Ewan and Charley in Rwanda

Categories: Population, Development and Health, Advanced Higher

I am sitting watching the excellent 'Long Way Down' featuring Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's motorcycle journey through Africa. They have just been in Rwanda, a country that we'll look at soon with Higher. Undoubtedly a beautiful,lush country, its recent history means that people don't often associate it with the stunning landscape. Many of you have already got a decent knowledge of the Rwandan genocide in the early '90's, and I have already told you that we'll make use of 'Hotel Rwanda', one of the most powerful films that I think I've seen.

McGregor and Boorman met with the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, in itself a controversial decision as Kagame has been implicated by some observers in war crimes. Reading his wikipedia entry just shows the confusion as history is written and re-written after conflict-its hard to tell if the article is fact or opinion ( a bit of both?). I wondered if Rwanda could have been something that an Advanced Higher student could look at for their Issues essay next year. A quick search shows plenty of sources, lots of them partial, and would make the basis of a good critical evaluation- Has the Rwandan conflict irreparably hindered development, Was foreign aid the root of the Rwandan Genocide, for example? Some of the articles may also be useful to a current student, who is looking at whether countries can develop without foreign aid. I also wondered if it would be feasible for Higher to do a bit of research on actual people uprooted as a result of the troubles to determine the factors influencing a forced migration, the impact on the country of origin and the host country etc. I'll have a look at this over the next few days to see the availabaility of material.

This link is for Miss Green, I think this is the world clock you were looking for that we couldn't remember the url for. I think tomorrow, we might use the trade game with s4 for an intro into factors influencing development, I have the link in my bookmarks. I've also linked the picture of 'Long Way Down' to the Unicef homepage for the journey. There is some really useful info on here for a number of topics which we can maybe use in the next few weeks.