Educational Media Reviews Online

Ted Koppel introduces this segment from Nightline with an advisory on the challenges of getting the news out on Africa, particularly the expense of sending in television crews. He credits Hollywood star, Don Cheadle, fresh from his role in 2004's Hotel Rwanda, which chronicled the 1994 genocide in that country, with funding and starring in this segment. Cheadle, after visiting Sudanese refugee camps with a U.S. Congressional delegation, determined to take his children to Uganda to witness the displaced lives of children so different from themselves. On film, he worries about how ‘soft’ his children are, and both he and their mother, Brigid Coulter, talk frequently about the emotional family dynamic that came to questions like: “Can this happen in the U.S.?” He provides background on the sinister presence in Uganda of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Christian revolutionary group that burns villages and steals children to be turned into soldiers and ‘wives.’ The film focuses on a rehabilitation center for children escaped from the Lord’s Resistance Army, and a camp—holding several thousand—near the city for “night commuters” who work in their villages during the day, then walk through the night to the camp to avoid capture by the LRA. The interviewees’ indomitable approach to each day is not belied by their otherwise subdued responses. Since most people are in their homes during the day, this is another reason the problem is not easily captured by the news media. An engaging, very personal view of Africa. Recommended for all libraries.