"Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." Walt Disney

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Looking at the Effects

This week we are going to again talk about Rwanda. In Goma, Zaire there is a refugee camp called Kibumba. In Rwanda on April 6, 1994 their President Habyarimana died. His death lead to several thousand, even tens of thousand of Hutu's(majority ethnic group) to wage a war against Tutsi (minority ethnic group). "President Habyariamana's assassination plungedRwanda into the worst frenzy of killing the world has ever seen"(Morello).This effect caused several hundreds, even thousands of Rwandans to seek refuge.





Photograph by Sebastio Salgado

This photo was taken in Kibumba. "Rwandan refugees die daily of cholera... The photographs show the burials of more than 4,000 persons"(Salgado) What exactly is cholera? "Cholera: an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from infected water supplies"(Oxford). Now there are many ways that water supplies might get infected. I am going to quote part of the book Left To Tell. "The truck then stopped at the edge of a cliff high above the Akanyaru River, a favorite spot of the Interahamwe for dumping corpes. "They threw all the bodies over the cliff and into the river," Florence continued... I woke up in the mud by the riverbank the next morning. My parents and sister were lying there, too, but they were all dead. I looked up at the cliff and couldn't imagine how I survived- it was at least a 200-foot drop."(Ilibagiza)

Work Cited Page

Photograph

Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. Aperture. New York, 2000. 193.

Ilibagize, Immaculee. Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. Hay House Inc. 2006.

Morello, Debbie. "Best of the 90's." US News and Worldly Reports. 2007. Web. 17 Feb. 2010
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3 comments:

  1. bensixty6February 18, 2010 at 9:57 PM

    Often we recognize the direct damage of the genocide, but the repercussions and lasting devastation are tremendous as well. As you said cholera was a huge problem. The killing lasted long after the guns and machetes were put down. I liked one of the comments in class on Wednesday about how sometimes surviving the genocide is the easy part. You are in survival mode and then when everything calms down you realize you have nothing left and the anguish finally hits you. I can’t comprehend that kind of devastation. These people looked forward to happiness and are left with only more misery.

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  2. Ms. DFebruary 19, 2010 at 2:45 PM

    Great post. And excellent continuing discussion.

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  3. AnonymousFebruary 26, 2010 at 3:30 AM

    This picture really puts into perspective the number of people who are dying. To think that heavy machinery is needed to move piled up bodies is just heart-wrenching and sickening. As I continue to look at Salgado's photographs, I realize more and more how blessed we are to live in a place where we don't even know that this kind of stuff exists. It's sad that these things actually happened and that they still continue to.

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