NY Times Article

Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old’s Eyes

KETE KRACHI, Ghana — Just before 5 a.m., with the sky still dark over Lake Volta, Mark Kwadwo was rousted from his spot on the damp dirt floor. It was time for work.

Shivering in the predawn chill, he helped paddle a canoe a mile out from shore. For five more hours, as his coworkers yanked up a fishing net, inch by inch, Mark bailed water to keep the canoe from swamping.

He last ate the day before. His broken wooden paddle was so heavy he could barely lift it. But he raptly followed each command from Kwadwo Takyi, the powerfully built 31-year-old in the back of the canoe who freely deals out beatings.

“I don’t like it here,” he whispered, out of Mr. Takyi’s earshot.

Mark Kwadwo is 6 years old. About 30 pounds, dressed in a pair of blue and red underpants and a Little Mermaid T-shirt, he looks more like an oversized toddler than a boat hand. He is too little to understand why he has wound up in this fishing village, a two-day trek from his home.

But the three older boys who work with him know why. Like Mark, they are indentured servants, leased by their parents to Mr. Takyi for as little as $20 a year.

Until their servitude ends in three or four years, they are as trapped as the fish in their nets, forced to work up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, in a trade that even adult fishermen here call punishing and, at times, dangerous.

Mr. Takyi’s boys — conscripts in a miniature labor camp, deprived of schooling, basic necessities and freedom — are part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets. The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.

By no means is the child trafficking trade uniquely African. Children are forced to race camels in the Middle East, weave carpets in India and fill brothels all over the developing world.

The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually.

Studies show they are most vulnerable in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Africa’s children, the world’s poorest, account for roughly one-sixth of the trade, according to the labor organization. Data is notoriously scarce, but it suggests victimization of African children on a huge scale.

A 2002 study supervised by the labor organization estimated that nearly 12,000 trafficked children toiled in the cocoa fields of Ivory Coast alone. The children, who had no relatives in the area, cleared fields with machetes, applied pesticides and sliced open cocoa pods for beans.

In an analysis in February, Unicef says child trafficking is growing in West and Central Africa, driven by huge profits and partly controlled by organized networks that transport children both within and between countries.

“We know it is a huge problem in Africa,” said Pamela Shifman, a child protection officer at the New York headquarters of Unicef. “A lot of it is visible. You see the kids being exploited. You watch it happen. Somebody brought the kids to the place where they are. Somebody exploited their vulnerability.”

Otherwise, she asked, “How did they get there?”

John R. Miller, the director of the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, said the term trafficking failed to convey the brutality of what was occurring.

“A child does not consent,” he said. “The loss of choice, the deception, the use of frauds, the keeping of someone at work with little or no pay, the threats if they leave — it is slavery.”

Some West African families see it more as a survival strategy. In a region where nearly two-thirds of the population lives on less than $1 a day, the compensation for the temporary loss of a child keeps the rest of the family from going hungry. Some parents argue that their children are better off learning a trade than starving at home.

Indeed, the notion that children should be in the care of their parents is not a given in much of African society.

Parents frequently hand off children to even distant relatives if it appears they will have a chance at education and more opportunity.

Only in the past six years or so has it become clear how traffickers take advantage of this custom to buy and sell children, sometimes with no more ceremony than a goat deal.

In 2001, 35 children, half of them under age 15, were discovered aboard a vessel in a Benin port. They said they were being shipped to Gabon to work.

In 2003, Nigerian police rescued 194 malnourished children from stone quarries north of Lagos. At least 13 other children had died and been buried near the pits, the police said

Last year, Nigerian police stumbled upon 64 girls aged 14 and younger, packed inside a refrigerated truck built to haul frozen fish. They had traveled hundreds of miles from central Nigeria, the police said, and were destined for work as housemaids in Lagos.

In response to such reports, African nations have passed a raft of legislation against trafficking, adopting or strengthening a dozen laws last year alone.

There were nearly 200 prosecutions of traffickers on the continent last year, four times as many as in 2003, according to the State Department’s trafficking office.

