“This is How the World Fucked Africa”
It happened by chance that last week I saw “Hotel Rwanda” and this week I saw “The Constant Gardener”. Both films I would brand as super great and real masterpieces.
Hotel Rwanda is not a documentary about the massacre of Tutsis who were killed by Hutus in Rwanda as much it is about this hotel manager who saved the lives of 1,200 people from the Tutsis by being a very good hotel manager, based on his background of diplomacy.
The Constant Gardener is delving into the dirty business of pharmaceutical companies that manage to get approvals to use “cheap” humans as test subjects for medical experimentation without their knowledge or consent. And of course where do those “cheap” human live? The answer is Africa. The main theme of the film revolves around diplomat Justin Quayle who seeks the truth to find why his wife was murdered in Africa while he was in a mission there.
Both films successfully portray the misery and despair in which millions of people in Africa are experiencing while the world is looking away. Hotel Rwanda is based on a true story and The Constant Gardener is based on true details of how big multi-international companies can wear the mask of helping when they are exploiting innocent souls.
I will not go into details about the stories of both films but you can visit Hotel Rwanda here and The Constant Gardener here. Photos are from the same sites.
Diplomat Justin Quayle, a role played by talented Ralph Fiennes, is an example of how diplomacy can be so ineffective when put in the right traditional channels. That’s through embassies and representations. However, when the skills and dexterity of diplomacy are used for a cause, it usually achieves its goals which is quite contradictory but that's what both movies conveyed to me in a way. Those precious qualities of diplomacy functioned so well away from the classic image of diplomats.
Paul Rusesabagina, a role played by Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda revealed how high exquisite professionalism of diplomacy saved the lives of more than 1200 lives from unavoidable genocide though not through the legal traditional channels of diplomacy versus the failure of the real diplomacy to save the Rwandan people from the genocide in 1994.
Every one of us has talents and skills in one area or another and usually restricted to certain channels or circles but same talents could exemplify heroism and great courage in support of great causes like saving innocent lives from a dreadful genocide or from pharmaceutical human testing. It is never an easy mission as in both movies but such missions serve sublime goals that confirm values of our humanity.
When Justine Quayle gave up his diplomatic passport in Britain or when it was withdrawn from him, he did not give up seeking the truth behind the murder of his wife. The truth uncovered a mafia that is using innocent African lives and souls because they think it is “cheap” for drug testing. Missions are not passports. Missions are meant to believe to serve greater causes. The two movies confirm that principle of missions can be owned by anyone as long as she/he is serving an inspirational goal for humans.
I am still touched by Paul Rusesabagina from Hotel Rwanda, Justin Quayle and his wife Tessa, a role played by the pretty British actress Rachel Weisz, from the Constant Gardener. The reason why I am touched or why I cried while watching both movies, it is because they touched the very core of our existence as humans and how we should coexist. We should exist as equal human beings with the same rights. No humans are meant to exist at the expense of the lives of others. No race should exist because it is better than the other; hence the latter should be exterminated. All humans are entitled to live decently with dignity and self respect. There is no such thing as cheap or expensive humans. Qualifying some humans as priority and others as not because of discriminatory values is frightful.
I remember this statement from “The Constant Gardener” when Justine Quayle was visiting Southern Sudan seeing a raid on a refugee camp, he asked the white" doctor while trying to flee the massacre what is this. The doctor answered: “This is How the World Fucked Africa”. True both films are sincerely showing “How the World Fucked Africa” and failed many children and women in their weakness. And that’s enough. I highly encourage you all to watch both movies, because I will not be able to describe how anyone would feel, I would do both movies injust. They are true works of art.
Diplomacy should be Paul Rusesabagina, Justine Quayle and Tessa Qualye's determination to make a better life for others, trying to undo injustices to others.
posted by Freedom For Egyptians @ 1:21 PM
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This article should be of interest and should hit close to home...
Who is exploiting Africa, and who isn't?
Nile restrictions anger Ethiopia
By Mike Thomson
BBC News
Looking out across the vastness of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, it is difficult to see why Ethiopia is known as a land plagued by horrific droughts.
Ethiopia says it needs resources to exploit the Blue Nile
Lake Tana is 112km (70 miles) wide and fed by more than 40 tributaries.
From its origin here in the Ethiopian Highlands, the Blue Nile flows hundreds of miles north into Sudan and then Egypt before eventually flowing into the Mediterranean.
Yet despite this apparent abundance of water about 2.5 million farmers, in this region of Ethiopia alone, depend on food aid to survive.
The Ethiopian government says this state of affairs continues because it has not been able to meaningfully exploit the massive natural resource which passes largely untapped through its territory.
This means the agriculture on which so much of the population depends is at the mercy of seasonal rains which are becoming increasingly erratic.
