This is sure to be a doosy of blog, so settle in and get ready to READ!!
Today was a really amazing day and the first time that I’ve
gotten to do anything remotely “rescue-like” in almost a year!! Getting Faith Roots up and running has been
such a priority to me, to all of us here at City of Refuge, that we haven’t had
much time or opportunity to do many community entry events, investigations,
negotiations, etc for quite some time.
But, as the second Children’s home gets closer and closer to
being completed, we have begun to prepare for child rescues…and today was our
first day of community entry.
In the past, we have been primarily working lakeside. We see a child who is fishing out on the
lake, find the master, and then negotiate with the fishing master for the child’s
release. This is a looooong process and
in some cases, we are still negotiating for the same children’s release YEARS
after our first community entry into certain areas. But, we are all about relationship instead of
paying off a slave-owner. We are about
development and education. And in no way
to we ever offer a bribe or pay off to the fishermen for a child’s release.
But, this time, we wanted to come at it from a different
angle. You see, the problem of slavery
here in Ghana is two-fold. We talk about
it from the angle of “sending communities” and “receiving communities”. The coastal fishing communities are where the
Volta fishermen will come down, purchase children, and bring them up with
them. The coastal communities are what
we call “sending communities” while the Volta fishing communities are what we
call “receiving communities”. We realized
several years back that while we can do continual work at the lakeside,
rescuing endless numbers of children and doing development type projects and
education among the people there, unless the problem is stopped at the ROOT…the
coastal communities, then the problem will just continue. And out of that idea, 7 Continents was
birthed. A single mother’s women
empowerment program in coastal fishing communities aimed and empowering and
educating women so they can provide for their families and selling their
children never becomes an option.
So, this time around, we wanted to try that ROOT approach in
even our rescues. Ultimately, the goal
of City of Refuge is not necessarily to bring gobs of children here to live
with us, it is to reunite children with their families and enable the families
to provide an education for their children.
So, we headed out to Lalonya and its surrounding communities, where both
Abigail and DK were from, and Dora and Mary were rescued from. We have hired Abigail and DK’s uncle, James,
to help us during these investigations as he is from that area and was a child
slave himself (now he is 29 and just finished senior high school).
We arrived in Lalonya around 11 am this morning and picked
up the assembly man (like the mayor of a given area) and went to the first
village where we were to do community entry.
The journey to Lalonya was such an interesting one for me. I kept thinking about Dora and Mary and their
many tears leaving that place last August and what they must have been thinking
during that whole time. I think about
Abigail and DK—DK so strong that he said he had to check out City of Refuge
before agreeing to move in with us. I
see so many changes in them, so much good that has come of our guardianship of
them, and I see so much promise in what they could do in this country—when they
finally have a voice to speak up.
As I looked around at the scenery before me, it was unlike
anything I’d seen before. Lalonya is
surrounded by salt fields and lagoons.
The salt fields are places where ocean water has been pumped in, the sun
dries it out and hired workers go out to the fields to harvest the salt into
large piles, where they bag it and sell it.
Piles of salt were everywhere…some pure white like piles of snow…others
covered in the dusty sand of the ocean nearby…and some covered with branches
sewn together to prevent it from blowing away.
You could see the workers out in the fields…no telling how old they
were, but I can guarantee that there are children working in those fields.
The lagoons were just as interesting…a mixture of fresh and
salt water, the lagoons are places for small tilapia fish to reside. The lagoons are shallow waters, some only
reaching ankle deep, while other places are probably waist high. Groups of children were gathered out in the
waters with large metal bowls. They step
on the small tilapia fish with their toes and pull them up and put them in the
bowls. They stand there forever just marching
up and down on these fish and putting them in their bowls. Out of all the people we saw in the lagoons,
only ONE was an adult. A fishing trade
entirely run by children.
When we arrived in the first village, our community entry
begins with meeting with the village chief.
There are all sorts of rules that govern meeting with the chief. First of all, you always have to greet in a
certain way, which I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it because it’s a
call and response type of greeting in the local language! You also have to be careful not to cross your
legs (especially girls), have to only gesture with your right hand (otherwise
you are being offensive), need to shake hands from right to left (or is it left
to right…I never can remember!).
After that, we discuss what we do and talk to the chief
about the laws that govern human trafficking and child labour in this country
(it was made illegal in 2005, not that it is actually prosecuted very often,
but it is there!). Finally, we find out
what the chief knows about the situation in his own community, if anyone had
sent their children to the lakeside for payment, and discuss the importance of
education for children—that children should have the freedom to BE CHILDREN and
not have to do the work of an adult at an early age.
The first chief that we met with was a younger guy. Usually chiefs are quite old, so I was
surprised when the chief came to the door.
We followed our usual protocol for community entry and when we got
talking about if any families send their children away, the chief was adamant that
they hadn’t. But, he made sure to let us
know that HE himself, sends his own children away to be shepherds (those that
wander with the cows) until they are 14 and then he sends them to school. We really got after the chief about that
situation. We come to them and talk
about the importance of education, and the chief himself sends his own children
away to wander around with the cows.