Some countries are encouraging villages to form their own surveillance committees. In Burkina Faso, the government reported, such committees, together with the police, freed 644 children from traffickers in 2003. Still, government officials in the region say, only a tiny fraction of victims are detected.

Ghana, an Oregon-size nation of 21 million people, has yet to prosecute anyone under the new antitrafficking law it adopted last December. But the government has taken other steps — including eliminating school fees that forced youngsters out of classrooms, increasing birth registrations so that children have legal identities and extending small loans to about 1,200 mothers to give them alternatives to leasing out their children.

The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency set up after World War II to help refugees, has also mounted a United States-financed program to rescue children from the fishing industry.

Since 2003, the organization says, 587 children have been freed from Ghana’s Lake Volta region, taken to shelters for counseling and medical treatment, then reunited with parents or relatives.

“We sign a social contract with the fishermen,” said Eric Peasah, the agency’s Ghana field representative. “If they have 10 children, we say, ‘Release four, and you can’t get more, or you will be prosecuted.’ Once they sign that, we come back and say we want to release more.”

To reduce child trafficking significantly, said Marilyn Amponsah Annan, who is in charge of children’s issues for the Ghanaian government, adults must be convinced that children have the right to be educated, to be protected, and to be spared adult burdens — in short, the right to a childhood.

“You see so many children with so many fishermen,” she said. “Those little hands, those little bodies. It is always very sad, because this is the world of adults.

“We have to educate these communities because they do not know any other way of existence. They believe this is what they need to do to survive.”

That is the fishermen’s favorite defense in Kete Krachi, a day’s drive through dense forests from Ghana’s capital, Accra. For the area’s roughly 9,000 residents, fishing is their lifeblood. Children keep it going.

Nearly every canoe here holds at least a few of them, some no older than 5 or 6, often supervised by a teenager. A dozen boys, interviewed in their canoes or as they sewed up ratty nets ashore, spoke of backbreaking toil, 100-hour workweeks and frequent beatings. They bore a pervasive fear of diving into the lake’s murky waters to free a tangled net, and never resurfacing.

One 10-year-old said he was sometimes so exhausted that he fell asleep as he paddled. Asked when he rested, another boy paused from his net mending, seemingly confused. “This is what you see now,” he said.

They never see the pittance they earn. The fishermen say they pay parents or relatives each December, typically on trips to the families’ villages during the December holidays.

The children’s sole comfort seems to be the shared nature of their misery, a camaraderie of lost boys who have not seen their families in years, have no say in their fate and, in some cases, were lured by false promises of schooling or a quick homecoming.

On Nkomi, a grassy island in the lake, Kwasi Tweranim, in his mid to late teens, and Kwadwo Seaako, perhaps 12 or 13, seemed united by fear and resentment of their boss. Both bear inchlong scars on their scalps where, they said, he struck them with a wooden paddle.

“I went down to disentangle the net, and when I came up, my master said that I had left part of it down there,” Kwasi said. “Then I saw black, and woke up in another boat. Only the grace of God saved me.”

Kwadwo, stammering badly, said he had been punished when the net rolled in the water.

Not every fisherman is so pitiless. Christian Lissah employs eight children under 13, mostly distant relatives. He said he knew many children who were treated no better than workhorses, and some who had drowned.

“In general, this is not a good practice because people mishandle the children,” he said. Yet he said he could not imagine how he would fish profitably without child workers, and depends on friends and acquaintances to keep him supplied — for a commission.

“You must get people who are a very low background who need money,” he said. “Some of them are eager to release their children.”

Mark Kwadwo’s parents, Joe Obrenu and his wife, Ama, were an easy sell. Mr. Obrenu fished the seas off Aboadzi, a hilly, sun-drenched town on the Gulf of Guinea, and his wife dried the catch for sale. But the two often ran short of food, said Mark’s aunt, Adwoa Awotwe. Over the years, they sold five of their children into labor, she said, including Mark’s 9-year-old sister Hagar, who performs domestic chores for Mr. Takyi.

