A slave by any other name…

By Brenda Plonis

           Little Paul wrapped his scrawny arms tightly around my neck and clung to me.  I sat on the ground, absorbed in the surrounding whirlwind of activity – children laughing, dancing, and singing. It was one of my last times at Paul’s home – a sort of ‘half-way house’ for street children and boys rescued from slavery.

            Paul was his usual filthy self. He wore only tattered underpants. The rest of his body was covered with dirt and scabies medication. But for once, I didn’t think about how much I wanted to wash my hands and rid myself of the germs that festered on his skin.  I only wanted three-year-old Paul to feel safe and secure in my arms. I wanted him to feel like he had a home.

            UNICEF estimates that 200,000 children are traded through West and Central Africa, annually. Paul is one of them.

            I visited this place nearly every Saturday while my floating home – a hospital ship – spent seven months in Benin, West Africa. Before my first visit, I only knew that the children there had been ‘rescued’ from slavery at the border, in town, or caught on the job. Throughout the weeks of playing games with the boys and slowly recognizing their faces with their names, many of their stories came out – stories of abusive parents, nights spent on the streets and being sold by relatives for a small price.  They didn’t know the names of their village. Some didn’t even know their own surnames. They had been sold, abused, abandoned - by those who should have loved them most.

            The reality of this modern day slave trade struck home when news broke that an alleged slave ship was off the coast of Benin. Suddenly, this tiny country, located in the ‘armpit’ of West Africa was making headlines.  Daily newspapers around the world featured stories of child slavery. The port, usually busy with loading and off-loading gravel, cars and rice, was now crawling with UN staff, child aid workers and reporters.  All of them wanted to discover the real story behind the m/v Etireno.

The real story

            We too waited in anticipation for the arrival of the Nigerian registered vessel.  There were rumours that children had been thrown overboard. Our crew ¾ especially those of us working at the Children’s Home ¾ got a little anxious. We had met children who were victims in this shocking business, and now perhaps many more would soon be on the dock.

            One morning, as the reports claimed the ship was near, I was out doing my usual run.  I wondered aloud to my running partner, if the ship would be arriving soon, or if it was all a hoax.

            Just then we jogged past the ship. We barely noticed it on the dock – dwarfed by other ships and gigantic cranes and containers.   The sun wasn’t even up yet, and only a few people hovered near the vessel. I dismissed the rumours of a slave ship and chalked it up as inaccurate reporting. I hadn’t seen 200 children spilling onto the dock. What I didn’t know at the time, was that the Etireno had sailed back into Beninoise waters hours before, in the middle of the night, spotlighted by a crowd of people, including Government officials, NGOs, the police and the Ambassador to the USA.

            Later that day, my reporting instincts were crowded out by the activity as the dock filled with investigators. The Government opened a national inquiry, passengers began to be interviewed, and reports began filing in from around the world. The Etireno supposedly sailed ‘clandestinely’ out of Benin – even though our own captain and crew enjoying the African breeze watched it sail away from our promenade deck. The vessel allegedly carried 250 children on it. Yet media reports were conflicting. First there were 20 children, then 30, then finally a grand total of 43.  

Media frenzy

Before the Etireno even docked, our hospital ship received phone calls from around the world from different media groups. Most wanted to know how we were involved, or helping with the situation.  Because a group of us from the ship volunteered at Paul’s home, we were now the supposed ‘experts’ in this complicated situation. 

            I got involved by hosting a lady who wanted to do a documentary about child slavery.  My colleagues and I took her to Paul’s home. The staff there were more than helpful, although I cringed as I watched the documentary lady, anxious for scandalous clues, search for the pieces she wanted to fit her whole puzzle together. 

            Another, well-established and respected local writer accompanied us that day – I think more out of curiosity than a story.  He sat back and simply observed the charade going on around us, while the staff pulled out dusty files on each of the boys – the documentary and aid workers pumping him with questions through a translator.

