le petit voyage de sarkozy.

so yesterday my host dad made some sort of joke about how he ordered a child from chad about 10 days ago but it hasn't arrived yet. i didn't get it at the time but it alerted me that something had to be going on. then on the news this morning there was a story but all i really caught from the reporters who talk a mile a minute was chad, sarkozy, and spain. ah the joys of trying to function in a foreign country.

then in my class this morning we were working on oral comprehension and listened to a radio newscast from last night. after 4 times through and hashing out the information as a class with the professor, i had a better understanding of the situation, but it still didn't quite make sense. i now knew that sarko had flown his private plan to chad yesterday to rescue 3 french journalists and 4 spanish stewardesses who were charged with child trafficking. in the aftermath there were manifestations or protests {but when are there not?} in paris and the socialist party leaders are calling for an investigation into why sarko paid special attention to these individuals when there is so much other suffering in the world.

when i came home for lunch i tried to find an article in english so i could sort everything out, but to my astonishment, of the large news sites i frequent none of them had yet to post a story about it. i finally found an article article on the wall street journal's site by nidra poller who is an american living in paris.
finally the details were becoming clearer. so eric breteau, a frenchman, started this ngo called l'arche de zoé {very close to l'arche de noé-noah's arch} to save the children of the world. rather high expectations for a first timer. so he decides to 'save' the children of darfur by importing them to european families who are desperate to adopt. so breteau manages to get tons of money from these families and embarks on his mission to chad along with a spanish flight crew and several french journalists to document the whole thing. then things turn sour when local chiefs in chad start bribing families to give up their children and telling them they will attend an islamic school in the nation's capital. it turns out that of the 103 kids only a dozen or so were actually from darfur. many of the rest weren't even orphans, but rather bribed away from their families (allegedly).

on october 25, the group was about to take off for france to deliver the kids to anxiously awaiting families. alas, the plane never arrived. the french organizers, journalists, and spanish flight crew were taken into custody before the plane ever took off and the 103 toddlers are still trying to be sorted out and returned to their respective families. fast forward to yesterday, and good old sarko arrives in chad for a surprise visit. he speaks with the president and a few hours later, 3 of the journalists and 4 of the flight crew are on sarko's plane back to europe.

in all of this it wasn't really the hypocritical publicity stunt sarko pulled by rescuing the cute girls who may well be accomplices to international crimes opposed to his own conservative views on immigration. what angers me more is the lack of response from the american media. i thought for sure they would take every chance they got to jump all over the french and criticize them. hello, fox are you still there? or have you finally disappeared into the shadows in my departed time from the not so united states? wait, what's wrong with me? oh right, i forgot, the US prefers to pretend darfur doesn't exist. hang on, what's darfur again?