Children | Ain't Complicated

Restaveks in Haiti

God bless those who help these children:

Unprecedented levels of poverty have driven almost 225,000 Haitian children into slavery. According to Eva DeHart of For Haiti With Love, parents desperate to feed and clothe their starving children are easy victims for child predators.

“Most of those parents are not deliberately selling those children into slavery,” she explained. “They’re selling them to people who promise that those children will eat regularly and have a better life.”

The enslaved children, known as “restaveks,” are taken from poor homes to the homes of families that are less poor. The family takes responsibility for raising the child in exchange for unpaid domestic service.

Source: Poverty forces kids into slavery

Here’s a story I’ve been sitting on since December 22. I wonder what Christmas was like for the Johansson’s…and what’s happening with Dominic by now. I just did several Google searches and turned up nothing new.

An appeals-level court in Sweden has affirmed the “kidnapping” of a 7-year-old boy who was snatched by police from a jetliner as it prepared to take his family to their new home in India.

The days-old decision from the Administrative Court of Stockholm affirms the state custody of Dominic Johansson, who was taken by uniformed police officers on the orders of social workers even though there was no allegation of any crime on the part of the family, nor was there any warrant, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

The group, the premiere homeschool advocacy association in the world today, has been alarmed by the case that developed apparently because school and social services officials in Sweden objected to the homeschool program for the child.

[…]

“HSLDA is gravely concerned about this case as it represents what can happen to other families who might wish to homeschool their children,” Donnelly said. “Furthermore, in response to inquiries from HSLDA, Swedish authorities have cited the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child to explain and defend their actions.

[…]

In a posting at the Swedish newspaper Varlen Idag, Mats Tunehag, president of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance, worried about the injury being inflicted on the family.

“Annie is from a Christian family in India, and they had planned for some time to move there to live, work and to homeschool Dominic. Due to the harassment from Swedish authorities the trip was delayed. But finally in June this year they were on their way, sitting on the plane bound for India. Then the police came rushing into the plane – as if they were to apprehend dangerous terrorists – and snatched Dominic, saying he is to be taken into care. Can anyone imagine?” Tunehag wrote.

So…what happens here in the United States if the USA becomes a signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

Source: Court endorses ‘kidnapping’ of 7-year-old

Christmas Bummer

What you’re about to read will take you in a direction different than you expected to go:

He sees her as we circle the parking lot a second time, an aimless, wandering circle, a time-killing circle while we wait for their mother to finish a bit of shopping. I have already seen the woman — a girl, really, with tangled dark hair and downturned gaze. She sits on a little concrete median between the entering and exiting traffic, and she holds a cardboard sign asking for money. Not even money, just anything. “Anything helps,” her sign says.

I have already seen her, and so, having nothing better to do, I am engaged in a lukewarm internal debate. Should I give her money? What will she do with the money? Should I drive across the street and get her McDonald’s? Don’t poor people eat badly enough as it is? What about teriyaki chicken from a nearby Japanese place? But will she turn her nose up at that? Will the drivers behind me hit their horns when I stop to give her the money or cheeseburger or chicken with rice? Will people look askance at a man stopping to talk to a young woman on the side of the road? There’s so much to be calculated, you see, in the doing of small good.

Then Caleb sees her. “Dad,” he says, “there’s a woman in the road holding a sign. What does it say?”

“She’s asking for money,” I tell him. We talk about the reasons why a person might be so poor that they take to begging in traffic. They mostly come down to bad choices and illnesses of the heart and mind.

“We should give her some money,” he says.

[…]

I am proud of my son and I want to be like him and I am afraid one day he will be like me, all of these thoughts in me at once, and so what I say is that I love him.

If you only read what I have excerpted above, you are cheating yourself. You really should read the full story over at Sand in the Gears.

Then clean out your gearbox.

And a joyous Christmas to you as well.

Update: Avoiding Eye Contact

Loopy Virginia

This isn’t just loopy. It’s sick. Evil, actually.

A loophole in state law is preventing Campbell County investigators from charging a woman they say killed her newborn baby.

