Africa's shape

While in my second year at high school, a geography teacher asked me to define Africa's shape. Expecting to hear the bog standard text book answer, she was rather nonplussed when I replied, "it's the shape of a gun". Her response to my response made it extremely clear what she thought of my answer.

To me, the fact that Africa looks like gun pointing downwards (the bullet would emerge from South Africa, the trigger is shared by Nigeria and Cameroon and the hammer is Somalia), is as obvious as Italy being the shape of a boot. But while Italy is renowned for its fashion footwear, Africa is renowned for being a place to dump guns. The continent is awash with arms, and yet apart from South Africa, no other African country manufactures guns. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, these guns find their way into the hands of children who are easily manipulated by power hungry adults. You can teach a kid anything, killing is no exception and once they've got the hang of it, they acquire a taste for it (with the help of narcotics) and become pretty ruthless killing machines. If a child is instructed by an adult whom the child trusts, to do something because of the child's inherent nature to please, they comply. So you find kids who've racked up the kind of body counts you see in your typical Hollywood blockbuster and heaven help us when these kids survive their childhoods to become adults. Is it any wonder that Africa is plagued by conflict? But who really gives a DAMN? What's the value of an African life - apparently not very much!! Witness the intransigence over Darfur and the conflict in Northern Uganda that has been going on for 30+ years

To Mrs K, I believe it's time you ate a massive slice of humble pie.