Desert Flower - Waris Dirie

In religion class we read part of the book Desert Flower by Waris Dirie. It ties into us learning about Gender Equality.

This is a true story about the life of the Somalian model Waris Dirie. She grew up with a nomadic family in rural Somalia but ran away from home when her father insisted that she marry a much older man. She went to the capital city, Mogadishu, and then eventually moved to London with her aunt and uncle. In London she met a photographer and became a well known supermodel. In the book Waris talks a bout Female Genitil Mutilation, something that is commanly done to young girls in Africa to ensure that they can get a husband. In her book Waris describes how the procedre is hardly ever preformed in a hospital and that no anestic is used. After it is done the girls are put into a hut to recover for a week, and many of them die from infection. When she was much older Waris went to the doctor in Londen and she had an operation to try and fix the damage that had been done, the operation helped with the pain alot but it could not reverse the damage that had been done. Reading the part of the book that talks about FGM made me very uncomfortable and angry. It was horrible to find out that thousands of girls go through all that pain and suffering unnesscarily and it is something that affects them for life. Waris describes how the BBC made a documentary about her life in Somalia and she got to go back and find her mother, who knew nothing of her new life. Waris spoke to Marie Claire magazine about FGM and became a UN ambassador. She is now working hard to try to stop FGM. I really really enjoyed reading this book and I would definatly reccomend it. Its sad but has a happy ending, and also gives an insight into the lives of girls in Africa.

Projects!

Right now we have lots of different projects to do! In Home Ec we were put into pairs and are researching a country and cooking three dishes associated with that country. I'm with Mia and our country is Spain! We cook one dish a week so last week we made churros con chocolate which are a bit like doughnuts dipped in chocolate sauce, and today we made paella. The churros didn't work out very well last week because they didn't cook in the middle, but the paella was really nice and really easy to make! We also have to make a power point presentation to our home ec class about Spain aftet we have cooked all the dishes. In Art our project is based on the same country that we are doing in home ec and we have the same partners. We have to look at the architecture of Spain or a Spanish artist and make a poster of pictures inspired by this. In Geography our current project is about diseases that you can get while traveling in third world countries. This ties in with the last geography project that we had because we have to choose one of the third world countries that we researched. We have to write about the causes, symptoms and treatment of this disease. I'm doing Typoid fever a disease that you can get in the Philippines. We have just finished a French project on French speaking countries in the world. We got to work in pairs again and me and Danielle did Lebanon. We learned loads of interesting stuff but it was hard to translate it into French! We'll be presenting them in class this week and I'm looking forward to seeing everybodies! :)

Mini Company

Our mini company group is called Baby Cakes and we sell baby clothes wrapped to look like cupcakes. It was quite hard to get everything started but we've started taking orders from students in our school now. We've gotten a few orders so right now its kinda stressfull trying to meet the orders in time! We are also getting ready to sell the Baby Cakes in the farmers market in Naas. Hopefully loads more people will buy them there! We make the baby cakes in boxes of 1, four and six and for boys and girls. You can also get 1 cake wrapped instead of boxed. We have loads of different coloured boxes and the Cakes look really pretty when their finished! The competition is in March and we're really looking forward to it! :)