Mr. Obrenu drummed up other recruits from neighbors, sometimes to their lasting regret. “It was hunger, to get a little money; the whole today, I have not eaten,” said Efua Mansah, whose 7-year-old son, Kwabena, boarded a small blue bus with Mr. Takyi four years ago for the 250-mile trip to Kete Krachi.

She has seen him only twice since then. In all that time, Mr. Takyi has paid her $66, she said, a third of which she spent on buses and ferries to pick up the money.

In her one-room hut decorated with empty plastic bottles, she forced back tears. “I want to bring my son home,” she said.

Mark also cried when his turn to leave came this year, his aunt said, so his mother told him that Mr. Takyi would take him to his father. Instead, he was brought to Mr. Takyi’s compound of caked mud huts, to a dark six-foot-square cubicle with a single tiny window. He shares it with five other children, buzzing flies and a few buckets of fish bait.

In two days, a smile never creased Mark’s delicate features. He seldom offered more than a nod or a shake of the head, with a few telling exceptions: “I was beaten in the house. I can’t remember what I did, but he caned me,” he said of Mr. Takyi.

Mr. Takyi, who sleeps and works in the same gray T-shirt, is disarmingly frank about his household. He can afford to feed the children only twice a day, he said, and cannot clothe them adequately. He himself has been paddling the lake since age 8.

“I can understand how the children feel,” he said. “Because I didn’t go to school, this is work I must do. I also find it difficult.”

Yet he does not hesitate to break a branch from the nearest tree to wake the boys for the midnight shift.

“Almost all the boys are very troublesome,” he complained. “I want them to be humble children, but they don’t obey my orders.”

One recent morning, his young crew, wrapped in thin bedsheets for warmth, hiked in the darkness down to the shore.

They paddled out in two leaky but stable canoes, searching the water for a piece of foam that marked where their net was snagged on submerged tree stumps. Kwabena, 11, stripped off his cutoff shorts and dived in with an 18-year-old to free it, yanking it at one point with his teeth.

Mark has not mastered the rhythm of paddling. Mr. Takyi said the boy cries when the water is rough or he is cold. He cannot swim a stroke. If the canoe capsizes, Mr. Takyi said, he will save him.

“I can’t pay what is asked for older boys,” Mr. Takyi said, as Mark bailed out the canoe with the sawed-off bottom of a plastic cooking oil container. “That is why I go for this. When I get money, I go to get another one.”

In the other canoe, Kwame Akuban and Kofi Quarshie plucked fish from the net with the air of prisoners waiting for their terms to end.

Kofi, 10, said his mother had told him his earnings would feed their family. But he suspects another motive. “They didn’t like me,” he said softly.

Kwame, 12, said his parents had promised to retrieve him in a year’s time and send him to school.

“I have been here three years and I am not going home, and I am not happy,” he said quietly.

As if on cue, Mr. Takyi shouted: “Remove the fish faster, or I will cane you.”

Running away is a common fantasy among the boys. Kofi Nyankom, who came from Mark’s hometown three years ago, at age 9, was one of the few to actually try it.

Last December, he ran to town half-naked, his back a mass of bruises. He said Mr. Takyi had tied up him and whipped him.

George Achibra, a school district official, demanded that the police intervene, and Mr. Takyi was forced to let Kofi go.

But before many weeks passed, he had brought in a replacement — younger, more helpless, more submissive. It was Mark Kwadwo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/world/africa/29ghana.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=3e6b6aaf7693f1ad&hp&ex=1162184400&partner=homepage

Note on photos

Alright, so I just tried the link to my photos that I claimed was valid in the previous entry. I thought... hoped that it would work, but it won't unless you have a Facebook account. So, I guess since Facebook is now open to the masses, and if you want to see my photos, well, you may have to join. Sorry for all of those who have held out, but embrace the technology for what it is.

Pics now online!

