+ I have been extremely lucky safety-wise here. I'm living in a war-torn country where everyone here has either been a victim or a perptrator. Everyone. Children were kidnapped, drugged with cocaine and sent into combat, some at the tender ages of 6 or 7 to act as spies, their tiny bodies slithering unnoticed in the bush. The massive use of child soldiers ripped this country apart and the indescribible inhumanity distinguished this war from others. Children were forced to murder their own parents and cut off the limbs of adults under the premise that a person with no hands could not vote. This did not stop pure decapitations or the regular removal of people's feet. I regularly read the stories of young girls taken captive to act as sex slaves (many, also, in their pre-pubecent years.) The stories you hear and read about in the literature are absolutely horrendous, and disgustingly, the more you read, the more they blend together. It becomes common to hear the story about the 13-year old girl who was raped, tied to a stake, and had her foot cut off before she was burned alive. She does not die - the fire goes out and she lives to watch the maggots eating away at the stump at the bottom of her leg.
You read, in your research, the stories - endless, endless, stories - of 15 year old girls with a knife under her throat giving blowjobs to soldiers, bearing the children of her captor(s), and being stuck with them at the end of the war. Because who is she ("she" being hundreds of individual terrorised young women) going to live with now that she is unmarried, pregnant, and living with only one arm? You watch interviews with children, 14, 15, 16 years old, who talk candidly about how yes, they killed and tortured civilians, but what were they to do? They would have been murdered themselves otherwise. Their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles - everyones lives depended on these children committing with eyes closed torturous acts on their peers. Others, with cocaine-smiles, flailed their machetes wildly.
Almost all the taxis drivers are former combatants. Your waiters. The guy who sees you lost on the street and offers to hail you a cab that you don't even tip him for - he'll still smile huge white teeth and wish you a wonderful day. Or, if it's Christmas, he'll say "Compliments of the season." Jim, the guy who sells bread on the street with his two (unschooled) daughters, Tina and Fatima who run run run to hug you when you come home from work. Jim probably fought too, and probably did so as a child soldier. Jim invites you to Christmas dinner.
Despite these stories, despite living in a country where people have experienced such immeasurable pain and hardship, I am consistently floored by the generosity and warmth of the people. I feel more safe here hailing a taxi at night than I do walking to Summerhay's at night, 15 minutes from my West-Ottawa home in Whitehaven.
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2 comments:
Are you getting to do the work you wanted to do?
I absolutely adore the work that I am doing. On my first day here I told them that this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and that still stands today. I could research and analyse children's rights forever. I hope that I'll be able to continue on that path for a long time. :)
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