A Week Before Africa

Hey Everyone,

This is my blog for my second trip to Africa, my first to Uganda. For those who dont know me, my name is Andy Bauer. I am a Illinois State University student senior, and I will be student teaching at an elementary school all of next year. I am very fortunate and thankful to have such loving and supportive family and friends. (Really I would not have been able to anything without them)

I first became aware and involved with Global Family Rescue three years ago as a senoir in high school. Ben, Melody, and Jake, had come and held a presentation in my schools auditorium, and I gave them my information carelessly, clueless of the implications. I kept in contact with them off and on, but it was not until I watched Hotel Rwanda, for a second time, that I really reflected on myself and my morals/beliefs. There is a quote in the them movie where the main character Paul is talking to a US cameraman. The camera man shows him footage of people getting slaughtered by the masses in broad day light. And Pauls says to the camera man, "You can show this to your people back in the US and they will do something". Then the camera man looks at Paul and says,"People in America will be watching this on the news, while eating dinner. They will say how horrible this is, and then go back eating their dinner like nothing happened."

This single quote in a movie changed my life. I reflected on how I could let this happen, and why I never stuck up for what I believed what was right. How could we let this happen? The Rwandan genocide happened in 1994, I was a alive then, and no one helped these people. I thought about "how we could let this happen back then". But in reality it is happening right now in many countries in Africa. (Sudan, Uganda, Congo) The war in Sudan,"Darfur", has been called a GENOCIDE by our own Governement. The USA recognizes that this is a genoicde, and when I bring up Darfur while doing a speech to high school students, I get blank stares. And you can't blame them, it is not there fault that all they see on the media is Paris Hilton's next DUI or Americas Next Top Eating Disorder (ANTED for short). In Sand and Sorrow, narrated by George Clooney (Ladies and Adam), he says that last year CBS talked for a total of 3 minutes on the GEONCIDE in Dafur. This is why no one knows that Darfur is not a "Candian Fur Trading Company", and is a section of Sudan that has/is be murdered by the hundreds of thousands. So this is my mission, to learn and share the stories of the people of Africa, and to relay these stories to anyone who is ready and willing to listen.

On this trip we will be going to Uganda, a very imporvished country, that has been war strickened for years in the Northern Region. The conflict between the rebel Lord's Resistence Army and the Ugandan Army is at the moment "semi-stable". We will be traveling over night to a the city of Gulu, where children by the thousands walk for miles to sleep together on the ground in order to protect themselves from being abducted by the LRA and being transformed into child soldiers. We will be speaking to women who had been raped, and now have children, by these rebels, and sharing their stories. We will also be visiting the sponsored families in Uganda and relief oganizations to help aid their needs.

This trip will change everyones life involved, me included. It will test everyone physically and emotionally. I am very exitcited to say that my father will be going on this trip with me. This will be an amazing oppritunity for the both of us.

Thank you to everyone that helped me get where I am today (family and friends)

Andy Bauer