After dropping off the kids at school this morning, I was listening to BBC radio, and they were talking about child trafficking in Afghanistan. Women are selling their children for $200 or sometimes $100!
I've heard of this phenomena before, but i never really thought about it deeply, until i had my own kids.
At first my reaction was: How could they? How do you have the heart to watch your child leave with a stranger to the unknown? The only thing that you do know is that you will probably never see them again!
One of the women that had sold her 4 year old started talking... She said: "It's not just for the money, i gave up my child because I'm hoping he will go to a family with better living conditions, so he can be safe & he can live a good life."
I felt the pain in her voice... But still i thought: Ok.... But why do they keep having kids if they can't even afford to feed themselves, let alone a child? Is it selfishness?
Or
Is it selfish of me to assume that they should know better?
I wanted to imagine myself as her for a moment...
Uneducated, poor, and living in a war torn country... Did she really CHOOSE anything?
These women can't get an education, even learning to read has to be done in secret, they have to marry at a very young age, get pregnant immediately after, and then reality hits: Everything that you've been taught about your duty as a woman has led to this.
You can't work if you can't even read, (that's if there are any jobs available in your area)
You can't keep having kids... but you can't exactly deny your husband sex either...
You are stuck! You obeyed all the rules and now you are faced with having to sell a child to feed his brother!
If that's not agony, i don't know what isIf that's not agony.
On top of all that, there is a big chance you will be arrested cause it's illegal!
It's not illegal that you can't get an education... it's not illegal that you get married at 12... it's not illegal that you have to wear a bag covering your entire body in the scorching heat... But it's illegal to give your child away in hope that he/she will have a better life then you ever did.
Shouldn't the govt. solve the root of the problem first, before punishing this woman?
The cost of keeping her in a jail cell would have prevented her from giving her child away in the first place!
Do they really think that this woman had any other option?
I'm not saying selling children should be legal... But for one thing: the laws of an uncivilized society are usually only exercised on the weak... Ya, she's put in jail, yet the person that bought the child is home free & probably on the first plane out of Afghanistan...
Second: These women have to abide by one ridiculous law after the other, without having ONE law that actually protects them... so what good is it that they follow any of them?
If it was me, I would probably go crazy! Not that i would last one day in Afghanistan, but if i did, I would be angry, and vengeful and I won't even know why or at whom.
Well, angry at the world! A world that makes these situations possible...
We are allowing this to happen... we are all responsible... Greedy & selfish decision makers, with greedy & selfish people backing them up...
I don't know how to save the world, but as a mother, all I know is: No woman should ever be put in this position... No woman should be subjected to this kind of suffering.
Then I got home... and i went about my day as usual............ forgetting all about the subject.
I guess the least thing i can do is blog about it.
1 comment :
hi:)
yes, it is hard to feel incapable, n it is jus sad to hear abt the pain of these women n feel that u can do nothing for them...but at least u hav blogged abt it, n at least u hav made some people who maybe forgot abt the sufferings of these women remember n think abt what they can do to change sth even so little...maybe blog abt it too:)...it is indeed a better step, than playing jus the role of the spectator..
touching post, n nice blog:)
hav a nice day
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