The Month of the African Child....

I've just finished a day of finance and accounting training from Internews managers who've flown in from Nairobi. They're smart, fun people, so that made the day bearable. But right about now, my brain feels like it's been deep fried in lard.

If my new employers knew that my budget management skills extend only so far as calculating the difference between the 50% off at Nordstrom's Semi-Annual Women and Children's Sale and the 65% off end of season sale at Macy's, I probably wouldn't be chillin' like a villain in Gulu right now.

This won't be a long post. But since I've mentioned children, I guess I should tell you that I tried to read today's Daily Monitor newspaper as a way to unwind from the day's training. But after the first few pages, I had to stop. Ugandan newspapers are fascinating....I mean, if you think American journalism is too sensationalistic, just pick up a copy of the Red Pepper. In one column the other day, the writer speculated about when a prominent soccer player was going to "shaft" his new girlfriend....and I don't think he was talking about the Richard Roundtree movie.

Lately, there've been a lot of stories about the plight of children, because June is informally considered the "Month of the African Child." I probably don't have to tell you that life is insanely hard for most children on the Continent. They struggle to be born, to escape early illness and death, to survive as orphans, to get enough food and education, to avoid sexual and exploitation....I could go on and on.

But the article that made me stop reading today's paper defies just about any form of human comprehension. I've focused on social policy affecting children and families in the U.S. for the past 13 years in D.C., so I know a lot about the worst problems for poor American children. Still, a story about what happens to children trafficked from Uganda to the Middle East almost stopped my heart.

Get this: apparently, some of them are used to train horses and camels to run faster. I am not making this up. Ugandan Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Fred Ruhindi explains:

"When a horse is trained to run fast, it has to hear a lot of noise behind. So the more noise, the faster it becomes. To achieve this, a rope is fastened onto a child's leg and then tied on a horse, which then pulls it. The more noise the child makes by crying, the faster the horse runs," he said.

This is definitely one of those "Stop the World and Let Me Off!" moments for me. Or at the very least, one of those double gin and tonic moments. ANYTHING to get that image out of my head.