They are practically adults by the time he sends them to school, which
leads to all kinds of problems (early pregnancies, marriages, etc). In the end, we told the chief that we would
not provide help for his family until he showed an attempt at being an example
for his community. But, we did discover
three children from that community (even after the chief had originally said
that no one sends their children away to the lake) that had been sent away (3
girls, ages 3 years to 10 years approx.).
We were able to get names and contact information for those children so
that we might be able to locate them.
The next village we came to was completely FILLED with
children. I mean, FILLED! We saw probably three times more children
than we saw adults. And we noticed the
lack of a primary school. The whole time
I was there, I saw only ONE child in a school uniform, even though government
schools were to have started back up today.
When we sat down with this chief, he said that the biggest problem that
they had in their community was lack of education. It wasn’t that the people sent their children
away to the lakeside, but that there was only a nursery and kindergarten school
available and even though it was a government school, it was run by the
community and the lack of money kept children out of school. And it was true…the kids weren’t attending
school! But, it wasn’t because of lack
of desire to attend school (as the chief put it), but lack of putting their “money
where their mouth is” on the parent’s behalf.
So, we discussed future education with the chief, about coming to their
community to put together a workshop on the issue of education, and then we
gave our well-wishes and left the chief’s house.
As we were walking out of the house, we noticed three young
boys who had just brought in a load of fish to a woman who was standing outside
of her house shouting at the three boys.
Right away, we could tell that these kids were not being treated as
normal children (there are all kinds of signs to tell the difference between
slave children and a master’s child). We
discovered that one boy was living with his grandparents and that he had spent
several years on the lake and was just brought back to fish here. He was only about 10 years of age, but had
never been to school in his life. We
talked with the grandfather and found out that the boy was from his mother’s
first marriage. When she remarried and
moved down to this village, this boy was used as a slave to help the
step-father (a common practice here) so the other children could attend
school. We spoke with the step-father
and will continue to educate and negotiate with this man for the boy’s release
(whether this means that we will help get the boy to school or take him to be
here with us, it is yet to be seen).
After talking with that man, we immediately saw this young
girl, probably 8 or 9 years of age, cutting fish at a nearby house. We had seen her earlier with her bucket of
fish and went to talk with her mother.
Apparently, she works for a neighbor man collecting fish, is the
second-born of her mother, doesn’t attend school, and the mother doesn’t really
care much that she doesn’t attend. She
is also from a previous marriage, so the new father probably doesn’t see it as
important either. We spoke with the
mother and will continue to education and negotiate with her for the girl’s
release (whether this means that we will help the girl get to school or take
her to be here with us, it is yet to be seen).
And finally, we ran into three little boys on our way out of
the village who looked very mistreated (distended bellies, peeling skin from
the salt, etc). We went and met with the
grandfather who said that he was sending them to school (which might have been
partly true, but you could tell that they fished with the majority of their
time). The grandfather was very
frustrated with our line of questioning and eventually, we ended up leaving,
but we did get the children’s names and we’ll be back to check up on the boys
and make sure that the grandparents have them in school and not solely out in
the ocean fishing.
The next village we went to was Lalonya proper. It is a larger village and I suppose the “capital”
of that area. We went and met with the
chief who knew about the issues of child trafficking and labor and quickly
agreed that something needed to be done with it. He was a very wise and well-spoken man, so we
were excited to be working with such an open and honest chief. We set up a time next week to return to meet
with the families of that village. We
will do an education event and discuss what the issue of child trafficking is,
the laws that govern this issue in the country, and ways that they can be
supported to do the best for their children.
This will also give us room to identify the neediest families (perhaps
grandparents with orphaned children who have sent them away) and see what we can
do to bring them here with us and give them a better chance at a brighter future.
The same thing happened in the next village, Goi. We wanted to visit the chief there because we’d
heard that the grandmother of the first children that we had talked about in
our first village that morning, was in Goi.
She knew where she had them taken, so we wanted to check in with her and
see what we could do to bring the children back. We also heard news of an infant who was
delivered several weeks ago by a young mentally handicapped girl in the
community. The baby, a boy I think, was
left at the hospital as the young girl wasn’t able to breastfeed. They’re unsure of what will happen next for
the baby and aren’t sure if the next of kin are able to care for him. Finally, we discussed a community education
event and we will conduct one in this village next week as well.
All in all, the community entry was very successful. We were able to identify about 8 children
that have the possibility of being rescued (and either returned to parents or
brought to live with us) and the possibility of actually dozens more.
So, it’s begun! The
floodgates have been opened and we’re ready to bring them in. Let’s see if we can get this house finished
and house parents found because I have a feeling, these kids are going to be
brought in FAST!
One more side-note that has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything in this post...usually on trips like this, I have been known to dehydrate myself so that I won't have to pee somewhere really random. Well, I didn't do that this time...and both Stacy and myself had to find some pretty random places to pee. Stacy had some kids lead her out into the bush and I had one of those three walled "bathrooms" found in most villages, expect the bathroom wall only camp up to my waist. Good thing Stacy kept them occupied! Go squatty potty!
