But in some ways, the world has not become better. Nothing, but nothing, makes me angrier than the selective killing of girls. So a dormitory for girls in a private school in Uganda caught fire, killing nineteen girls between nine and twelve years old, and the fire may well have been set.

This reminds me of something I read in my local newspaper many years ago, probably in the 1980s. There had been a school girl massacre in an African country, can't remember which one, and the killers were boys who had attacked the school, raped a large number of girls, and then somehow killed many of the girls girls, maybe by setting the school on fire. As horrible as this was, can you guess what was the most unspeakable outrage? It was a representative of the country's government who said that the boys must be forgiven "because they hadn't really wanted to kill the girls, they just wanted to rape them". Where is the "retching icon"?

Ann

That second story is so horrible and yet it doesn’t surprise me at all. There seems to be a different value put on life and the welfare of others in Africa. I remember the last time I was in South Africa for a holiday and the first story I heard on the news was about a 13 year old who was gang raped, stabbed and dumped in a field to die. Some welcome home! But then that’s what you expect, and become frighteningly accustomed to, in the rape capital of the world. Makes me glad I don’t live there any more.