Educação pode mudar sua vida

1 The woman had been trapped in her office for three days as fighting rocked the streets below and armed gangs roamed. Alexandra had survived on a package of cookies and two cans of soda. Finally,frantic that a promised rescue by a U.N. convoy didnot materialize, she ran out of her building and intothe dangerous streets, dashing two blocks to a nearbyhotel. “This place is paradise,” she said to the staff,who took her in and provided her with water andsome food, even though they were running low. “This place is paradise.”
2 On March 31, millions in the chic, sultry West African city of Abidjan, the center of power in lvory Coast, abandoned their wine bars, high-rise officesand four-lane highways. They barricaded their apartments and watched, terrified, as the battle fortheir nation swept into town. Forces allied withnortherner Alassane Ouattara, who was electedPresident on Nov. 28, fought troops loyal tosoutherner Laurent Gbagbo, the incumbent, whodelayed an election for five years, then refused to gowhen he lost.
3 Mediation went nowhere, and from March 28 to 30, militias supporting Ouattara captured most of thecountry. But the battle for Abidjan, a city of 5 million, was always going to be bloody. Gbagbo hadsurrounded himself with thousands of troops andheavy weapons – mortars, mounted machine gunsand artillery – and was believed to be in a bunkerunder the presidential residence. Its food suppliesalready low, the city ran so short of water that evenGbagbo’s thugs were knocking on doors begging fora drink. Thirsty civilians braved gunfire to draw waterfrom the city’s polluted lagoons.
4 Meanwhile, the specter of genocide hung in the air as Gbagbo’s state television urged patriots to defendthe nation, broadcasting pictures of bodies in thestreets. Northerners and southerners daubed oneanother’s doors with signs to indicate tribalaffiliation, a guide to enmity. In the western town ofDuékoué, 800 people died in two separate massacres,apparently one by each side. The U.N. estimated thata million people were displaced.
5 Gbagbo seemed to be counting on the world’sdoing little to stop what sounded like an all-too-familiar African tragedy. As with other autocrats – Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Muammar Gaddafi inLibya – the country would burn. The world wouldwatch in horror but just as quickly turn away. Andafter all the killing, rape and destruction, Gbagbowould remain.