inside my head by Umene

what I found after this AE2 class

            This is my last post for this semester, and there will be no photographs this time. Instead, I want tell about my own experiences, experience of my friend, and thoughts I had these days.

            I was always interested in Africa. Actually I didn’t write about it in this blog, because I feel so lost about it. I don't know where to start. I don’t know in what field I want to be specialized. I don’t know what I exactly want to do. I even don’t know why I’m interested and attracted for this country. But today, I want to try to explain my thoughts, and I want you guys to know about the situation going on there.

            When I was in elementary school, I had a neighbor form Sudan. Since I lost their contact many years ago when they left to America, I will not use their real name here. They were three siblings, older sister, younger brother, who was my own age, and the youngest sister, who was only a baby. The older sister was 3 or 4 years older than me, and I was probably in the first year in elementary school, but it was too long time ago that I don’t remember well. As I already said, they came from Sudan. Actually they escaped from Sudan’s civil war. Since I was really small, I didn’t understand what does it mean, and don’t remember a lot about these stories. There are two things I remember really well; my mam told me to not ask them about the war, especially to the older sister, whom remembers about the civil war. The other thing remains so deep in my heart is a story the older sister and younger brother told me. We used to play together every day. Once we (their family and my family) went to Shiga prefecture to see the fireworks. There are big fireworks every year around the Biwako-lake (琵琶湖). When the first firework exploded, and a big flower covered the sky in many colors, sister and brother told me with a smile on their face about the first time they saw these fireworks. They told me that in that moment the fireworks exploded, they automatically laid down on the ground. Why? Because the fear for bombs was inside their blood. It was the first thing they learned during the civil war to lay down to protect their own lives while there were bomb explosions. In that moment they heard the sound of fireworks explosion, it remind the, the fear for the bomb explosion. They told me this funny story smiling and expecting me to say them, “how stupid you were! Hahahaha”. Probably, I did react like that in the moment. However, rethinking now, after I know more about meaning of the word war means, this story made me to think a lot of things.

            These days, I was making a research about the Rwanda Genocide in 1994, where one million Tutsis people were killed.[i] I saw two movies about this Genocide to get an idea about how the situation was there. These movies are hotel Rwanda and shooting dogs. The first movie was taken more form the Rwanda people’s point of view, and the second one was from the point of view of European’s who combatted there for the Tutsis people. Of course, in the movie it is impossible to express every real thing happened. But, can you imagine? The streets are full of your neighbor’s corpse. Most of them, with the head and body separated. Catted in pieces. Can you really imagine it? I can’t. I can’t imagine things I never saw. I can’t feel the pain I never explained. That’s only an imagination, nothing more. However, when I saw these movies, I always thought about my old time friends. Did also them, more or less had these experiences? Did they felt all these fears? Did they saw people dyeing in front of their eyes?

            How many of you, actually feel, in deep of your heart, when you see those movies or TV news about Africa, that these black people are pathetic people? How many of you, in deep of your heart, thought they are black people, and the Africa is so distant, almost in a different planet? I am asking these questions, because during the Rwanda Genocides, the UN army couldn’t help these people. Actually, they run away from this country, because some of the UN solider killed by a rebel army. The UN decided to not make more victims in this country. How did the world act if this Genocide occurred in Europe, instead of Africa? How did the world act if this people were not black? Can we really say there was no discrimination to them?

            To say the truth, I don’t have any answer to these questions yet. I want know more. I have to understand more about these things happening in the world. But more over, we have to know more about these things happening in the earth. Through this class, while I was trying to write a blog, or when professor Stan told us the attitude to learn something, I was keep thinking what will be my own research field. What is a topic I can really focus and be truly interested that I can put up with all these pretty hard steps professor Stan told us. This is my answer for now. Still lost, but I wanted to share my thoughts, and my memory of my friend form Sudan. I wanted you to know, these things happening in the world, is not something in the other side of the world. However, sometime happens in your neighbor’s life. The issue is, if you realized it or not.

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[i] Wikipedia, ルワンダ虐殺, available; http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ルワンダ虐殺