Deputies were called to a home in the 1200 block of Lone Jack Road in Rustburg around 11:00a.m. Friday. The caller said a woman in her early 20s was in labor. When deputies arrived, they discovered the baby had actually been born around 1:00a.m., about ten hours earlier. Investigators say the baby was already dead when deputies got there.

Investigators tell WSLS the baby’s airway was still blocked. They say the baby was under bedding and had been suffocated by her mother. Investigators say because the mother and baby were still connected by the umbilical cord and placenta, state law does not consider the baby to be a separate life. Therefore, the mother cannot be charged.

“In the state of Virginia as long as the umbilical cord is attached and the placenta is still in the mother, if the baby comes out alive the mother can do whatever she wants to with that baby to kill it,” says Investigator Tracy Emerson. “She could shoot the baby, stab the baby. As long as it’s still attached to her in some form by umbilical cord or something it’s no crime in the state of Virginia.”

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office and Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office worked unsuccessfully to get the law changed after another baby died in the county in a similar case. Emerson says they asked two delegates and one state senator to take the issue up in the General Assembly. He says the three lawmakers refused because they felt the issue was too close to the abortion issue.

Can’t touch infanticide because it’s too close to abortion. 😯

So what are they lacking? A spine? A heart? A conscience?

Maybe it’s a moral compass.

And compassionate morality.

Truly we live in depraved, perilous times.

The full article might interest you: Mother won’t be charged with baby’s death because of law loophole

Mr. Lonelyhearts Answers

So this morning I got my daily Google Alert for Mennonite. And amid all the less-than-interesting-to-me stuff, this:

Celebrate with Mennonite family, then have a real party at girlfriend’s 😯

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’m single, aged 26. Christmas is coming and I hate being with my Mennonite family because they won’t let me drink or smoke or have any fun. I have never broken tradition by not going before, but I want to go to my girlfriend’s place in Regina this year where they party and celebrate the way Christmas should be. How do I get out of the home thing? — Desperate Mennonite Grinch, Winnipeg

Wait a minute. He’s 26 and still whining about “they won’t let me…have any fun”?!

At 26, what’s he doing at home yet if he hates it there?

Bah hum bug.

Note to all (Mennonite and other) twenty-six-year-old guys still living at home: This is your opportunity to bless your parents as well as your siblings. Try that instead of focusing on yourself and on having fun. Don’t make your family miserable with your bad attitudes and hateful spirit. Don’t be such a grinch. You’ll likely be much happier for it.

Oh, and as far as I know, a guy at the ripe old age of 26 should be able to fend for himself.

For that kindly advice, just call me Uncle Mark. 😉

And, please, don’t call me Mr. Lonelyhearts. I have only one. And it’s not particularly lonely.

Their Parents Died

And So Did His Camel

Rescue units restore hope in the form of vegetables

According to the Encyclopedia of Nations, Zambia’s population totaled 10.8 million in 2003. Of those, 600,000 are AIDS orphans.

[…]

Bob Bland with Teen Missions said, “[The orphans] are not taught the things they would normally learn in a village situation, such as how to grow a garden, because there’s no one to train them. At our rescue units, one of things we do is try to help them grow gardens.”

Often times, they lack the tools needed to plant, but Teen Missions provides what they need. “To do that, we provide a hoe,” Bland said.

So far, these orphan gardens have proven very successful, and in one village, a child’s garden is the only source of vegetables for a whole village.

Teen Mission has 33 rescue units throughout Zambia working to provide safety, food, medical needs and education to these orphans.

Read it all

Flying With Child

Dave Barry takes an imaginary journey, starting this way:

We set out with a sense of foreboding. If you ever feel a boding, and later on something bad happens, that was a foreboding.

We were traveling from Miami to Minnesota, a state located near, or possibly inside, Canada. The reason we felt a boding was that we were carrying a live baby, and we had stupidly elected to travel by airplane. I think that, instead of making such a big deal about weapons, the airlines ought to start cracking down on babies.

So………………………………was he trying to be funny or dumb?

When I had the opportunity to travel (kinda) with Benjie G, he was a super baby traveler. By air. By land. Wow!