Aaron - Sad and Angry

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Alright. So, this is going to be a sad and angry blog post, because right now I am sad and angry.
Today we were outside the hotel, playing frisbee, and a little girl came along, walking by herself. We called her over. It was just starting to get dark--she grabbed onto Leah's arm, and held it really hard, and kept holding it. You could tell, this wasn't massive affection or friendliness; she did not want to be alone at night. She was really, really scared. So we stood with her for maybe half an hour until an older boy, perhaps her brother, came along and took her by the hand.
That's not such an intense story, but what it did was bring screaming back the words we were told yesterday, at the Mwema Center for Street Children, which we visited for several hours in the morning. It's a place where the town's 'street kids,' the children that are either orphaned or unable to stay in their homes because of the extreme poverty or drunkeness of their families, can sleep and get some informal teaching and one meal. The center is all boys (ages 5-17), and we asked the director why. His answer was that the young girls would not be there for nights, because so many of these children have been forced to prostitize themselves. They have, quite literally, no other options. They have to sell themselves, or die. These children. Little girls.
And it's not that I'd never heard of this thing before. But after spending a week here, meeting the little girls who might be those little girls, seeing them as the smart, funny, awesome children they are--and then hearing that, knowing that every night, in the very town in which I'm sleeping, these girls are out there. Aahhhh! What? What am I supposed to be thinking? There is no excuse. Absolutely no excuse that people can exist in such poverty as to cause that, while others do not. I mean, my family has more than a million dollars. I belong to a family of millionaires. And I feel sick to my stomach about it. Seriously, how can this kind of disparity exist in our world? How? How can I go home, and live how I live, knowing that the four-year-old girl with the blood-shot eyes that Arthur saw yesterday has to soak a rag with petrol and breath it to keep themselves awake every night because it's too dangerous for them to fall asleep on the street?
And I know, there's no point to this rage and despair, the thing I should be doing is simply figure out how I can help, think positively. So I will. And I guess I'm going to have to go into politics afterall, even though I really don't want to anymore, if I want to make the kind of difference I see now needs to be made. Someone needs to give Jeffrey Sachs the $30 billion he could use to make sure those girls don't have to do that, anywhere in the world. akljsbgsbsaoaa I don't know what I'm thinking right now.
Alright. Moving forward, moving on. Work needs to be done.

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