Archive for September, 2008
A new kind of slavery
September 28th, 2008. Published under religion, thoughts and questions. 2 Comments.
27 million people are under slavery today in our world… one human being every thirty seconds is trafficked or sold. Human trafficking is the fastest growing crime in the world and its such a lucrative business that in the last year more profit was made from the selling of human beings than Microsoft made selling its software. But haven’t we abolished the slave trade?
I’ve read stuff like this before and heard about slavery around the world but never thought much of it, thinking there wasn’t much I could do living in my California bubble. But there are things we can do, no matter where we live. The western world, the USA in particular, shape the world based on our consumerism. We as Americans have incredible influence on the world with our purchasing power. All this to say, every time you purchase something you could be supporting an organization that enslaves children… or you could be supporting an organization that helps release enslaved children. Free Trade companies aren’t bulletproof, but they are a start. I myself am convicted of the indifference I’ve shown towards what I buy and who I support. I never realized how powerful we are and how we can shape this world by our purchases.
But where do we start? I ask us all to look into our purchases and look into the companies we regularly support. When William Wilberforce was battling slavery back in the day, people asked him what they could do. He told them that the sugar they put in their tea was made on the slave plantations, so quit eating sugar (something incredibly hard for tea drinkers!). His strategy helped, people quit buying sugar and the companies had to respond. The consumer is always king.
The sugar of the 21st century is chocolate. It is estimated that around 15,000 children are enslaved in the Ivory Coast on cocoa farms. The Ivory Coast, a small country in West Africa, produces over 40% of the world’s cocoa, a pretty staggering amount. There are several organizations, our own Congress being one, which have been trying to raise awareness of this and force the chocolate companies to change their ways. But it is in the hands of you and me as consumers to help. I urge you to stop buying slave produced chocolate and only buy chocolate with a slave-free logo on it. If we as consumers spend our money differently, we’ll send a message to the large companies that we won’t stand idly by while they rake in the money at the expense of a human life.
“We must all fear evil men. But, there is another evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men.”
Read this article:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1625697,00.html
Or watch this video for more. And look for this chocolate in US stores soon!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X3saJUs8f4
Confession
September 14th, 2008. Published under thoughts and questions. No Comments.
I just read one of my buddies blogs (misterlib.com) and he had a link to a really interesting letter: http://www.burnsidewriterscollective.com/social/2008/07/letter_from_an_inner_city_kid.php If you get a chance, read it.
It’s a hypothetical letter from an inner city kid to the caring adult who visits and tries to befriend and mentor him. The letter really hit home because the themes and attitude of the letter could easily cross over to the young kids here in Uganda.
While reading it, I saw myself many times in the description of the adult… and not in a good way. I saw that sometimes I just don’t get these kids and get frustrated and think of them as rude or ungrateful or selfish. But how can I do that? I don’t know what they’ve been through. I’ll never know what it was like to leave home every night, fearing for my life, and go sleep on the ground somewhere with hundreds, even thousands of other kids. I don’t have that past. As a kid I was taught to say please and thank you, to respect my elders and do what I was told. How can I expect them to act the same when they were never taught those things? Some of them come from a background where they didn’t know where their next meal was coming from, so each one might be their last. Some from a history of violence or abusiveness from their parents. In all honesty, I’m amazed at how well they do behave and respect others, all things considered.
Anyways, I felt really convicted reading this letter and encourage you to read it as well. Its long but worth it…
Rwanda/Burundi
September 11th, 2008. Published under Fun Stuff, New Countries, TIA. No Comments.
I just got back from a week in Rwanda/Burundi visiting friends and meeting new ones. I went with my buddy Kyle who is out visiting and four other friends from here. We started the trip off with a bang… karaoke with like 15 friends followed by a 3 am bus ride. Below or some notes I took along the way:
Sept 6th: Drove from Kigali, Rwanda to Bujumbura, Burundi today. Craziest drive of my life. We barely got seats on the bus, the worst ones in the very back. The road was great compared to Uganda in terms of potholes… but it was windy and very hilly. We were screaming around blind, hairpin turns, the bus rocking left to right at each turn and the wheels screeching. I honestly thought we were going to tip over and fall the hundreds of feet down the side of the mountain to our death. It was by far the scariest bus ride I’ve ever taken. And thats saying alot, because most people say the Gulu-Kampala is the worst. Oh, and we blew a tire on the way up the mountain… then blew the spare on the way down. Blowing the spare we didn’t even flinch. Just kept on driving, because there was no other spare. It was keep driving or sit and wait, and our driver wanted to be finished. So we kept right on going, kareeming down the mountain like we had nothing to lose. Now we’re in Buj. This place is weird, like a ghost town. Tonight there were hardly anyone on the streets, even in the late afternoon when we got here. It almost has the feel of an old western movie, like when everyone closes up shop and leaves town when the bad guys show up. A little eery.
