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Uganda had come a long way since the stifling...

11:14 PM, Sunday, May 2, 2010 .. Link

Uganda had come a long way since the stifling dictatorship of Idi AminJust a few years earlier, it had had the highest AIDS rate in AfricaWith a campaign called the big noise, the death rate had been cut in half through a focus on abstinence, education, marriage, and condoms The four of us went to two small villages, Mukono and Wanyange, to highlight the importance of education and of American-financed micro-credit loansUganda had tripled education funding in the previous five years and had made a real effort to educate girls as well as boysThe schoolchildren we visited in Mukono wore nice pink uniformsThey were obviously bright and interested, but their learning materials were inadequate; the map on the classroom wall was so old it still included the Soviet UnionIn Wanyange, the village cook had expanded her operation and another woman had diversified her chicken-raising business to include rabbits with micro-credit loans funded by UWe met a woman with a two-day-old babyShe let me hold the infant boy as the White House photographer took a picture of two guys named Bill Clinton The Secret Service didnt want me to imitation louis vuitton wallets go to Rwanda because of ongoing security problems, but I felt that I had toAs a concession to the security issue, I met at the Kigali airport with the leaders of the country and with survivors of the genocidePresident Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, and Vice President Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, were trying to put the country back togetherKagame was the nations most powerful political leader; he had decided that it would advance the reconciliation process to begin with a president from the majority Hutu tribeI acknowledged that the United States and the international community had not acted quickly enough to stop the genocide or to prevent the refugee camps from becoming havens for the killers, and I offered to help the nation rebuild and to support the war crimes tribunal that would hold accountable the perpetrators of the genocide The survivors told me their storiesThe last speaker was a dignified woman who said her family had been identified to the rampaging killers as Tutsis by Hutu neighbors whose children had played with hers for yearsShe was badly wounded by a machete and left for deadShe awoke in a pool of her own cartier watches for women blood to find her husband and six children lying dead beside herShe told Hillary and me that she had cried out to God in despair that she had survived, then came to understand that my life must have been spared for a reason, and it could not be something as mean as vengeanceSo I do what I can to help us start againI was overwhelmed; that magnificent woman had made my problems seem pathetically smallShe had deepened my resolve to do whatever I could to help Rwanda I began the first visit by any American President to South Africa in Cape Town, with a speech to the parliament in which I said I had come in part to help the American people see the new Africa with new eyesIt was fascinating to me to witness the supporters and victims of apartheid working togetherThey didnt deny the past or hide their current disagreements, but they seemed confident that they could build a common futureIt was a tribute to the spirit of reconciliation that emanated from Mandela The next day Mandela took us to visit Robben Island, where he had spent the first eighteen years of his captivityI saw the rock quarry where he had worked and the chanel quilted cheap handbag cramped cell where he was kept when he wasnt breaking rocksIn Johannesburg, I called on Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who had been meeting with Al Gore twice a year on our common agenda and was almost certain to be Mandelas successor; dedicated a commercial center named after Ron Brown, who had loved South Africa; and visited a primary schoolHillary and I went to church with Jesse Jackson in Soweto, the teeming township that had produced so many of the anti-apartheid activists By this time I had developed a real friendship with MandelaHe was remarkable not only because of his astonishing journey from hatred to reconciliation during twenty-seven years in prison, but also because he was both a tough-minded politician and a caring person who, despite his long confinement, never lost his interest in the personal side of life or his ability to show love, friendship, and kindness We had one especially meaningful conversationI said, Madiba [Mandelas colloquial tribal name, which he asked me to use], I know you did a great thing in inviting your jailers to your inauguration, but didnt you really hate those who imprisoned louis vuitton backpacks you? He replied, Of course I did, for many yearsThey took the best years of my lifeThey abused me physically and mentallyI didnt get to see my children grow upThen one day when I was working in the quarry, hammering the rocks, I realized that they had already taken everything from me except my mind and my heartThose they could not take without my permissionI decided not to give them awayThen he looked at me, smiled, and said, And neither should you After I caught my breath, I asked him another questionWhen you were walking out of prison for the last time, didnt you feel the hatred rise up in you again? Yes, he said, for a moment I didThen I thought to myself, They have had me for twenty-seven yearsIf I keep hating them, they will still have meI wanted to be free, and so I let it goThis time he didnt have to say, And so should you The only vacation day on the trip came in Botswana, which had the highest per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa and the highest AIDS rate in the worldWe went on a safari in Chobe National Park and saw lions, elephants, impalas, hippos, crocodiles, and more than twenty different species of replica rolex submariner b

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Uganda had come a long way since the stifling...

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