Think Global: Sub Saharan Africa

By Halie Schuster Authors and journalist Nicholas Kristof detail the history, present state, and even specific accounts of gender equality and oppression in  Half the Sky . For example, they begin by telling the story of Meena Hasina. Meena is an Indian Muslim has been prostituted by a brothel controlled by the local sex trade for many years. She was kidnapped at the young age of nine and was kept at a rural house until she was old enough to attract clients. After being sent to the brothel, she experienced rape, violence, and drugging. Unfortunately, Meena’s story is not an uncommon one. Kristof makes the assertive claim that force prostitution, such as what Meena experienced, is essentially modern-day slavery. He writes that “it is not hyperbole to say that millions of women and girls are actually enslaved today” and that “the term that is usually used for this phenomenon is ‘sex trafficking’, a misnomer” (pg. 9). Although Kristof’s belief may initially controversial, his judgment on

          In Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the story starts off with the story of a girl named Rath. In the story Rath goes to Thailand to try and find work. A job agent after they had been washing dishing for a couple months took them deep into Thailand where he turned them over to some gangsters. The girls then stayed in a tenth-floor high rise apartment where they were sent back and forth with guards from a karaoke lounge that operated as a brothel. There, the men told Rath and her friends that the men paid lots of money for them and they were going to have to pay the money back and then he would send them home. They weren't sure how they were going to pay the money back but that became clear very quickly when Rath was locked in a room with a customer who tried to force her to have sex with him. When she refused the man came in the room and beat her telling her that he'd kill her if she refused to have sex with the customer and refused to do what he tol

  In Half the Sky , Kristoff starts off by telling a story about a young girl named Rath. Rath went to Thailand with four of her other friends to work at a restaurant to help her parents pay the bills. However, the trip quickly took a turn for the worst. The job agent sold Rath and her friends to gangsters. These men treated the young girls as property, explaining that he had paid money for them and they are obligated to repay him with their services. Their job was to obey the men and serve the “customers” so that the gangsters could earn their money back. When the girls disobeyed the men or resisted the customers, the gangsters beat them and threatened to kill them until they eventually gave in. Basically, the girls were slaves to the gangsters. Slavery is described as “the state and condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated like property. Slavery relies heavily on the enslaved person being intimidated either by the th

  By Halie Schuster In her Ted Talk, Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks discusses the notion that individual identities and the way that people perceive the world are often influenced by the culture that they themselves are surrounded in, with little consideration of other cultures outside of their own which, in turns, impacts one’s assumptions and judgements of others. She beings her Ted Talk by providing examples from her own childhood and upbringing. When she was a young child, she mostly read books from the United States and Britain and assumed that all stories and books featured “white and blue-eyed” foreign characters. As she grew older and discovered African books, she realized that this was not the truth. Additionally, she also learned that these kinds of one-sided truths, or ‘stories’, were not just limited to novels and literature. She goes on to tell the story of Fide, her family’s live-in help who came from a nearby rural village. Adichie’s mother made her ver

       For this week’s class we had to watch the TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story , by the Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Adichie introduces her talk by telling the audience that she is going to tell a few personal stories. She wants the audience to view her as a storyteller so that they can prepare themselves to be able to better visualize the details and information she is about to give in a story-format. Most of her pieces of writing were made from her imagination, they didn’t necessarily mimic her real life experiences, so this method allowed her audience to also use their imagination. She started the TED talk by explaining her background and where she is from, which is Nigeria. She then goes more into detail about how her writing was made from her imagination, which were about white kids with blue eyes playing in the snow, eating apples, and talking about weather changes. Since she was from Nigeria, she never actually experienced cold weather or foods such as app

     Adichie comes out and starts the TED Talk by introducing herself as a storyteller and how she's going to tell a few personal stories. She starts off by saying her background, how she's from Nigeria, and started reading at a very young age, but how most of her pieces of writing were about white kids with blue eyes playing in the snow, eating apples, and talking about the weather. She never actually experienced any of those things because she lives in Nigeria and its always hot and they don't eat apples. She then goes to say that she is middle class and her parents both have good jobs, her dad is a professor and her mom is an administrator. The more important part of the story is that they had a house boy named Fide who her mother always told her that he was very poor, and they would go bring him food and clothes. She went over there and and saw a basket that they Fide's brother made Adichie's mom, she was surprised that he could make something so nice because sh

By Halie Schuster             Humanitarian aid, in the simplest terms, is assistance that is used to relieve suffering and save lives during emergencies. The underlining principal that international humanitarian aid organizations adhere to is the “golden rule” or “humanitarian imperative” being that “above all, our job is to save lives and alleviate suffering” ( Concern USA, 2020 ). However, not all humanitarians approach the subject with the same perspective. Linda Polman discusses two major humanitarian figures in her book  The Crisis Caravan : Henry Dunant and Florence Nightingale. These two have had a significant influence on the history of humanitarianism and while their associating philosophies may differ, it is important to recognize their impacts and their opinions.  [Red Cross Flad]             Notably, Henry Dunant founded Red Cross, an international organization dedicated to providing aid and relief in the face of natural disasters and other emergencies. After the deadly 185

 By: Sam Whitty               Humanitarian aid is an important subject when it comes to globalization. This is because humanitarian aid is given out to all who need it rather than only to members on one side. Only relatively recently in human history have there been international organizations dedicated to helping those in poverty and wounded soldiers. Their emergence is one of the biggest steps that humanity has taken towards a globally moral society.  [Henry Dunant]             In The Crisis Caravan , Linda Polman discusses two major names in the history of humanitarian aid: Henry Dunant and Florence Nightingale. Henry Dunant is the founder of the Red Cross, an international organization dedicated to helping people during national disasters and other emergencies. Dunant founded this organization because of what he saw in the Battle of Solferino in 1859. During this battle, forty-thousand soldiers were killed, and another forty-thousand were wounded. This massive amount of death shoc

       This weeks' blog focuses on the idea of humanitarian aid. In this weeks' reading which was The Crisis Caravan,  two humanitarians were discussed, Henry Dunant, and Florence Nightingale. They were two key people in the history of humanitarian aid and they kind of worked together yet had very different ideas on what should be done for the issue of humanitarian aid. Henry Dunant believed that it's a person's duty to help no matter what whereas Nightingale believed that if aid fails in its purpose, if the warring parties use that aid to their advantage"(Polman). Dunant coined the phrase "Tutti Fratelli" which means "we are all brothers" and it was a motto he stood by throughout his humanitarian aid campaign when lobbying to Switzerland's parliament. Dunant wanted to start helping injured soldiers after what he saw at the Battle of Solferino where 40,000 soldiers were killed and another 40,000 wounded. The issue was with these injured sold

       In the two readings assigned in class, two humanitarians were discussed, Florence Nightingale and Henry Dunant. Although they sometimes worked together, they had a difference of opinion when it came to the issue of humanitarian aid and what should be done for it. Henry Dunant believed that it is a person’s responsibility to help no matter what the circumstances are. He believes it is the right thing to do and that we should give back. Dunant has stood by the phrase “Tutti Fratelli” which means “we are all brothers”, this shows his mindset in believing it is our duty to help. He has stood by this motto throughout his entire humanitarian aid campaign and it was a daily reminder of why he was doing what he was doing, and it kept him going. However, Florence Nightingale believed that if aid fails in its purpose, the warring parties will use that aid to their advantage (Polman). Dunant eventually formed the Red Cross with the help of others. He was inspired by soldiers who were dying