Child Sex Trafficking

 Burundi's child sex slaves include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital. Photograph: Imagestopshop/Alamy


Pamela comes from an affluent family and was doing well in one of Bujumbura's best-performing high schools – until two years ago, when she became a sex slave.

She recalls befriending a group of girls when she was 14, who at first proposed she join them when they went out. The trips led to dates with older men who would pick up the bill, initially without asking for anything in return.

One night she was taken to a house in Kiriri, a smart residential district in Bujumbura, Burundi's capital, where she was held for three months under the supervision of men in police uniform.

"When a client came, if you didn't want to go with him they would slap you and whip the soles of your feet," Pamela says, her voice trembling. She was freed in a police raid after her mother reported her missing.
"Such places exist in every part of town. You just have to open your eyes to see them," says Florence Boivin-Roumestan, who leads Justice and Equity, a Canadian NGO that has exposed the vast scale of sex trafficking in the small central African nation.
"After months of investigations, we're seeing that human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular exists in Burundi on a scale no one would have imagined."

Victims include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital.
In a months-long investigation, Justice and Equity found that young girls were being recruited across the country and either forced into prostitution or sold abroad. "You find girls of nine or 10, but most of them are in the 13, 14, 15 age range," Boivin-Roumestan says.

The trafficking takes different forms. In Bujumbura, it is girls from well-off families who are targeted in the best schools. Fellow pupils of both sexes are recruited by pimps to play the role of intermediaries. They gradually gain the confidence of the victims, who eventually end up in brothels.

Keza, who comes from a poor district in the capital, says she was locked up and used as a sex slave by a senior intelligence officer for several months when she was 15. "He threatened me and he threatened my parents," she says, adding that she no longer wishes to see her family after the ordeal.
"I filed a formal complaint against him and he received several summons, but he has never shown up. The case has gone nowhere."




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Inasikitisha zaidi maana wanaohusika ni wenye nguvu za madaraka

LETTER FROM AFRICA - GIFT FROM KENYA

Dear Zawadi,

 

Thank you for making me a dad again.

Your name means gift in Swahili.
You're a special gift from God and judging by your first few days on earth, you're also truly gifted.

 You have the gift of timing and that is vital in surviving Kenya.

You chose to arrive on the last day of the month - 31 January - to coincide with pay day.

This fiscal sensitivity on your part saved your parents the agony of having to borrow too much to settle your hospital bills.

You'll soon learn that Kenyans are only fully functional in the first seven days after pay day.

The usually nauseating city traffic turns into a coiled up nightmare as cars that had been starved of petrol for half the month cough and belch from a fuel overdose, and pubs come alive with merry-making.

You also have a communication gift.
When you arrived into the doctor's hands, you unleashed a powerful war-cry without waiting for the traditional slap on the back.

If you want to be heard above the other 42 million Kenyans, then yelling for your needs is a core skill.

 

Kenya's constitution guarantees the right to protest

Kenya has one of the most progressive constitutions on the continent with an impressive bill of rights.
Your scream is well within your constitutional rights.
'Be alert always'
Your eyes were also wide open when you emerged from the five-star hotel you had occupied for the last nine months.

This means you had already embraced the Swahili expression "kaa macho", which means "be alert always".

Kenya is a land of opportunities but they are snapped up pretty fast by those who see them first.

Within 20 minutes of your birth, you had already incurred a personal baby bill of 6,000 Kenya shillings (about $70; £42), even though you were delivered in a natural way.

This was for things you had consumed in hospital in those first few minutes of life.

 


This means you're already in debt.
It's not a position that I would encourage you to stay in, because it puts a strain on the Kenyan economic hamburger.

You see, with high levels of unemployment in Kenya and with no public social support system, the few people with jobs are like the meat in the middle of the burger.

It is pressed down by the weight of the elderly parents above who need to be supported financially and it's also pulled down by the weight of the children below who need help for their upkeep.

So Zawadi, you will need to crawl out of debt as soon as possible.
24-7 economy

In the few days since you joined us, I noticed that you eat and sleep a lot.

You can't survive like that in Kenya.

This country is gradually moving to become a 24-hour economy.

Already there are supermarkets and other businesses that operate day and night.

So you too will need to learn to survive on just a few winks and a smaller dinner plate.

You arrived at a time of a huge public debate over the role of the mother tongue in children's education.

The debate followed a Ministry of Education guideline that children under eight years of age, which is roughly when they are in primary class four, should be instructed in their mother tongue.


This is how the new Konza city - an intended IT business hub near Nairobi - is envisaged

Well, Zawadi, irrespective of the merits or otherwise of this policy, we are not taking any chances. You will learn everything.

You will need your mother tongue to communicate properly with your grandparents.

You will require the national language, Swahili, to navigate Kenya and East Africa, while the official language, English, is a basic survival tool.

But a little Chinese can't do any harm in modern day Africa.

By the time you reach 16, Kenya will have hopefully achieved its vision 2030 of becoming a middle-income country with a better quality of life for its people.

I'm told that by then, you'll be spared the trauma of travelling in our current metallic coffins, otherwise known as matatus.

High-speed trains will be the order of the day in an oil-producing country.

You will also be able to travel from the port of Mombasa to Yaounde in Cameroon, or Ethiopia's Addis Ababa by road in no time at all.

I've spent my lifetime being reminded that I'm a leader of tomorrow. Several decades later, that tomorrow hasn't come.

So it's over to you now, Zawadi.

You're a special gift and the future of Kenya is in your tiny hands.

Shhhhhhh… when I said you should scream, I didn't mean you do it in the middle of the night - or when I'm busy! Shhhhh…



 African journalist, broadcaster and media trainer Joseph Warungu offers a few tips on surviving Kenya to his new-born daughter.



Source: BBC NEWS

THIS GOES TO ALL THE BRIDES

 

CANCER : A GLOBAL THREAT

 Why is cancer such a threat?
Globally, one in five men and one in six women will develop cancer before the age of 75.
And one in eight men, and one in twelve women, will die from the disease.
Cancer is the leading cause of economic loss through premature death and disability worldwide - because of the vast sums spent on treatment, but also in lost economic and social activity.
In 2010, WHO says the total annual economic cost of cancer was $1.16 trillion (£700bn).




source: BBC NEWS





A global drive to tackle the causes of cancer linked to lifestyle, such as alcohol abuse, sugar consumption and obesity, has been urged on Monday by the World Health Organisation as it predicted the number of new cases could soar 70% to nearly 25 million a year over the next 20 years.

Half of these cases are preventable, says the UN's public health arm in its World Cancer Report, because they are linked to lifestyle. It is implausible to think we can treat our way out of the disease, say the authors, arguing that the focus must now be on preventing new cases.


Even the richest countries will struggle to cope with the spiralling costs of treatment and care for patients, and the lower income countries, where numbers are expected to be highest, are ill-equipped for the burden to come.
The incidence of cancer globally has increased from 12.7m new cases in 2008 to 14.1m in 2012, when there were 8.2m deaths. By 2032, it is expected to hit almost 25m a year – a 70% increase.



Source: The Guardian




Today was Cancer day! Cancer is such a threat to human life, we should all work together to help each other fight this terrible disease. Huu ugonjwa hauna jema kabisaaa! Mungu atuepushie!