P.S

Take a good look at this woman.



Pay very close attention to her eyes.

Her name is FannyAnn Eddy. She used to live in Sierra Leone with her 10 year old son. She's dead now. Been that way since Sept, 2004. She was raped repeatedly, stabbed and then they broke her neck.

She spoke at the U.N Comission on Human Rights in April of the same year. In her testimony, she spoke about the need to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender(LGBT) rights in Sierra Leone.

She was found dead in on her office premises, where she was working late.

Tomorrow, I leave to join a gaggle of american college kids who will spend some time over the next four days, mimicking the U.N.O in session. Some of them have prepared papers and talk-points. Some plan to get drunk once it' over.

None, I am told, suffer under any delusions of the grandeur that comes with putting down a proposal regarding human rights and sending it in to the big wigs. I was told that such model U.N meetings are only meant to foster communication.

Eddy is already forgotten. These kids at the conference, perhaps many of them on my committee-- LGBT rights, sex trafficking and child labour-- will not know her name.

I could either weep the tears of rage Im keeping down or laugh at all the helplessness that comes with being a noisy little hamster in a very big wheel. Or I could go out and smoke and remind myself to stay silent, and listen, and do only that during the whole conference.

Yes. That.