Mrs. Shoop : 2013

Wednesday

Africa Instructions

This web journey will take you through some of the information I would like you to learn about Africa during this unit. When you are finished reading and looking at the information given for each section, take a moment to write a few notes on the page provided in your packet. You will be using the notes you take for a writing assignment once you are finished.

Click the links below to be taken to each section.

AIDS and EBOLA

Technology and Pastimes

War and Crime

Stories in Africa

Tuesday

African Geography

Let's start with a bit of

AFRICAN GEOGRAPHY
Below is a political map of Africa (political maps show the "political" boundaries, meaning the countries). As of today, there 54 independent countries that make up Africa. If you try to count the countries listed on the map below, you will notice that you count far fewer than 54. Some are too small to show and some are located on small surrounding islands. Africa is home to about 1.1 billion people, making it the second most populous continent on Earth. While Africa's population is growing, the life expectancy for citizens of Africa is 58 years old. (In comparison, life expectancy in the USA is around 78 years old.)

Below is a Physical Map of Africa. Physical maps show the physical features of the land. Look to see if you can spot the Sahara Desert, Atlas Mountains, The Great Rift Valley, Lake Victoria, Nile River and the Kalahari Desert. Africa is home to the largest desert in the world (Sahara) and the longest river in the world (Nile). The tallest mountain in Africa is Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Next, you will see a map of Africa that gives you a glimpse of the great size of Africa in comparison to the nations of the world. Can you spot the USA? Are you shocked to see the size of Africa in comparison to these other countries? It is helpful to see the map below in order to better understand the vast size of the continent of Africa. Just as people here in Oklahoma live slightly different lives than those who live in NYC, New York or Portland, Oregon; so Africans who live in different parts of Africa may live varying lives as well. This web journey will delve into the lives of some Africans throughout the continent, but if would be incorrect to assume that ALL Africans live the same lives. It is important to recognize this tendency to overgeneralize.

Click HERE to be taken to the next section - EDUCATION

Monday

Education in Africa

There are 46 million school age children in Africa who have never set foot in a classroom. That is about half of the school age population in Africa. So why are these children not attending school? Surprisingly, it is not because they do not want to attend school. In many cases, it is because their parents do not have the money to pay school fees.

Many African children desperately want to attend school, but they or their parents cannot afford the school fees. Even in some countries where primary (elementary) education is free, the students cannot even afford the uniforms, books, pencils and erasers.

No Money = No School

Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Ghana are some of the countries that are trying to make education more attainable by abolishing school fees to keep children in school.

Some children have to walk long distances to attend school each day.

"In Zambia, Grace Simokali, nine, and her younger sister Misozi walk for an hour and a half to get to their school. They have to leave home early to avoid the heat and arrive three hours before their lessons start." (source)

Classrooms in many African schools are not like American classrooms. Below are some pictures of classrooms across Africa.

(The one white kid above is Mrs. Shoop's nephew, Hudson, attending school in Kenya)

School children sit down to a meal in Ghana in this photo from Colleen Foley and Elisia Carlson. (source)

To pay for food, Pascal started scavenging for scrap metal. Lenjo, he said, "was so hungry he couldn't do anything but sit. Unless I collected the scrap metal, we would go to sleep without eating."

Their fortunes changed when a social worker from the Undugu Society of Kenya, an advocacy group for street children, told the brothers about the organization's school where there were no uniforms, shoes were optional and there were no tuition fees. Intrigued, Pascal asked the deciding question: "Will they feed us?" The answer was yes, and now the boys study every day at Undugu's tumbledown school on the edge of a Nairobi slum. The walls are crumbling stone, there's only one light bulb, and three children share a textbook. But it's far better than the street, and lunch is served at noon.
(Source)

Click HERE to be taken to the next section over Conflict

Sunday

Conflict in Africa

Due to the numerous conflicts in Africa, many children's lives have been influenced and affective in negative ways. We will look at a few together.

Fear of separation:
Children often fear losing a parent due to conflicts and wars. Fathers or brothers may go off to war, never to return. Some children live in fear of losing these family members or never even get the chance to know their family members. In Rwanda, 300,000 children grew up without moms or dads because their parents were killed in the civil war of 1993. (source) Some children suffer from nightmares about waking up to find their fathers or brothers gone.

Fear of bodily harm:
Some conflicts leave behind landmines, resulting in unannounced detonations and the loss of limbs. In Angola alone, 70,000 people lost arms or legs.

Fear of being recruited and forced to fight:
Child soldiers as young as 7 years old have been found fighting in some of the conflicts throughout Africa. Sometimes children are forced to fight, other times they join on their own. Many times, they have no idea what they are fighting for or against. Sometimes they are forced to fight to protect their own family members. More than 11,000 kids (1/3 of them girls) have been forced to fight in conflicts in Uganda. (source) According to the United Nations there remains an estimated 300,000 children involved in conflicts around the world today. Listen to what one former child soldier had to say about his life:
Beah (age 12) was taken in, given shelter and eventually trained to kill. "Somebody being shot in front of you, or you yourself shooting somebody became just like drinking a glass of water. Children who refused to fight, kill or showed any weakness were ruthlessly dealt with."

"Emotions weren't allowed," he continued. "For example if a nine-year-old boy cried because they missed their mother, they were shot." (source)

Click HERE to be taken to the next section over AIDS

Saturday

AIDS and EBOLA in Africa

AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It is caused by HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus). People with HIV/AIDS have a weakened immune system, making them much more vulnerable to infections and diseases. HIV, which causes AIDS, can be found in the bodily fluids of an infected person. It is transmitted to others through blood to blood contact or sexual contact.

