the first time I've had a blog so it took me a while to get used to it and figure out what I am doing.

I wanted to answer some of the questions Prof. Wachanga asked in class. He first asked the question 'what do you think when you think of Africa?' Now that I have been in college I know a little about this country, but if he asked me the same question years ago when I was in high school, my reply would be much different. Coming from a small town, really the only thing you see about Africa is what you see in movies -- lions and tigers roaming the hot plains looking for prey, tribal people dancing around a fire chanting and rich white people going on safari, or hunting for big prey. I admit that I still don't know much about Africa besides what is in the news, but I am not as naive as I was in high school. That is one of the things I like about college; you get exposed to different people and you learn different cultures. Just to let you know that I am in no way trying to say that anyone in class is naive.

One of the things that the proffessor went over in class is the idea of education. I remember talking about how people from other cultures go into a certain civilization and feel that since those people are not doing or holding the same concepts as they are that they must be uneducated such as what people did to the American Indian to civilize them and educate them so that they would not be 'savages'. As I thought of this, the meaning of education has taken a new meaning. For example, the American Indians were educated in the sense that they knew how to live off the land and when to move from location to location and what their people needed when they were sick. Or how someone who lives in a dangerous neighborhood is educated on how to survive in that enviornment, and also how someone who does a lot of camping and staying out in the wilderness is educated on what to do when certain things happen and how to survive out in those elements.

Well I know I wrote too much, but I hope you enjoy it. I am now going to see how the rest of this blog stuff works.