As a mother of two amazingly wonderful little people who bless my life every day with their sweetness and wonder, I sit trying to write this article which encompasses the death of not one, not two, but several million Congolese children. I can't process the horror. I can't image for one second what I would do if someone did to my children what is being done to the children in that country. As a parent, what would I do if my child did not come home? Here in North America there are so many avenues to respond to the crisis of a missing child, but in Congo, if your child does not come home, you can assume only the worst and hope the same fate does not befall you. How can the world.. how can I live with such a double standard?

I wonder how many times someone looks at their laptop or their cell phone and thinks "there is coltan mined by children in this product." Children who die because of disease, starvation and unsafe working conditions. Children who die because the military, the very people who are suppose to keep them safe, abuse and then murder them to hush their crimes. I try to shake the pictures of those children out of my head but they have now painted themselves into my heart.

I didn't realize when I began researching this project that it would be anything other than a writing assignment. I had no clue what I was opening myself up to and I don't know if I can delve any deeper into the truth, because the truth of the situation in the DRC is one of horror. Five and a half million people have died there in the last 10 years of which they estimate half to be children.

The war is brutal and is fueled in large part by the richness of the minerals that are being mined. Coltan(Columbite-tantalite)which is used to produce tantalum capacitors and other components of modern electronic devices as well as the highly in demand copper are being sold on the black market. That money is funding the purchase of weapons, ensuring more fighting and continuing the cycle of death. Eighty percent of the world's coltan comes from the mines in the DR of Congo. The technique used to extract it from the earth is similar to the process used in the 1800's to mine gold. Sloshing the silt through a sieve and the heavier than mud coltan settles to the bottom and is then scooped out. A seasoned worker processes one kilogram per day and is paid $1.00 for their work unless that worker is a child and then they are paid twenty cents to dig in the mud and rocks with crude

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