African Education

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In my conversations with people at home, I remembered once again that lots of people don’t know as much about geography as we’d like to. I was one of them, too, before I joined the Choir. Maybe this will help a little.

UGANDA: The capital city is Kampala and official language is English, though there are 40 or so dialects of native languages. The most common of which is Luganda. There was a civil war of sorts in 1984 to overthrow the dictator, Idi Amin (see: The Last King of Scotland.) Yowrei Museveni has been in office as the president since 1986 or so and was a big part of helping the rebels win in Rwanda in 1994. Kampala is built on 7 hills, so you can see across the city in many places. During the time when Europe was colonizing Africa, it was part of the British Empire. I’ll let you do research on GNI and things.

RWANDA: The Land of a Thousand Hills. It’s a small country, about the size of Vermont, but one of the most densely populated, with over 10 million people and a rapid birth rate. The capital is Kigali, which is pretty close to smack-dab in the center of the country. It is famous for two things: the mountain gorillas and the 1994 genocide in which over 1 million people were killed and several hundred thousand displaced. Paul Kagame is currently in office, and has more or less been in power since the rebel army, which he led, took Kigali in July of 1994. Rwanda has undoubtedly experienced the most rapid development of any African country in modern history.

KENYA: It is known as one of the most developed countries in East Africa, with the capital of Nairobi. I don’t know a whole lot more about it, other than it is a coastal country, so it has more access to trade. Much of the country is over 5000 feet above sea level.

ETHIOPIA: For those of you following the adoptions, I figured I’d include this as a point of reference. Ethiopia is also on the Indian Ocean, and a very mountainous country. Addis Ababa is the capital. It is the neighbor to the countries I am visiting on this trip.

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