My Unit Plan Website Link

Sorry guys! Here is the link to my unit plan on African Literature. Feel free to download any or all of the documents. If you have any issues downloading them, I can also email them. Enjoy!

http://sites.google.com/site/africanliteratureunit/

For our African Lit class, we do explorations. I just looked at some African art online and here is the art I created afterwards. Enjoy!

Here is the link if you want to check out the original art.

Ways we can help...ways others are helping

To be honest, I wasn't going to find anything new to bring to class today about helping in Africa. However, last night I decided to look at the Kalamazoo Gazette and found, to my surprise, an article about World AIDS Day, which was yesterday. The article is similar to an argument and talks about how much money should be given to stopping AIDS and how much certain organizations are spending on AIDS instead of working on stopping other diseases like pnueomia. Check out the link above to read the article online. I'll bring the paper copy to class today.

The reason I wasn't going to do anything for class today was that I had written my second paper on World Vision, an organization that works through sponsorship and other means to help impoverised people around the world provide for their needs and bring justice to those who can not help themselves. If you are at all interested in finding out more about this organization, click on the link. World Vision offers a multitude of ways that we can participate in helping people around the world, plus they offer information on the countries that they are working in such as history and social life today. Very interesting.

The Language of Johnny Mad Dog

As I've read through Johnny Mad Dog, there have been several passages that have caught my attention and I feel have helped me to understand the main characters better (Laokole and Johnny).

The first passage is used is by Johnny after his fellow soldier Gator was killed by their Commander, Giap. Giap had just chosen the 4 division leaders of the Commando units and Gator thought that Giap should monetarily reimburse them for their time and effort. Gator tried to begin a revolution, however, in order to deal with the disrespect, Giap shot Gator. In response to the killing of one of his best friends, Johnny says , "Really, people are awful. They have no heart." (p 44). From reading others' blogs about this book, it seems like the general concensus is that Johnny is ignorant and prideful, however, this little comment made me see him as real, a real boy with real genuine feelings.

Later on, this same comment reappeared. This time it is said by Laokole. Johnny's fellow soldiers have just taken over the 4x4 of Melanie's family and were chasing the refugees. One of them had seen a little boy with gun and they stopped to get the gun from the boy who they thought was a Chechen. When they stopped, they shot the boy while Laokole and her mother were hiding behind a wall or flower hedge. Just as Johnny was torn up by the killing of Gator, Laokole is devastated by the death of this child that she didn't even know. She repeats what Johnny said, "Really, people are awful. They have no heart."

I just think it is interesting that these two sentences are repeated in the book and I'm wondering if they are repeated at all later on in the book. I guess I'll just have to keep reading.

Johnny Mad Dog

I was hooked on Johnny Mad Dog right away. I had been warned that it was told through two different narrators. However, that is the part of the book that I really like. Having the story of Johnny/Matiti Mabe alongside Laokole is really great.

One thing that I didn't catch right away was that Laokole is a girl. I didn't realize that until she was talking about the things she was planning to bring with them on the exile from their home because of the soldiers invading for the looting.

I decided to look up a little on Johnny Mad Dog and found that it is also a movie. A clip on You Tube is available for the movie.

Endangered Animals - Just Africa

So I was going to look up endangered animals from all over the world, but when I started doing my research, I found out that that would be way too much to tackle. So I just looked at the endangered animals in Africa.

The first animal that I found that is endangered in Africa is the mountain gorilla. It lives in East Africa (Rwanda, Uganda & Zaire). It is the largest and rarest of the three subspecies of gorillas at an average of 6 ft. tall and 400-500 lbs. These gorillas also live up to 50 years. Right now, there are only about 650 mountain gorillas in existence.

Another endangered animal in Africa is the rhinoceros. There are 2 species of rhinos in Africa. One is black and the other is white, and both have horns. They range in weight from 750 to 8,000 lbs. and are 4.5 to 6 feet tall. Currently there are 2,400 black rhinos and 7,500 white rhinos. They can live up to 35 to 40 years.

The african wild dog is also endangered. They are about the size of a medium dog and can live up to 10 years. Between 2,000 and 5,000 remain in the wild. They are only found in Africa south of the Sahara.

100,000 to 200,000 four feet tall chimpanzee's remain in the wild. They can live up to 50 years in the wild and are found in 21 African countries. They prefer to live in dense tropical rainforests and habitat destruction is the greatest threat to them.

A final endangered animal in Africa is the zebra. There are two species and one of them is endangered. There are only 600-700. They live on mountainous slopes and plateaus and feed off a variety of grasses.

The Bleeding of the Stone

When I first started reading this book, I was worried it would be a boring read. However, after I stuck it out for a while, it started to get pretty good. Asouf begins to tell his story and the visitors arrive.

I was curious about the place where all of this happened. The map on the left is of Libya and I'm guessing of the area near where this book takes place.

After reading about the waddan and the goats, I began to wonder what they looked like. Here is what I found: The picture on the left is of female moufflon and the one on the right is a male.












As I was looking for pictures of the moufflon, Darius suggested that I look for pictures of moufflon meat, which is what Asouf's dad was killed trying to get. I'm not sure that this looks very appetizing, but I guess if you were living in the desert and were hungry, it would taste good.

I also began to wonder about what the desert looks like in Libya where Asouf lives. I looked up some picture of Libya.