This is a link to some pics from my first month:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076679&id=12925720

I apologize for not using the Flickr link integrated into my blog, but I am having difficulty uploading photos to it.

dysentery... there is a first time for everything!

NOTE - this blog includes explicit info about bodily functions... and no, i don't mean running and jumping... you've been forewarned.

i guess there is little left to the imagination from the heading above, eh? first off, so my mother doesn't panic - i am fine and recovering and doing well and all that good stuff. hey, i feel alright enough to sit upright and stare at a computer screen so that you all may enjoy my experiences. all the excitement started on friday night when i suddenly realized that i wasn't feeling very well, my lymphs were beginning to swell, and my joints were beginning to ache - all in all, i was uncomfortable with the forethought of where this was heading. well, i slowly began to accrue a fever through the night, tossing and turning, sweating and freezing, aching and MORE aching. i believe that time possibly slowed down, possibly rewound through the night because that night enclosed in the mosquito net seemed like a cruel, prolonged, and heightened reality. saturday morning was the worst, though.

my fever peaked at just a tad over a 104 degrees, quickly whereafter i attempted my best at performing laborious acrobatic antics at the latrine as i was, let's say, "leaking" from both ends. i kind of felt like being on the receiving end of an unfair tag-team wrestling match. you know, when the official is distracted by your partner who is argumentatively trying to point out the egregious fouls that are being committed upon you and meanwhile, one of the opponents jumps in to lay down a nasty flying elbow while the other pins you to the ground just as the flying elbow lands right across the midsection. it was great! i can only say this now in retrospect though.

that was definitely the worst of it, and i was glad that is quickly passed. i spent the rest of saturday rehydrating, taking fever reducers, and making quick, dizzied jaunts to the bathroom. yesterday, i was taken to the PC med unit in kombo (the capital area on the coast). i managed to eat for the first time in about 2.5 days and am otherwise ok. i just have lingering aches and mild, but fleeting headache that is residual from the intense fever. also, i am about 15 pound lighter than when i arrived in country. this weight loss was accelerated by the dysentery but the diet while spending a week and a half in training village definitely cut weight, too. never was there a serious threat to my health, mom! it's basically like a really bad flu. i don't want to sensationalize this too much, it just makes for a good story now that i am better

luckily, this all happened the last night while we were at our training camp on the river. all the PC staff knew my condition and we arranged for transport as soon as i was well enough to travel. most PCVs here get dysentery at least once, and it is fully treatable, even if you are by yourself in village. maybe i just got mine out of the way early. i have spared some details, but to summarize, dysentery leaves you feeling like you've been herded over by cattle, but spared the injuries like broken bones and ruptured internal organs.

in other news, well?

• i would like to send out a shout-out to Scott B who sent me an uplifting note and pics from kentucky. scott, that bike looks sweet and the farmer's market pic really welled me up inside. mainly because i haven't seen produce that fresh in a while. thanks.
• i have some journal entries about the first week in training village that i will post later, so stay posted. i should be in kombo through mid-week.
• all the trainees received their site assignments last week. these are the assignments to where we will be posted for our two years of service after we finish training. my site sounds amazing, but altogether a bit exceptional from most other AgFo assignments. i have been assigned to a site at a place called Sapu. it is about 20 miles or so west of Bansang along the south bank. i am not completely for sure what the village is like, but the reason why i am going there is because there is a research facility. the facility is operated by the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), an exntension branch of the Agriculture Department, and a Taiwanese-affiliated research group. evidently, i'll have my own house, unlike other volunteers who live with a family in a compound, and my house will be equipped with.... drumroll.... a FLUSH toilet and electricity! overall, i should have the best accomodations of any other AgFo volunteer that lives upcountry, according to some sources. disclaimer - if any of this turns out to be false, then i will let you all know. also, i have six banana trees in my backyard and, since the place is a reasearch facility they have powered irrigation technology. this means, i suspect, that i will have a big, irrigated garden to feed myself and won't have to rely so much on local markets and be concerned with the lack of availability of fresh foods upcountry. as for the work i will be doing, i am not for certain. the research being conducted is on alot of the grain crops (i.e. millet, sorghum, findi, rice, etc...) along with vegetable crops that are grown here. the idea is that i will assist in research, hopefully be able to coordinate and conduct my own, and serve as a medium to other AgFos in the country. the goal will be to disseminate pertinent info to them for trial and introduction in their own villages and with their own counterpart farmers. my understanding is in its infancy at the moment and my thoughts are obscured from the lingering effects of dysentery, so i apologize if i am not making a lot of sense.