            Tom (not his real name) pulled me aside and mentioned how child slavery is such a complicated and touchy issue today. He explained that we might call it slavery, but in some cultures, it was simply a form of indentured servanthood.  That made me think – especially once I heard some of the stories of how parents would ‘sell’ their children to people who seemed to be do-gooders… and people whom they thought might give their children an education. Even a friend of mine said she had to put herself in the shoes of an African mother who couldn’t afford to feed all  her children. She might have sold one of them. Especially if she thought he was going to a better place.

            I could see Tom’s point. He was talking about what is known as ‘bonded labour’. The practice takes place when a family receives an advance payment to hand over a child to an employer. The child usually cannot work off the debt. According to the Human Rights Watch, the bonded labour could even be generational – a child’s grandfather or great-grandfather may have been promised to an employer many years earlier, with the understanding that each generation would provide the employer with a new worker – often with no pay.

By any other name…

            The practice of bonded labour is outlawed by the 1956 UN Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and the Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery.

            Anti-Slavery International is the world’s oldest international human rights organization. Founded in 1839, it is the only charity in the United Kingdom which works exclusively against slavery and related abuses. Although slave trading in Africa was officially banned in the early 1880s, the charity works at local, national and international levels to eliminate the system of slavery around the world, which still exists today.

            In 1997, the number of children intercepted at the Benin border increased nearly seven times that of the number in 1995. As a result of this, Anti-Slavery commissioned the NGO, Enfants Solidaires d’Afrique et du Monde (ESAM) to carry out research into trafficking from October 1998 to July 1999. Their results were rather shocking. 

            Of the 170 families interviewed in Benin, 37%  said they could not earn enough to satisfy the essential needs of their family and were therefore prepared to hand their children over to traffickers.  Interviews with the children revealed that 75% would go with a trafficker if their parents told them to. And most surprising, their research indicated that many of the children who are returned home are often trafficked again.

            A few weeks into the outbreak of the slave-ship scandal, the dilapidated rust-bucket still tainted the view from the deck of our ship. The search for missing pieces to the puzzle was still on, but interest had dwindled. I visited the hotel where the journalists and aid workers were staying. They appeared a bit bedraggled and frustrated.  They mustered plastic grins and said all was fine, but their stories were simply not panning out as expected. They had come to some dead ends. Child trafficking was  not an issue to be solved overnight.

            I pondered their quandary as I left the hotel.  As a journalist, I too wanted a good story. But at what cost? To Paul and the other boys, who had already been through enough? First to be sold into slavery, and now photographers and TV crews wanted to splash their pictures all over our living rooms? Yet this story needed to be told – especially the truth about the complex and very real issue of child slavery which still exists in Africa today, not to mention the rest of the world.

The facts

Eventually UNICEF issued a press release, clearing the air and giving the correct story, albeit perhaps still with some gaps. Unfortunately, by that time, the media had already sensationalized the Etireno story.  At least it got the world’s attention… for a few weeks, anyway.

            As it turned out, this particular incident was not as sensational as some had expected, or perhaps even hoped, it would be. But it highlighted the ongoing tragedy. According to UNICEF’s report, 147 people were on board when the ship arrived in Benin.  Among them were 43 children and young people. Of these, 23 were between five and 14 years of age and 17 were between 15and 24 years.. Three infants were found on board, but ties to the women accompanying them had yet to be determined.  At that time, their records and research indicated that five children declared that a financial transaction had taken place before their departure, and eight said they were travelling with an unknown intermediary.

            Anti-Slavery issued a press release this year, stating that most of the children from the Etireno are now in school, apprenticeships or starting legitimate work after being helped by social workers in Togo and Benin.  The charity also stated that the captain, co-captain and the man who chartered the boat, remain in jail in Benin, charged with illegally transporting foreign children. 

            The hype has died down now, and the journalists have raced off to another crisis in another part of the globe. Sadly, this story sadly is a continuing saga – at least while 200,000 children are still trafficked through West and Central Africa annually. They are children like Paul, whose visible scars and those beyond their skin show that they had lived out a nightmare.

Brenda Plonis is Communications Officer on the Mercy Ship Anastasis, currently stationed in Benin, West Africa.

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