In the writing assignment there were many difficult challenges that I faced throughout the process to get to the final product. One of the most difficult parts for me was trying to get an introduction and conclusion composed. I didn’t know quite how to start out by stating my argument and outlining the rhetorical techniques and appeals. So I started the introduction out with a bold statement “For some of us, Rwanda catches our attention because we know its tragic history, but what would it be like if over the course of approximately 100 days at least 500,000 people were massacred in a horrific “war”?” I said this because some people do know something about Rwanda and if they didn’t as they read I informed them on what it was like for Rwandans. The conclusion was not as testing as the introduction because you needed to address a “so what” question. I have a strong interest and care for what happened and is happening to Rwanda so I conveyed that in my conclusion to tell audience members that Rwanda is and wants to change for the better. My introduction and conclusion’s context were similar and both addressed the “so what” question. I thought that the body of the essay wasn’t quite as difficult because that’s where I incorporated the rhetorical appeals that I thought were best suited for the picture. It was however tricky for me to put the techniques into the essay and make sure that they made sense and was fluid when you were trying to read. The biggest help of this writing assignment were doing the pre-writing assignment and having the peer-reviews. The peer-reviews helped me see what other drafts looked like so it made the second revision process very easy.
I think I changed many things in my writing assignment for the better. Some of these changes were drastic ones while some were small or minor but did a lot to my writing. I rearranged and resized a couple different multimedia elements, changed a few hyperlinks, cut out a big chunk of my first paragraph, and did some grammar editing. The reason I rearranged and resized some of my multimedia elements was because the photo I chosen was towards the bottom of my writing and I started to address elements of the photo in the first paragraph, so I moved it to the top of the page. I also made the pictures bigger. I think this made the picture stand out more and catch the reader’s attention. The hyperlinks I changed were the logos and pathos. I changed these to more defined definitions so if the audience didn’t know what they meant would click on the hyperlink and understand it better. In the second rough drafts revision I cut a big chunk out of the first paragraph that talked about the different location the Imbabazi orphanage made. I didn’t think these were necessary in the essay due to the fact that the essay was supposed to be talking about the photograph. I also did a slight revision and put who took the photo and a little background of the photographer.
WP1 Rough Draft #2
WP1 Rough Draft #1
Statement of Purpose
For some people, Rwanda catches our attention because of its known tragic history, but what would it be like if over the course of approximately 100 days at least 500,000 people were massacred in a horrific “war”? What feelings or emotions would be churning in your stomach? That’s something to think when looking at the photograph I have chosen. But these images of violence that we often associate with the tiny country in Central Africa are out-of-date. Rwanda today is a place that epitomizes hope and development. The thoughts that I get when I look at this photo are that this boy is worn down and tired, he feels as if his life is not what he wants it to be like but he knows that this is the best it can get right now. I draw this argument from the boy's eyes, his posture, the lighting in the room, and his overall appearance.
The country of Rwanda has one of the highest percentages of orphanages in the world. One of the top orphanages in Rwanda is the Imbabazi Orphanage. It has provided a place of refuge for troubled and traumatized Rwandan children. The country of Rwanda is settled in the east-central part of Africa. In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, Rosamond Carr, an American woman who had lived in Rwanda since 1949, converted her farm into a shelter for lost and orphaned children. It is called Imbabazi, which in Kinyarwanda and means “a place where you will receive all the love and care a mother would give.” quoted by Rosamond Halsey Carr. She founded the Imbabazi Orphanage in 1994 on her farm in, Mugongo, in the hills of Mutura, next to the Congo border. The Imbabazi Orphanage is home to over 150 children. Many of these children's families were killed during the 1994 Genocide, which they regularly refer to as "the war." Others died of disease when they fled to the Congo as refugees. Due to continual outbreaks of violent behavior, the orphanage moved to the petite lake town of Gisenyi. In late 2005, the orphanage moved back to Mugongo, into a new, lasting facility. The orphanages is one of the smallest numbers of homes where children are being raised without ethnic differences.