alright, i am in town for a few more days. i hope to hop on the internet a few more times between now and then. talk to you all sooner or later.

off the grid for a while...

alright, lots to say, but litte mental capacity with which to say it. first off, like i said in the previous entry, we are off for our training village in the morning. it will be about a 5 hour ride along the south bank road. this also means that i will not have access to, nor see a computer for the next two months until we return to the banjul area for swearing in as authenticated peace corps volunteers. however, us trainees will still be receiving mail at our sites, so feel free to send a letter, even if it just to say, "Hey Ben, guess what? I just ate at Pazzo's on pint night... and it was good. By-the-way, how is the rice in Africa?" You know, something nice like that.

Well, what is the breaking news from The Gambia? Well, personally, tomorrow I get to change my malaria medication. I'm switching from Lariam because of the heightened psycho-activity it has induced. Sounds freaky, but basically, all I mean is that my mind is racing while sleeping and I am having some crazily intenese dreams about reality. So much, in fact, that I am confused when I wake up and think that I should be wherever the setting of my last dream was. I have some examples, but none too imaginative. So, yay, no more Lariam! In other medical news, we receive some our last immunizations tomorrow, too! We have been receiving two shots every other day since we arrived a week ago, more or less.

Hmmm... we are all ready to get out of the Kombo area, as this capital region is called. We are ready to begin actual training. In preparation for our host village stay we discussed what the realities will be once we arrive there. Some stuff was fairly elementary, like how to take a bucket bath. Yet, other topics were more cultural, like how to alert someone (who comes knocking on your door) that you are indisposed at your latrine so they know to come back in a bit. You just make some low guttural noises without actually speaking. Also, we went to the market a few days ago to buy kola nuts to present to the village authorities upon arrival. The nuts taste like a dense, crisp (but not juicy) raw potato and have loads of caffeine in them. They are bitter and evidently, an acquired taste. However, they are culturally integrated into many aspects of Gambian society - though not my cup of tea.

Speaking of which, attaya (uh-tie-yuh) is a cultural tradition that I am excited about. It is super strong green tea that is brewed with lots of sugar and sipped all the day long in the shade of a baobab or mango or whatever type of shade tree that the village has. And, part of the Peace Corps mission is cross-cultural exchange. What does that mean? Well, technically, part of my reponsibilities will be to sip tea beneath a tree in some African village talking Mandinka with the locals. I jest a bit, but in all seriousness, cultural integration is absolutely necessary here in order for us volunteers to accomplish anything at all.

This is the foremost lesson I have learned from this past week. Collectivism is at the heart of West African society. Everyone is supported by their families and communities and within those abstractions of structure is the function of their society. American individualism is at a bright contrast here. This is what we have all learned in the past week; and what the Peace Corps staff has been trying to demonstrate to us. It is difficult grasping the extent to which collectivism is adhered to here, but this is also why I told the PC recruiter almost a year ago that I wanted to come to Africa - because of the cultural differences. An example of the difference are the lengthy greetings one initiates upon passing another person. It is a series of simple questions and answer that translate foreignly (obviously) in English. (i.e. Person A: How is the morning? Person B: Peace Only. Person A: Hope you slept well? Person B: yes, slept in peace only. Person A: Where are the home people? Person B: They are there.) It is my responsibility to adapt and be flexible so that when I actually get to initiate some work, I will be accepted as part of the community; instead of aligning myself with the popular development mantras of paternalism. My scope is rather limited and my impressions are still naive, so I issue that disclaimer if I in the future change my interpretations of this culture, but so far, it is beautiful.
[Insert time lapse.] OK, it is now an hour later from when I typed the word 'beautiful'. The power went out here at the office and then there were some technical problems with the computer. So, I have waited quasi-patiently in the computer room awaiting the return of technology to the office. I have lost my thought tracks and thus, am unable and a bit unwilling to write anymore. With that being said, I am now late for dinner. Catch ya'll in December…… oh, write letters!

