Nine countries border the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Sudan, The Republic of Congo (not to be confused with
the DRC), Central African Republic, Angola, Zambia, and Burundi.
It is difficult to defend a border like that. Imagine, every
time one of those border countries has an internal conflict, it ends up
spilling into your country (literally), imagine that there are violent rogue armies
such as the “lord’s resistance army” (from Uganda) that steal children for
soldiers, and by the time your army gets there to defend you, the LRA are long
gone back across the border. Imagine another country such as Rwanda decides to
set up shop in your country, mine your minerals and sell them (Rwanda has no
Coltan, they are stealing it from the DRC), on top of that they have their own
troops patrolling inside your country!
Can you feel the outrage yet? I am just scratching the surface
here.
Imagine you are a child, who should be happy go lucky and
full of life, eager to learn in school, but you do not know whether it is safe
to go to school because of raiders. Imagine your biggest concern as a parent is
not your next paycheck, but your next meal. The poorest homeless in the United
States are kings compared to those in that region of the world.
If we become serious about providing and education for these
students, many other things fall into place because we would have to build the infrastructure,
we would have to have stability, and we would have processes in place where
learning can happen.
The world is not serious about this issue, at least not yet,
and this needs to be a global effort of all of us saying “enough”!
There are many ways to help educate children; this would be
a good place to start.
Dr Flavius A
B Akerele III
The ETeam
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/03/186734.htm
info on the LRA
http://www.congoweek.org/coltan-facts.html
Coltan facts
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