HIV/AIDS began in Africa and Africa today still faces an uphill battle against it. AIDS is the biggest single killer on the continent. Not only are adults and children dying of AIDS themselves, but many children are also orphaned by parents who have been killed by the disease, becoming what is known as "AIDS Orphans." Many babies born to mothers infected with AIDS are infected themselves if proper care and medication are not given to prevent transmission.

There are 23.5 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa who are infected with HIV. In Ethiopia alone, 250,000 children under the age of 5 have AIDS. South Africa has the largest AIDS population, with 5.6 million infected. The United Nations estimates that AIDS will eventually kill about a third of all the young people living in Africa today if something doesn't change. The statistics are staggering, but the number of AIDS related deaths are actually declining due to antiretroviral drugs becoming more available.

EBOLA is still presenting a challenge in West Africa. As of March 2015, over 10,000 people had died from Ebola. It is of particular concern in Africa because proper medical care is not always available and Ebola is highly contagious.

Doctors and nurses treating patients with Ebola must wear protective gear so they do not catch or transmit the virus as it is highly contagious.

The following excerpts come from the World Health Organization's website:

Ebola spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids. People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids contain the virus.

Humans are not infectious until they develop symptoms. First symptoms are the sudden onset of fever fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, symptoms of impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding (e.g. oozing from the gums, blood in the stools).

The worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 in 2020 has occured in Africa as well. However, as of 2021, Covid-19 is thankfully not as severe in many parts of Africa as it is in other parts of the world. Since most severe cases of Covid-19 occur in the elderly, some theorize that this has helped contribute to the lower death rate in Africa. The median age in Africa is much lower than the rest of the world (18 instead of 35), some suppose this has helped lower the death rate among the population in Africa.

Click HERE to be taken to the next section over Famine and Poverty

Friday

Famine and Poverty in Africa

Droughts, floods, wars and poverty can cause famine in a country. Africa is especially prone to famines. Millions of children are starving in Africa.

I remember being a kid who was a picky eater and my mom would give me the line "Eat your food! There are starving people in Africa who don't have any food!" Little did I know the very sad truth to what she said. We definitely take the availability of food here in America for granted, don't we? But something about photos like these below tug at our hearts.

Millions of children in Africa live on just one meal a day. Some are forced to eat grass, roots and seeds for survival. Many will die of starvation. One out of every two people in southern Africa is ill due to poor diet.

Poverty:

Africa is home to some of the poorest countries in the world. In Malawi, seven out of ten people live in poverty. Poverty not only impacts whether a person can eat, but also where they live and if they can get an education. Food, shelter, and education are all things we often take for granted, not readily available to Africans.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some families who are poor accuse their children of being "witches" and exile them to the streets to live in the slums so they don't have another mouth to feed. They accuse these children of causing everything from poverty to deaths in the family. This has resulted in many children living in slums after being kicked out of their homes as "witches". (See story HERE.)

(photo from article)

Click HERE to be taken to the next section over Water in Africa

Thursday

Water in Africa

Many of us take clean water for granted. We turn on the tap, water comes out and we know it's safe to drink. This is not the case for many African children.

Many African countries are very poor and very dry, so they get massive droughts.
Often children have to walk miles every morning to get water from wells in other villages.
Drinking water isn't always clean, so lots of children have terrible diarrhea and nasty infections from drinking it.
Ethiopia is worst-hit, where only a quarter of the popular has access to clean, safe water.

In Tanzania, children spend an average of two hours a day collecting water, although some spend up to seven hours a day in really remote parts.

(Source)

Click HERE to be taken to the next section over Technology and Pastimes in Africa

Wednesday

Technology and Pastimes in Africa

Many Africans do not have access to the internet or even electricity. However, all of the capital cities of the countries in Africa have electricity and internet access. Even so, not everyone in those cities are able to use the internet because the cost of just 20 hours of internet time may cost more than a person could make in a month.

Mobile phones are very popular in Africa. Africa, for the most part, skipped land lines and jumped straight into the cell phone craze. Many Africans love their cell phones just like Americans. The major difference is that many Africans do not have smart phones with access to the internet.

African kids enjoy sports like most other kids throughout the world. Soccer (called "football" in Africa) is very popular. If African children do not have a soccer ball, they will make one out of plastic bags and bits of string.

Another popular "toy" in Africa is a tire that is pushed along by two sticks. (see photo) It is harder than it looks to keep the tire balanced.

Click HERE to be taken to War and Crime in Africa

Tuesday

War and Crime in Africa

Africa is plagued with bloody brutal wars that seem to never end. Nearly half of Africa's 54 countries are home to an ongoing conflict or recently ended one. Millions die. Cruelty beyond imagination surfaces. Those leading the rampages often don't want to take over capital cities or gain land or win converts, they want cash, guns, and a license to rampage. It is extremely sad.

Recent wars in Somalia, Sudan, the Congo, Rwanda and many other countries across Africa have ravaged the land, ransacked the cities, and run-off the people. Refugees flee their home counties in the midst of these wars only to find themselves in refugee camps in surrounding countries.

Traditionally, tribal conflict between rival tribes led to a cycle of revenge and violence. These conflicts are all too common, even today.

Crime
South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. For years, South Africa was ruled by whites who forced the blacks to live according to strict unfair rules of apartness. The system was called "apartheid." Because of the unfair system, South Africa suffered a lot of crime.