The girls at where I work are raising children of LRA rebels and also Acholi men who they turned to for companionship to deal with their PTSD and who then ditched them when they got pregnant.
-The girls are responsible for taking care of the babies.
-The fathers can show up and any time and take these babies away, because even though the woman has to care for them if the man decides at any point that he wants them he can come take them.
-When the girls get married, which their parents pretty much all want them to do asap (they're around 18 and 19 years old), there's like a 99% chance they're going to have to give up the babies to a distant family member who will treat the child like a burden their entire lives, because it is culturally unacceptable for a man to help support another man's baby
Its kinda like men and women here drew straws and the woman's straw is so small you need a microscope to see it... Good luck finding a health clinic to let you borrow a microscope and see it... And honestly I don't think that the majority of women here get that.
I guess I did have time for one more quick thought before I delved into the world of 18-year-old formerly abducted mothers in a place that has recently had the highest rates of depression and PTSD on earth.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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Lily, I've never thought life was fair. But the unfairness you are seeing in Uganda is on a whole different level than anything I've seen here. I'm glad that someone is looking after these abused child mothers and that they are safe while they are in school. And I hope that the fathers don't show up and separate them from their babies.
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