After the office de-brief we headed to the field. The first stop was in the Viana municipality which anywhere else in the world would be called, slum. There are people everywhere on the sides of roads, traffic is awful and everywhere there are people selling stuff (see earlier posting). We pulled in at the side of the road and met with a Unicef partner, a local NGO focused on stopping child trafficking. This is a program started in January with the Africa nations cup which they have continued with. They stand at these busy intersections giving advice and know your rights to kids. Here trafficking is a huge problem and these kids get taken across borders never to be seen again. When we visited a dozen kids were listening to the details, as well as some adults. It's pretty basic stuff like don't go with someone you don't know etc. but here the most basic advice is needed. From there we went to a school under a tree where the NGO was teaching self protection and what to be aware of to a group of maybe 25 kids. They also teach basic hygiene and HIV prevention.
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