Regional Geography

This video shows ingenuity of a persons mind and plastic bottles. This is a use of something that seems to useless but plays a very large roll in daily life of the people. This plastic bottle filled with water and placed in thecut out of tin roofs created natural sunlight for the the people in the poorest communities. This cut power bills and it also created a safer living situation for the people. It shows the use for something so useless in our area of the community but so usefull to other areas of the world.

this is a great invention, however the use of these light bottles would be restricted to environments where water never freezes. however, in regions which are economically in trouble where it is generally warm, it can be a cheap source of light in a normally dark building.

people making the best of their situation and being inovative and creative is insperational and the rest of the world should follow suit

This video is so sad because HIV/AIDS  in the DRC and other African countries is definitely preventable and treatable but due to the immense amounts of poverty and the lack of information about contraceptives and protection, millions are infected every year.

The man featured in this video mentions that the government does nothing to help fund medical centers or any other assistance and it is truly shameful.

Unit 2

One thing that stuck out to me in this video is when he spoke about the making sure the children’s basic needs are met so they can concentrate on school. That is such a problem in our education system today that people don’t wish to address. I wonder how our education system would be if we made sure our children also had their basic needs met.

Ojambo has founded a project that addresses the extremely sad issue of orphans who have lost their parents to AIDS. These children need help because they do not have parents to support them, leaving them with their Grandparents who struggle to support these children. This video made me think of AIDS in Africa in a different way. When I thought of AIDS in Africa, I always focused on how many people were dying and how tragic that was. I seldom thought of the people they were leaving behind and what their death would mean to those still living.

This is a big deal for me, as I'm always interesting looking into the far future for humanity as a whole. It's very important that a mistake is not made with the vast agricultural power that lays in the soil of Africa. Experiments with hybrid seeds and new technologies can yield a higher production, but at a cost we are not yet fully aware of. Many years down the line it's unclear as to what the result of this sort of farming will be, and I believe the last thing we want to do is to put all our eggs in one basket with this situation, as it could yield a worst case scenario where most of earth's farmland becomes useless for the purposes of growing due to an unforeseen long-term consequence of artificial seeds and the like. We should pursue technology with all haste and push forward without fear, but we need a reliable backup in case things go wrong.

This article first tells us about the different regions in Africa agriculturally, dealing with famine, economic, and distributive conflicts. It then tells a story about the famine killing 36 million in Chins, and how they would strategically select crops from the West in attempt to produce another "Green Revolution". Experts are saying that Sub-Saharan Africa should follow in their footsteps, but the two nations have many social, economic, and especially agricultural differences.

This write-up says a lot about how nations react to situations such as famine, and the distribution of goods aside that. Different nations have different abilities agriculturally and use these toward their peoples and social crisis's.  

Haiti is in a prime "natural disaster" zone and it is difficult for a country to recover fully after each "hit".  Disaster after disaster begins to weigh heavily on an already struggling infrastructure, government, and hope.  The earthquake that Haiti experienced in 2009 was particularly devastating.  This article aims to shed some light on a few of the reasons why, two years later, Haiti was in pretty much the same condition.  Haiti's government was basically non-existent before this earthquake, and anything that did exist was quite ineffective at making decisions.  Bureaucratic procedures made incoming aid and their supplies move into Haiti extremely slow.  Some of it stopped coming altogether when cholera began to make a huge presence within the population.  As seen with this situation, as well as in other countries, uncoordinated aid and conflicting agendas of different organizations can do more harm than good.  Also, urban settings are extremely complex and can be puzzling to an outsider, particularly in times of desperate need.  When rebuilding, it is important to consider the future in terms of what else nature and location has in store for them.

There are a myriad of reasons for why “after almost two years…reconstruction has barely started,” but the lack of “local” help stood out to me the most. As the article mentions, the NGO’s have been responsible for taking care of Haiti’s relief efforts, most of whom are outside sources. On some level it isn’t surprising that the UN and NGO’s took the lead as their seemed to be no prominent leader in the country due to the lack of political stability mentioned in the article. However, for the outside efforts to “ignore” the actually population of the country just perpetuates the problem. As the people enforcing all the change, I consider the NGO’s to be more of a leader as they are trying to go about handeling the welfare of the nation (however misguided there attempts) as they are the ones calling the shots about what is done. Since they are doing work with no help, when they leave no one is around to lead once again because an atmosphere was never cultivated to encourage Haitian leadership.

Just throwing money at the problem without local support is also troubling because it doesn’t actually seem to be an effective met the needs of the population either. In the paragraph that discussed poor coordination, one sees a major concern is that groups are duplicating efforts of another group through the use of donations. We know this is happening without the “local community.” So one would think the people who actually live in the country would maybe know there country the best. Not the outside European relief efforts though despite the fact that they respond poorly to “urban settings” poorly. Time and time again, this has been a problem with the way developed countries respond to under-developed countries. I often think developed countries hold on to the success the IMF had with England after WWII, when throwing money at a situation actually worked. However, this isn’t the 1940’s anymore and there are many studies showing those methods just aren’t working (probably because the money isn’t being used correctly). As such, it should be time for a change in methods. Yet, it seems only the developed countries are capable of making that call and it’s not one they seem to be making anytime soon.

I am in no way suggesting the world just let Haiti be. One positive aspect of globalization is that communities in need can actually get relief from other parts of the world. Yet, in that same hand is the negative aspect. For that money is typically misused. Instead I propose that as a means to rectify the downside of globalization other nations work with the Haitian people to create a country that the Haitians can actually claim as their own. 

Watching this video makes me glad that I live where I do, it also makes me feel bad for those that are not as lucky as myself and other students of colleges and universities. these students in South Africa's schools are not getting a proper education, the teachers sometimes do not show up, so in some cases the students will assume position and teach those who do not understand the material. It is also sad to know that there are so many out there with great ambitions for their lives and because of their poor education and understanding of subjects, they are failing and might not be able to reach their goals for life. It is good to see though there is a teacher that gets the kids engaged everyday  as a morning warm up to sing. 

what i dont understand is how south africa can be on such an upward trend which motivation and nationalism but the rest of africa just refuses to get on the same track. the success of south africa and their constantly improving country should be motivation and a model for the rest of the continent.

This is some really cool stuff! This is a good showcase of human ingenuity. We have no need to create our own helicopters here in the United States in our backyards, but this shows that with the technical know-how, a lot of savings money, and raw supplies, it's entirely possible for anyone to build one. The impressiveness in this article lies in the ability for these individuals to make something extremely complex on their own rather than rely on pre-built, expensive models.