At Sea

The last few days of class have by far been the most depressing lecture topics yet. As we travel to South Africa, in Global Studies class we have discussed apartheid, HIV, their shortage of food supply, genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, and the political unrest and violence in east Congo. Semester at Sea has a very unique design to the academic portion of the experience. Teachers are to tailor their syllabus around the countries and regions we are visiting, making lectures and readings according to what we are all learning in Global Studies. It is very neat to see the emphasis on certain topics that in a normal university, you would only receive through perhaps one class. For example, in my Women’s Studies class we were asked to watch the documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback,” where an ex-marine spent six months taking pictures as a “neutral observer” in Darfur, experiencing the (non-negotiable) genocide first hand. He came back to the States and for a while sat on the footage he had, knowing that bringing it into the media would stir a lot of controversy. After much debate with himself and his family, his sister contacted the New York Times and they covered his story. This was 2004, and from there, as most of you know, the effort has spread like wildfire. The Save Darfur organization asked him to do speeches at rallies all over the U.S and he has become quite famous for his story. If anyone from Kappa is reading this, tell Kujawa to watch this, she’ll love it! Jess and I thought about her the whole time we were watching it. J It made us want to put on our “Save Darfur” shirts we bought from her, which we brought with us, but probably shouldn’t wear when get to Africa. Anyways, probably the saddest thing I learned in my Women’s class was the terrible violence in Congo. We learned about the corrupt “soldiers” that are going into these villages and raping and murdering by the thousands. In class today we watched a documentary called “Lumo,” filmed by an NYU film school grad that also spent much of his time at Heal Africa, a women’s clinic in rural Congo that takes in women who are brutally raped by these rebel groups. After spending some time there, he decided to make this documentary with his knowledge in film, and won many awards at film festivals in the U.S. This documentary focused on the brutality of these rapes and the physical need for surgery to even repair these women’s chance at ever living a normal life again. What I found so interesting, though, were the women’s faith in God. Many of them were cast aside by their families, friends, villages, and husbands after they were “ruined” by these violent rapes, and many of them lost everything. Many of them had four or five surgeries, without anesthesia, to repair the damage, and often times it was unsuccessful. However, throughout all of these horrible experiences they kept saying that God would heal them, and they knew through Him their suffering would end. I found this so inspiring that they could remain so strong, when so many people give up faith over so much less. I’ll stop writing before I go into what we learned about Female Genital Mutilation, but unfortunately this is part of the voyage of discovery- learning what most people choose to ignore, even our government, and trying to figure out what we can do about it. Until next time! Xoxo Marissa