Monday, April 21, 2014

Be Thankful

The older I get, the more I realize just how lucky I have been in being born when and where I was. Another instance of this realization came as I was reading the latest issue of Foreign Policy. This was an article about the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  

If I had been born there now, I would have a life expectancy of about 50 and my share of the country's GDP would be $300. Diseases like HIV/AIDS, cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and dysentery are rampant. 

If I were a child, I would also face the risk of being accused of being a child sorcerer infected with the devil. The poorer my parents, the greater the risk that they would think I was a sorcerer and throw me out of the house and leave me to wander the streets trying to survive.

There is a wave of child sorcery in the Congo now and has been for a while. Children are accused of a wide variety of evils: strangling parents in their sleep, eating the hearts of their siblings, flying through the skies at night, stealing money or deliberately causing illnesses like HIV and polio. The churches in the Congo, 80% of which are Christian, are very active in this movement as they seek to exorcise the devil from the children and also, by the way, make some money. While some churches do offer some aid to the children, others may be denied food and water, whipped until they confess, or sexually abused.

No comments: