Late Post, Week 9, March 12 Reading

One picture that really captures my attention is that on page 894. It shows to African boys from the Congo who have missing hands. They have missing hands because of them being severed from forced labor. Like I said in my previous blog post, I am very opposed to child labor, let alone forced labor. Labor in Africa included building railroads, constructing government buildings and transporting goods. All of these labors were forced and unpaid. In the Congo, people were forced to collect rubber. The people would be out in the forests for days without food. They would starve. And if they didn't find any rubber, or told the "white men" that they couldn't go on, the white men would come to their towns and kill, or chop off body parts of the residents. The forced labor was horrible for the people of the Congo. Reading stories about people getting their body parts chopped off for not doing their job "correctly" is awful and heartbreaking, but seeing a picture really puts in perspective what people really went through. The things these people went through were just completely awful.