Sept 8th: Left Buj. Wasn’t as bad as we first thought. Hung out and relaxed at a beach on Lake Tanganyika. Saw some amazing tribal dancers/drummers at the beach. Burundi is definitely not a tourist destination. Eric thought we were possibly the only foreign people in the country not there for work. The country has really only been safe for about 2 months. They’ve had a civil war for the last 15 years or so, stemming from the Rwanda genocide. So what happened in Rwanda happened on a much smaller scale here… but went on for over a decade, killing 2-3 times more people. Thats why it feels like a ghost town/country… it practically is. On the bus back up to Kigali to hang out. Eric stayed behind to get work done on a potential youth corp home here. This bus driver goes slow, we’re loving him. Not too scared of death today.
September 10th: Left Kigali, back on a bus for Kampala. Was able to relax and spend time in Kigali with friends, just talking and hanging out. Then back on the bus to Kampala @ 6am. Pretty horrible drive. Even worse for Kyle, who’s having stomach trouble. We just calculated that after Friday, when we drive back up to Gulu, we’ll have gone on 6 bus rides in 10 days, a total of 48 hours on a bus… not fun. The bus rides zap any and all life out of you. Side note, neither Kyle or I fit in the seats, so we both sit sideways at like a 45 degree angle… for 10 hours. It does wonders for your back, try it sometime.
Overall, the trip definitely wasn’t a relaxing vacation… but it was fun seeing friends and hanging out in two incredibly beautiful countries.
Home visits
September 3rd, 2008. Published under Life in Uganda, TIA, thoughts and questions. No Comments.
Monday I went with my buddy Kyle, who got here a week ago, to take one of our youth corps girl’s home. School isn’t in session right now and the kids go home for as long as they can. One of the boys wanted to accompany us, so while we waited for him I sat and talked with this particular girl. Usually I’m with a group of the kids and never ask them personal questions, but seeing as we were about to go to her home I asked her about her family and her past. Her mom died of AIDS two years ago and her dad lives in the village working as a farmer. He is really poor so for at least the past 10 years (she’s 14) she has lived with one of her aunts or uncles near town, so she could go to school. She had a fairly big scar on her arm and after asking about it she got a little quiet. She said it came from a stick. After further probing she told us the stick happened to be in the hands of her uncle while he beat her. Then she showed us a scar on her other arm and another just below her collarbone, all from her uncle. I didn’t really know how to respond. I love this girl to death and I just couldn’t comprehend why or how someone could beat a little kid to this end. I asked a little more about this uncle and the others she had lived with. I had to make sure we weren’t going to this particular uncle’s house because honestly I did not want to meet him and definitely didn’t want to leave her back in his care. Luckily she now lives with her grandma when not at the y.c. home.
After a while we found the boy who wanted to go and the four of us hopped on bodas and took off for her home. We had a great time visiting with her aunt who was there but soon after arriving we went walking to find another one of the y.c. kids who lived nearby. After a good hour of walking (we asked how far it was and initially we were told no more than 1 km. It was a good 3 miles or so, but it was beautiful and through small villages by way of footpaths.), we found another one of the girls’ sister. She told us where to find this other girl… in a rock quarry. I cannot accurately describe the scene at the quarry… but it felt a little like the diamond mining in the movie Blood Diamond, sans the guards with guns. There were men, women and children everywhere “beating the rock” as the call it. The men had huge sledgehammers and chisels, breaking big chunks off and hauling them to their wives and children to beat into smaller rocks. Our girl saw us from afar and came running. She joyfully showed us around and introduced us to her step-mom and others. She took us to her home nearby and bought us water and sodas while we talked with her father. It was a bit disheartening though. Her father, obviously drunk (at 3 pm), talked us into the ground. He capped off our time there by somewhat making fun of Kyle. There were about 10 of us sitting in the hut, 4 of them being really little kids. Kyle was playing with them most of the time while the dad, the boy and I “talked”, more like he talked in circles and we nodded. But when I told him we needed to go he said no and, turning to Kyle basically said, “Why haven’t you talked. You come into my home, I need to get to know you.” Then proceeded to tell us why Kyle needed to get him a passport so he could come to the US and on and on. I sat there laughing as Kyle looked around for help not knowing what to say. It was pretty funny…
But as I look back on this day I’m left with a few lingering thoughts. One is the hospitality that we were shown. At both girls homes they went and bought sodas for us. That doesn’t sound like much, but these families are poor. It’s a big deal to buy sodas for three people, but it wasn’t an option. We were guests and they had to give us something, even with us trying our best to refuse the drinks. It was probably the equivalent of an average US citizen giving an unexpected visitor a $30-$40 gift upon arrival in their home.
The second thing I’m left with is how horrible these kids’ backgrounds really are. Both of these girls come from alcoholic, abusive families and both of their moms died of AIDS. Both had to, for up to five years, walk into town each night and sleep with thousands of other kids in shelters and then walk back home each morning, thankful that they weren’t abducted the night before. My mind cannot grasp this. I cannot imagine being 13 or 14 again and already have experienced all that they have. To not have a loving mother or father, to work in a rock quarry, or to flee home each night in search of a safe place to sleep. I can’t even imagine what I would be like now, at 23, if this had been a part of my recent past. It is amazing how strong they are and how joyful and happy they can be. I am constantly in awe of them and daily learn more from them than I ever imagined.