kayira be?

our group's arrival in banjul this week now seems like it was a month ago. this is only our 3rd day here but all the others agree that time has passed slowly despite our busy schedule. we were greeted on thursday evening with an all-american dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, though it was not as good as my mom's. still though, we were comforted by the food yet fully expecting and possibly desiring some local far straight away.

but enough about the food. we are staying in a pastoral institute (and by pastoral i mean in the heavenly sense, not the livestock one) that is in banjul just a few blocks from the PC/TG office. basically, we have five-star accomodations for another week. we have electricity, ceiling fans, running water, and shower and sink basins in our rooms. altogether so far things have been relatively uneventful, but still fascinating. the weather is hot and humid, but no worse than a kentucky summer by any means. the wet season is coming to a close and harvest season has begun.

the past two days have been busy with scheduled classes and other orientation-type events from morning on into the night. it has been a nice balance of necessary policy accompanied with cultural information sessions. we have had some free time in the evenings to play frisbee, soccer, cards, to read, and just about anything else, including now, revising our notes and studying our language.

the one thing that has happend so far, which everyone is excited about is that we have received our language assignments. myself along with most of the other training group will be learning Mandinka, which is spoken by over 80% of the population. less than half of the group of 25 is split between Wolof and Pulaar. this means the powers-at-be (the PC staff) have at least some idea of our future assignments, which we will find out much later in our 10-week training. there are some really exciting projects going on in AgFo ranging from cashew production, alternative crop gardening, some experimental soy trial, honey production, environmental education, and various types of animal propagation. the expectations for language acquisition are high (at least, according to my naive understanding of matters at this time) as we must reach an intermediate proficiency by november 27th. i think this is everyone's greatest apprehension, but also the most exciting.

also, ramaadan just began. since most of the country practices Islam, most people are fasting from food AND water through the day, even our Language and Cultural Helpers (LCHs) who teach us. our quarters are located very near a mosque, so all the trainees are awoken at 5 am to the sounds from the loudspeaker broadcasting the call to prayer. these sounds have been the most definitive reminder that i am in a different culture.

generally though, i am not as surprised as i expected to be about being in the culture. this is not to say i feel as if i belong. i'm just not uncomfortable being here. honestly, i felt more akward during our three hour layover in Brussels than upon arrival in Banjul. (BTW - we could not find a place in the Brussels airport that sold beer. most of us were excited to sample a brew, but left disappointed.) my experience in Ecuador is serving me well. there are certain ubiquitous traits, i guess, amongst developing countries; with the street atmosphere being what i am thinking of - what seems like, but is not inadvertent swerving and random honking, random items sold together by a street vendor... a controlled chaos, as reflected upon my very American eyes.

the general lay-out for the next weeks is this. we leave next weekend to go to our training villages. while there we are in small groups of 3-4 trainees and 1 LCH. there we will focus mainly on language and cultural integration behavior. while there we have classes in the morning followed by walkabout-type conversation practice in the village, generally. it is well organized and i think will be quite conducive to learning the language due to the intensive, immersive nature. following our week in the training village we will go to a river camp that is basically a tourist lodge where we will receive technical training. then we will return to our training village and our host family to do another week of language and culture training. we will rotate like this through the end of november when we will all hopefully be receiving our site assignments.

well, that is about it. the line for the computer is starting to stack up, so i'm going to cut this off. i don't know when i'll be on here next. i might try to get on here again before we head up country to our training village next weekend.

fo saama!