The gallery I picked the picture through features photographs taken by 19 children of the Imbabazi Orphanage, beginning when the children were linking the ages of 8 and 17. The photos were taken with 35mm disposable cameras, and, as of 2005, digital cameras. The photographs have been printed to archival, exhibition standards.
The photo I have chosen is from the Compose Design Advocate website under ‘Through the Eyes of Children’. This photo is taken by a boy named Tawagia who lived in the Imbabazi orphanage as well as the boy in the photo. The photo is of a boy staring out of a window with what either looks like he is doing homework or something he may be drawing. Before I knew of the history of this photo I knew from the other pictures that it looks like the different children are from a poorer country in Africa. The ethos of the photo lies with the photographer because we know that he lives in this country, this country that is torn apart by war; the audience has no choice but to trust him, trust him to depict the truth in a very raw and genuine way. At the first glance of the photo which would be logos in the rhetorical design of the photograph I look straight to the “vector of attention,” which is the boys face. A “vector of attention” is defined in the book as in all photographs the photographer directs your attentions by the way the people-or subjects- in the photograph are arranged. A patho in the photograph is that the boy (Musa) looks like he is hard at thought about what he really wants to do with his day. I think this because of the apprehensive or hesitant expression on his face. The pathos of a photograph wants people to feel similar emotion when looking at the photograph. What kind of feeling do you get when you look at the photograph? After his face I look at his surroundings, where it looks like he is not in the cleanest room with the comfiest bed. When looking at the photo you can tell from the elements in the room it is not clean, has some broken pieces of wood in the room, and that the windows are dirty.
When talking about framing in the photograph the book says to look at a photographer’s choices about what to include (or not) in a photograph as they frame the photograph through a camera’s viewfinder. In the picture it looks to me like the photographer wanted to focus more on the boy and not his surroundings. From what I get from the photo the photographer really wanted to capture a moment when the boy looked like he was struggling or just did not want to be in his room. For all we know there could be many other kids in the same room doing the same thing, but with framing the photographer wants you to focus your attentions on parts of situations. When looking at the picture it feels like I am only five feet away from the boy and that I am much taller from the angle of the camera shot.
From the lighting of the picture it looks to me like there are no lights on in the room, only the sunshine of the outside world. The hue in the picture shows mostly of a dark base color but also contrasts with reds, greens, and whites. Saturation portrays how much of a shade of hue is current in the colors. The reds and greens are not very bright, but are still fairly saturated. If there weren’t those contrasting colors in the photo I think you wouldn’t be able to see the boy due to his dark skin. The colors in the photo are more of depressing colors even though there are reds and greens in it because of the overall dark color of the room. A symbol of the red in the picture could be blood or fear from what he was recently put through and the greens that are overlapping the red may symbolize peace or earth due to the renewed Rwanda and orphanage.
The 1994 Rwanda genocide changed all the Rwandans children lives for good. It has been Twelve years later, and people are still returning and without a doubt bringing with them a powerful mix of traumatic experiences, hopes, fears and uncertainties. Today Rwanda has changed drastically; if you were to go there now you wouldn’t even know it was the same place. The Rwandans want their country to become a “knowledge-based economy”, with new developments and training for an increase in technology. I want people to look at this photo and give their own impressions of what it was like for children in Rwanda. We all know life has struggles, and chances are most of us having lived through some, but we also must think that there are other people out there that have worse lives than you.
Work Cited
Mahagarara, Emmanuel. “Imbabazi Orphange” 2002. http://imbabazi.org/imbabazi-staff.php
BBC News. Country profile: Rwanda Wednesday, 22 April 2009 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1070265.stm
New York Times. “Children of Rwanda’s Genocide” 1999. http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/index-rwanda-children.html
Stewart, John. Rwanda: Today. 2006. http://www.rwandanstories.org/today.html
