We only take one class and it is three hours every day, and that's it. There is a wide range of them to pick from, and the one that I picked and am in is called, "Christian Response to Refugees". I chose this class because I knew that the professor was a nursing professor (I'm a nursing major), and Cindy had told me that she was a missionary in Liberia (Africa) for a while. Since my grandparents were missionaries in Tanzania and my mom grew up there, I've always had an interest in Africa and possible missions there.
At first those of us in this class were literally having five hours of homework a night, but I now know that the professor just wanted to set up the foundation of what we would be learning about. We've been studying the definition of a refugee (an individual who has fled his native country in search of asylum because of persecution), human rights, the political and social aspect of things and of course the Christian side of things. Also, we've been watching lots of movies about persecutions and genocides such as that in Rwanda and Sudan. The movies are very graphic and disturbing. The very first movie we watched was about the genocide in Rwanda (not "Hotel Rwanda") (which was probably the most graphic - actually seeing people being killed, shot, beaten, and throughout the majority of the film: dead bodies lying everywhere), it ended when class ended, so we were free to go; the whole class was silent and left silently because there were no words; nothing to say. How can you talk about going to lunch or taking a nap after seeing something so horrific committed against mankind? Today we watched a movie called "The Invisible Children" about IDR (Internally Displaced Refugees) children in the middle of the war in Sudan and Uganda that are being kidnapped and forced to kill and become part of the armed forces, some of my classmates ended up crying because it's so sad. 
We are talking about children ranging from the ages of 5-12 who are ripped from their families in the night, roped and led to the bush to be brain washed, literally. After the children are in the bush, they are forced to witness other children be tortured and brutally killed to desensitize them and then are told that if they do not go and kill 20 people today, that is how they will die. And the children are given weapons to do so. 
It just kind of irritates me how the citizens in Sudan and countries like it are crying out to the United States for help and not enough is being done. Sure you have the NGOs (Nonprofit Governmnent Organizations) going in and helping, but like their name implies, they're non profit, they can only do so much. I don't understand why our government isn't doing enough. Sometimes I wonder if another Rwanda is happening right in front of us (500,000 innocent civilians were slaughtered in just six short weeks and nothing was done by the United States and UN because they were trying to decide if it actually fit the description of a genocide) and we're not paying attention because we don't want to.
We don't want to know that something like this could possibly be happening, that people could be so evil, yet there are innocent people who's everyday norm consists of seeing friends and family be murdered, raped and tortured. I always knew that things like this were going on in different countries in Africa, but I didn't know how serious and bad it was. The media and news hardly talks about this kind of thing in Africa; some, but not enough.
I would highly recommend the movie "Invisible Children" to anyone if you can get your hands on it. Anyway, just wanted to update everyone on what I'm learning about and doing up here right now. Love you all, and I might see you in a couple of weeks.
These pictures of course, are not from Africa, because I've never been to Africa, but the conditions are just as helpless and hopeless for the people in Africa, if not worse.