But Ethiopia's new determination to utilise the Blue Nile to lift itself out of poverty is likely to put it on a collision course with the country which currently makes most use of the water downstream - Egypt.
Dry
The further east you drive from Lake Tana the drier it gets. Once into the hills, green makes way for dull yellows and browns further neutered by clouds of dust.
Farmers like Mengistu (r) rely on rain to grow crops
Near the village of Zaha small children shepherd a collection of scrawny cows and goats towards a field of lifeless stubble. A group of men, clad in traditional head scarves and cloaks, crouch in the shade listlessly, flicking away the flies.
The meagre crops in the fields provide little evidence that this is harvest time. But within view of the parched fields a large tributary of the Nile sweeps past unconcerned.
Mengistu, a farmer, says that those in his village are finding it increasingly difficult to eke out even a basic livelihood.
"The main problem here is that we don't get enough rain. In fact, this is the source of all our problems," he says.
"Over the last four years our rains have not come as usual. Both the long and short rains have failed. Last May we got no proper rains. Yet this month is supposed to mark the start of the wet season. So we haven't been able to grow our crops."
"Even when the rains do come they don't last long. If the rains come too late or too early we are just planting in vain. We've had to rely on food aid. We've got nothing to eat."
Desert miracle
Many hundreds of miles downstream the very waters that passed by Ethiopia's drought-ravaged fields are used to grow fruit and vegetables in the heart of the Sinai desert.
A massive irrigation system spawns thousands of acres of fruit and vegetables at the Al-Hoda farm, one of Africa's largest organic farms. Most of the crops are bound for supermarkets in Britain and other European countries.
Any suggestion that this miracle in the desert comes at the expense of drought-plagued countries upstream gets an angry response.
The owner of the Al-Hoda Farm, Osama Kher Eldin, argues that Egypt has little or no rain and it could not survive if other nations began plundering the Nile's waters.
"If one wants to kill your kids, what you going to do? It means death for Egyptian people. We have no other sources. Only the Nile. So it is something untouchable," he says.
Egypt has not stopped at creating organic farms in the desert. It is also been using the Nile to grow whole new towns there.
In 1987 the land where Noubarya now stands was nothing but desert shrubs, but now it is a thriving urban oasis.
But even that is minor in comparison with the Egyptian government's latest major scheme, the Toshka Project, which uses the great river to irrigate a whole desert region.
Given the continent's acute shortage of water can all this be justified just to grow crops in the desert? Dia El Quosy, senior adviser to the Egyptian government's Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, says his country must act in this way.
"It's not only the production of food. It's also about the generation of employment. Some 40% of our manpower are farmers and if these people are not given opportunities and jobs they will immediately move to the cities and you can see how crowded Cairo is already."
Anger
Egypt's population has more than doubled since the 1960s. But Ethiopia is also facing similar demographic pressures. And Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi says the current division of water use along the river is anything but fair.
Irrigation projects have enabled Egypt to turn desert areas into productive land
"While Egypt is taking the Nile water to transform the Sahara Desert into something green, we in Ethiopia - who are the source of 85% of that water - are denied the possibility of using it to feed ourselves. And we are being forced to beg for food every year," he says.
Mr Meles says he is becoming increasingly angry at Egypt's long running objections to requests from other Nile basin nations to use the river's waters for major irrigation projects.
And he warns that his government, along with those of Kenya, Uganda Tanzania - who share the White Nile with Egypt - will no longer be intimidated by past threats, principally by the late President Anwar Sadat, to use force to maintain its grip on the Nile.
"I think it is an open secret that the Egyptians have troops that are specialised in jungle warfare. Egypt is not known for its jungles. So if these troops are trained in jungle warfare, they are probably trained to fight in the jungles of the East African countries," Mr Meles says.
"And from time to time Egyptian presidents have threatened countries with military action if they move. While I cannot completely discount the sabre-rattling I do not think it is a feasible option. If Egypt were to plan to stop Ethiopia from utilising the Nile waters it would have to occupy Ethiopia and no country on earth has done that in the past."
But one thing that does prevent Ethiopia from exploiting the Nile waters is a lack of money. Mr Meles blames this on Egypt's long-term opposition to any international funding of large scale irrigation projects on the Nile.
This allegation is denied by the Egyptian government which also insists that it is fully committed to implementing any agreement reached in current talks with its neighbours along the Nile.
Egypt's growing population is heavily dependent on the Nile
However, the United Nation's World Food Programme says that with nine million Ethiopians in need of food aid and rains in the country becoming ever more unreliable, the talking should not go on too long.
Meles Zenawi, believes that the time for talking may already be over.
"The current regime cannot be sustained. It's being sustained because of the diplomatic clout of Egypt. Now, there will come a time when the people of East Africa and Ethiopia will become too desperate to care about these diplomatic niceties. Then, they are going to act."
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