Monday, January 29, 2007

An Item of Great Interest to Me

I am honestly working on a post about the march the other day. It was impressive. Also, while sort of doing work I found two news items that are relevant to other people's recent posts in the neighborhood:
Congolese warlord to stand trial for war crimes for allegedly using kadogos (child soldiers). If he is found guilty, I hope he burns in hell. I saw some of these listless zombies in the Congo and one of them walked up to me, with an AK almost as big as he was, and asked me for some cigarettes. The kid couldn't have been more than 12 and he was drunk or seriously hungover. His eyes had that dead fish look to them. Joseph Kabila promised all of his kadogos an education. I doubt that any of them got it. Joseph Kabila got shot in the head. I am not sure how I feel about that.

"Je suis desole, no fumar."

The kid ambled off back to sit down with his two compatriots who were lounging on a WW2 era Russian anti-aircraft gun, complete with all the accessories like ammunition as thick as my forearm. I am glad that I never found out if they knew how to use it or not.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You better not tell us what kind of cigarettes he smoked. We don't want any more trouble over here.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how this will affect negotiations in Uganda. The main contention from what I read a while ago was whether to press for a treaty and drop war crimes charges against the LRA warlords or move forward with the war crime charges and endure more violence. If they're going after this guy as they are, it probably means things aren't going to improve, even if he's put away for what he's done.

I should note that my knowledge of all of this consists of reading a week's worth of google news after I met a girl who volunteers on behalf of Darfur, so I may be way off base.

Either way, I blame the weed cake...

Chuckles said...

Girls have that affect on my activism, too.

AG, he didn't have any cigarettes. That is why he was asking me for some. I couldn't even tell you what brand of empties lay in grass by the AA gun. I was a lot more worried about whether or not he was going to shoot me for not giving him my imaginary cigarettes.

Anonymous said...

Ok, C-wagon. I was just making sure he wasn't going to try to sue you or something.

teh l4m3 said...

You should take up smoking. I hear it's pretty cool.

Brando said...

That is messed up, Chuckles.

Chuckles said...

That is Africa for you, Brando.