What Can We Do?

This post is a continuation of my previous post on the incredibly high number of rape victims in Congo. The article was dated October 7th, 2007 and was written by Jeffrey Gettleman.
After racking my brains about ways to reach out to the rape victims, I decided to email him via the website. I was delighted when he responded with ways of contacting and helping the Congolese women. Basically, the best way to go about is to donate money to the hospitals to help them keep up with the demands of the swarming number of patients. Here's how you can contact them:

If you would like to donate, here is the bank account information:
N° compte 170-0362031-93 USD
Intitulée : 8ème CEPAC V/C HOPITAL GENERAL DE REFERENCE DE PANZI
BANQUE COMMERCIALE DU CONGO
AGENCE DE BUKAVU/RD CONGO
CODE SWIFT / BCDCCDKI

Granted, these bank instructions are in French and a little confusing. So, if you have any questions, you can contact Erika Beckman, a Swedish aid worker in charge of the rape victim program.
Email is the best form of communication because the phones are unreliable.

Her details are:

Erika Beckman
Project Manager
Victims of Sexual Violence Project
Bukavu, DRC
vsvbukavu@kivu-online.com
+243 813 186 246

If you have any problems getting in touch with her, you can also reach out to:
Aurélie Lachant
Information Officer
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
DRC, Bukavu
Mob: +243 81 988 91 73
Email: lachant@un.org
http://www.rdc-humanitaire.net

Spain and Spanish

Among a lot of other things, I have developed a new and unfound love for the Spanish language and culture. Maybe it comes with the love for new and unknown places, knowing a bunch of cool foreigners, or perhaps, it just comes with knowing Amy and Sydney? :)
Either way, it's quite exciting to learn a new language.
I just came across this website- my latest development in learning this language as efficiently as I can. You can buy packages from it but I use it for downloading podcasts.

Shocking Sexual Violence in Congo

"According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, and that may be just a fraction of the total number across the country of Congo."

Every day, 10 more women and girls are brought to the hospital as victims of this horrible crime. Yet, we were all ignorant of this fact until Gettleman decided to report this incident in The New York Times. Reading about these vicious attacks made me cry out in the public library the other day... Many of these atrocious acts are committed by psychologically disturbed hutu tribe, more than 800,000 of whom were killed off in the Rwanda genocide. The government soldiers share as much of the blame. With more than 17, 000 UN peace corps already out there, it still doesn't seem to stop.

I am trying to find out if there's something we can do about it/for those women...?

More Money for Wars

So, the US Senate passed the $1.2 billion budget for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even though it's very idealistic to think like that, but I still hope that they won't make things worse and think about spending it for reconstruction and improving the condition of war torn families.
This actually also got me thinking towards a lot of things that people should realize to raise their voices against it and do something about it-
1. Bush initially promised to capture Saddam and all the WMDs. The former's been done, the latter are obviously not there. There wasn't a game plan in the beginning on how to handle the little internal uprisings afterwards, was there? Here we go into a land whose culture we know so little of and are always ready to misinterpret...was that ever a smart decision?
2. I havn't seen a single soul in the United States, not even the President, "suffering through these terrible times". The war's affecting the economy, but that part doesn't stop anyone from enjoying, does it?
So who's actually miserable? The soldiers who go through endlessly harsh training thinking that they'll be defending the citizens of their own land and protectecting their country, and not be like those GI Joe dolls being walked around for a political motive.
3. There are fears of the draft being put into effect just in case enough soldiers havn't died and Bush can get yet more time to show "improvements" in the social/political situation in Iraq.
4. Lately, I have been reading The New York Times daily; the most excellent news coverage out there. One article on the front page is always devoted to the miserable condition and the sufferings of the Iraqis (take for instance the Blackwater incident that was repeated again and killed two innocent women this time)

With all this going on, how can one expect other countries/ people to like America/(ns) if we keep on making horrible mistakes like these?

Probably, like a lot of people, I am hoping that the upcoming elections bring a terribly smart head to the matter.