This post isn’t about Africa, but it was on the radio in Africa, which is close enough. While driving back from our village site yesterday, BBC Radio replayed a 1993 radio documentary called “Ghetto Life 101.” It features 13 year old Lee Allen Jones and his friend, 14 year old Lloyd Newman, narrating their life in the ghetto of South Side Chicago. They are at once soberingly innocent and all too aware of the hopeless world they live in. It’s startling and one of the most powerful pieces I’ve ever heard. Here I was driving through the countryside of a poor, African country who just one year after this piece aired, was victimized by civil war and genocide. And I was most horrified by the state of these parts of our own, “advanced” and “developed” country. In 14 years, Rwanda has come so far and in the same time, America’s ghettos have remain unchanged, marked by drugs, senseless violence, and overwhelming hopelessness.

Take 25 minutes and listen: BBC Radio.