Child slavery, Nigeria kidnappings seem surreal to the my American reality
Born and bred into comfort and convenience, with hardly any idea of what it means to truly want or suffer, I am an American. I’ve never lived through famine, a war outside my door, disease for which there is no cure and no hope, or the threat of being kidnapped and sold into child slavery.
That armed men could burst into my community and round up more than 300 teenage girls without much, if any, opposition, and take them away to be sold into human slavery is as alien to me as anything I am likely to ever experience.
The first time I even understood that children could be the targets of such evil was as a 10-year-old watching “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” where Indy liberates hundreds of Indian children stolen from a village and taken to work the mines beneath Pankot Palace. That, to me, was the extent of my knowledge of child slavery, and for many American kids of my generation, it was probably theirs, as ridiculous as that might sound. We were raised a generation – or a few decades, at least – removed from the idea that minors working in dangerous conditions were the norm. And to literally be stolen from their beds as they slept, chained into servitude? Well, that was strictly fiction.
Could that disconnect from the way the rest of world lives and processes be why America isn’t more concerned or up to date on the Nigerian mass kidnapping? Is it too out of the realm of everyday possibility to see this as anything but fantasy, the same way the child soldiers of Sierra Leone and Uganda were but a rumor to be researched rather than common knowledge?
America does set the tone for the rest of the world, and when the April 15 kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls by Islamist militant group Boko Haram goes so underreported by American media, it goes under-noticed by the rest of the world.
Maybe this country is just too isolated. Maybe standing at the top of the global food chain instantly put us into our own biosphere, where others’ concerns on a deeper level cannot possibly penetrate our artificial atmosphere, making media, the government and the people all incredibly short-sighted.
I ask these questions and make these guesses because I am American and I know too little, care too little and don’t know what to do other than feel guilt for a moment and then get back to the fact that Bradley Cooper is trending high all over the Internet for packing on 40 pounds for a movie role, and it’s being shot right here in El Centro. Priorities; my priorities.
Three hundred Nigerian girls, plus eight more kidnapped Wednesday, minus the 50 who have escaped, the several who have died and the 20 who are ill, is a significant but still small number among the world population. Yet these girls, who are reportedly being sold by Boko Haram for $12 apiece are among an estimated global population of 8.4 million child slaves, according to the International Labour Organization.
Not necessarily classified as child slaves, this country is home to 293,000 American children at risk for being sold into the sex trade or exploited sexually by adults for profit or individual pleasure, according to FBI stats from 2012. Some 40 percent of all human trafficking cases investigated between January 2008 and June 2010 involved children.
Those numbers don’t even touch the numbers of children in domestic servitude among illegal immigrants from numerous countries working off debts that got them here. It’s happening on the sly in homes all over the United States.
Spokespeople like kidnapping victim and former child sex slave Elizabeth Smart, who has visited the Valley twice in recent months, are helping communicate this to a larger audience. But the disconnect between what is being delivered from Smart’s painted lips and big blue, made-up eyes and the reality of hungry, filthy children being traded like cattle in Third-World countries or even being drugged, directed and filmed for the sick, perverted enjoyment of some deviant in this country is wide and just doesn’t compute intellectually or emotionally.
Social media has helped in delivering information the mainstream media doesn’t devote a lot of time to. With the Nigerian kidnapping, the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls has been tweeted more than 1 million times, and a change.org petition demanding the girls’ return to their families has received nearly 300,000 digital signatures. Yet memes, shares and likes mean little other than to show global support. If clicks translated to armed and highly trained teams that could take back those girls by force, we would really have something to cheer about.
Did I mention Bradley Cooper is in town? Clint Eastwood, too.
This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, May 9, 2014.