Posted on 06/24/2005 7:05:01 PM PDT by wagglebee
COTONOU, Benin (Reuters) - When she was 8, Rachelle Akawe's aunt sent her from Benin to work as a domestic servant in Niger. After 10 years, Akawe finally returned home, her childhood gone and her dreams in tatters.
"I wanted to be a lawyer. Now at 26, I am learning to read and write," she said. "When you are a child slave, you do not have a choice ... you always feel abandoned ... you have no future. It stays with you for the rest of your life."
Akawe's tale is unfortunately common in Benin, a tiny West African nation with a huge child labor problem fueled by poverty and tradition in a land where childhood is short and the average person can expect to live just 50 years.
But Akawe's lost childhood may yet serve a purpose -- her story is told in a new documentary produced by local director Christiane Chabi Kao and destined to be shown at schools, markets and on state television.
"Through my documentary, I am trying to understand why this happens ... in our country," Chabi Kao said.
The problem is not confined to Benin -- a slim, poor country stretching from the Gulf of Guinea to the barren border of Niger and best known as the ancestral cradle of voodoo.
The U.N. children's agency UNICEF estimates there are some 246 million child laborers around the world, with 70 percent working in hazardous conditions. It says at least 200,000 children are trafficked in West and Central Africa each year.
Children wield machetes on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, chisel rocks in granite quarries in Nigeria, dig for diamonds in mines in Sierra Leone and sweep and clean homes in Gabon.
Anifath Zoukanerou, a 10 year old, was sold to a stranger in Benin's main city Cotonou by her elder sister for 10,000 CFA francs ($19) two years ago. She said she was beaten and given little to eat by her employer.
"I want to tell my sister that it is not good to sell children, but I forgive her for what she did," she said, tears slipping lightly over the tribal scarring on her thin cheeks.
"PLACED CHILDREN"
Benin's problem with child labor is complicated by a decades-old tradition rooted in economic necessity in a land where 60 percent of adults are illiterate and just over half of children attend primary school.
Poor parents scraping a living in remote villages often send their children to relatives in the city. Some see it as an opportunity. The less naive know their children may become near-slaves but they feel they have no choice.
"The placing of children is in the tradition. It is a matter of culture and confidence," Chabi Kao said.
The children are known as Vidomegon, a word from the Fon language that means placed children. Aid workers say the practice has become perverted and now fuels trafficking.
The children are often removed from their families by relatives who promise to educate them with their own offspring.
Instead many are sold on to traffickers or placed directly in other families in exchange for cash. The children's paltry wages go directly to the relative, making them near-slaves.
Chabi Kao hopes her documentary "Les Enfants Esclaves" (Child Slaves) will help explain why the practice must stop.
"This film aims to inform my countrymen and others by showing them the lives of these children," she said.
Akawe, dressed in a green dress with her hair tightly plaited and caught in a chignon, sat on a cotton cushion in the offices of the agency producing Chabi Kao's film and told her story.
At 6, she was sent to work with her aunt in northern Benin. She swept the yard and washed plates while her cousins were at school. She also worked with her aunt in the fields. At 8, she was sent to neighboring Niger.
"I was sent to around 15 families by my aunt. Everywhere it was the same. I was treated differently to other children in the family," she said.
SLAVERY LEGACY
Akawe was relatively lucky. Children who are trafficked are often beaten, starved or sexually abused.
Outsiders might find it hard to understand how parents could expose their children to such risks. The father of 10-year-old Clementine, featured in Chabi Kao's film, tries to explain.
"I let her go because for me, in changing her environment, she would learn more," he said. Clementine left her employer after she was beaten for spending 200 CFA francs (40 cents) on food.
Some find the parallels between the ingrained child labor tradition and Benin's pre-colonial history disturbing.
In the 19th century, the kingdom of Dahomey, which covered much of Benin, was dubbed the "Slave Coast" by European powers who set up trading posts there and shipped captives to the Americas, mainly Brazil and the Caribbean, particularly Haiti.
"I am upset to see a country which endured slavery start again with slavery. It's as though it was never abolished," said Sister Genevieve, a French member of the Salesian order which runs a refuge center for mistreated girls in Cotonou.
Zoukanerou was among the scores of girls taking refuge at the center, which provides schooling and accommodation for girls who have escaped from servitude or left their employers.
Chabi Kao hopes informing people through her film will persuade parents not to send their children away. Aid agencies like UNICEF say another key measure is ensuring the necessary laws are in place to punish traffickers.
That is not yet the case in Benin and while Zoukanerou might pardon her sister for selling her, others are less forgiving.
Jojo Adigbonon, a frizzy-haired 11-year-old wearing a T-shirt and jean skirt, had no doubt the aunt who took her to Gabon to work five years ago should be punished.
"I want my aunt to go to prison," she said. ($1=541.3 Cfa Francs)
Yet the UN still doesn't actually plan to DO ANYTHING about this tragedy.
Yes. They plan to blame the US.
Looks like 70% may condone slavery.
"indigenous beliefs 50%, Christian 30%, Muslim 20%" (CIA)
Actually, the UN will settle for a hundred million dollars or so, to further "study" the matter. After they are through "studying," they will determine that the situation is primarily due to the fact that the US has too much money, so we will need to spend another hundred million or so a year so the UN can "monitor" the situation.
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