Preparing for Urbana, Recruiting for Slave Project

We have been very busy preparing to leave the day after Christmas for the Urbana Student Missions Convention in St. Louis. One of our big goals is to recruit help for our African anti-slavery initiative. We are looking for two women who can partner with our African staff women in rehabilitating and discipling former trokosi slaves. We can also use someone who could organize vocational opportunities as part of that rehabilitation, a school director and a director for our children's home where we welcome children of former trokosi who need a safe, loving place to stay for any length of time.

These needs are urgent. Would you pray with us that God would bring us the right people?

Ghana Staff Training on Child Trafficking

I just returned from Ghana where one of my jobs was to train all our staff on issues related to child trafficking. As part of the workshop, the staff compiled a list of all trafficking situations they were aware of in each of their areas. It was a challenging list, indeed. We also role-played asking questions to investigate possible cases of trafficking. Now they have all been charged with watching for and reporting all possible incidents of child trafficking. Our organization, Every Child Ministries, hopes to get more involved and to help some of these children. Please pray that the staff will remember and actively use all they have learned.

Preparing for Staff Training on Trafficking, Slavery

As my trip to Uganda nears (only 3 days left), I have put the finishing touches on our first staff training on child trafficking and modern-day slavery for all staff & missionaries of Every Child Minstries in Uganda. In two days I'm going to try to give our team a synopsis of what I've learned and experienced on the topic. Most important, we will be discussing and planning together what ECM as an organization can contribute to the fight against slavery. I'm already aware of several situations in Uganda and neighboring countries that need consideration. Please pray with us that God will guide our thoughts and our plans.

Sold 2-Year Old Daughter--For What?

I have committed myself to try to track all the news about child trafficking/child slavery in Africa or involving Africans. It helps me understand the pattern of things. (You can see my postings on www.slaverymap.org. Click on the flag and it tells you the story. My pen name on slavery map is musoniki, which means "writer" in the African Kikongo language.

Day before yesterday, I read about a man in Zambia who tried to sell his two year old daughter. With the money from the deal, he hoped to move to the city to start a new life.

Fortunately, he tried to sell her to the wrong person. He was arrested for attempted child trafficking. Yea for somebody.

But his story just shows how short-sighted this all is. What did he think someone would do with his baby girl? She wasn't going to clean houses for awhile. She wasn't going to braid hair, like the girls I learned about yesterday. There are a few extreme pedophiles who might use a two year old for sexual purposes. I've heard of that. But in Africa, she would more likely become a human sacrifice or be dismembered for her body parts. It's big business right now, and I've heard African police talk about how it is growing even as other crimes are shrinking. There are those who murder children and try to sell their organs to those needing transplants. There are probably even more who use various parts to create what they believe are very powerful magic charms, having come from someone who is young, virginal, and innocent. The father knows this. He didn't think about this? He knew, but he didn't care? A new life for himself in the city seemed more important to him? How did he think he would enjoy his new life, knowing that he had sold his baby for such purposes? The person who turned him in saved not only the child, but also the man from a life of terrible guilt and remorse. A prison term is nothing compared to the condemnation his own conscience would surely have brought him.

This man's problem shows up problems I see over and over in my work in fighting slavery: the devaluation of human life, especially the lives of children, and the extreme emphasis on the here-and-now, with very little if any thought to the future. On these two points my Christian faith helps me so much. Soon after I became a Christian, I realized that since we were created in God's image, we are all pretty valuable in God's sight. Then as a Christian I am able to withstand hardships in the present knowing that there is a glorious future ahead. May God help this poor man in Zambia and his precious baby. May he come to see children as a precious gift from God. May he seek God's help for his present troubles, for my God says that all who seek Him, find Him. Jesus, help him. Amen.

Voodoo used to enslave girls & justify it

Yesterday a Togolese woman residing legally in the United States, Akouavi Kpade Afolabi , was found guilty on October 14 on 22 counts of human trafficking and obtaining US visas by fraud. She had been a well-to-do textile merchant in Lome, and a traditional or voodoo worshiper. Her name Afolabi, which is common in Nigeria, means "coming into wealth suddenly". But the wealth she gained by her trade in textiles was not enough for her. She took girls into her home in Togo and gained control over their lives. Parents even sent their precious young teenage daughters to her when she promised them a better life in America. They should have known something was wrong when they were forced to swear loyalty to her using voodoo curses. If they did not obey her, they would go mad. So she caused them to think. It's a ploy I've heard over and over in regard to the trokosi slaves of Ghana. In traditional families, these kinds of curses are the way things are done. So the girls accepted them. They were accustomed to seeing Afolabi pray and offer chicken sacrifices in front of the stone voodoo idol in her home.

They should have known something was wrong when Afolabi had to stage a fake wedding for one of them in order to get a visa to America. For sure, these uneducated girls did not understand American law, but at least one should have known something was fishy. But the pull of a new life in America was so strong, and her parents were counting on her to send money home from her earnings.

Once the girls got to America, they never got any earnings. They worked hard--14 hour days, six days a week, braiding hair in Afolabi's salons. Occasionally Afolabi sent some money home to some families. Best to keep them thinking everything was OK. The girls themselves never got any salary at all. Even the smallest tips given by customers were confiscated by the greedy trafficker.

As is the case with so many trafficking victims, the girls had their passports and personal documents confiscated. They were denied the right to call home or to call friends or anyone. They had to come right back to their room after work. If they didn't, or if they asked for their salaries or any money at all, Afolabi's husband Lassissi would beat them. He even beat the head of one of the girls against a table. That didn't stop him and their son, Dereck Hounakey, from raping the girls, nor did the fact that they were nearly all under the legal age of consent, ranging from 10 to 19 years.

Voodoo was used not only to enslave the girls, but also raised by her lawyer as a justification for her actions. He claimed that what Afolabi had done was admirable, saving the girls from poverty. Only a West African custom. Done all the time in Togo and Ghana, where the girls were from. It's OK, because it's her tradition.

Hmm. Now, where have I heard that argument before? I know! Isn't that the same argument the Afrikania Mission uses to justify trokosi slavery in Ghana? If it's their tradition, it's sacred, unquestionable, unchallengable.

Hogwash. Slavery was our (American) tradition. I'm glad we got rid of it. Every culture has traditions that need to change.

Hogwash. That's what the jury said in Newark, New Jersey. They quickly returned a unanimous verdict of guilty on all 22 counts of human trafficking.

And now some of the girls parents are upset, blaming their daughters for "telling" on their traffickers. Why? The pittance that Afolabi sent them on occasion, a very small percentage of what she stole from their daughters, I'm sure. Never mind that their daughters work without pay. Never mind that they have no life of their own. Never mind that they are beaten, have their heads bashed on tables. Never mind that they are raped. Just send us our little pittance.
Hogvomit.

Disgusting News about Mitterand - Are we really civilized after all?

I just read disgusting news on one of the abolitionist sites I follow. France's now culture minister Mitterand published a book a few years back. Only now is he getting heat for it.

Here are some quotes from his aptly titled 2005 book The Bad Life,
"I got into the habit of paying for boys, [despite knowing] the sordid details of this traffic. ... All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excited me enormously... the abundance of very attractive and immediately available young boys put me in a state of desire."

Say what? Mitterand not only openly admits (or boasts) that he had sex with boys in Thailand, but he was "excited" and "put...in a state of desire" by the fact that these were slave children? It did not bother him that he was so abusing other human beings, and vulnerable children at that?

Disgusting. Utterly, abjectly disgusting. Are we really civilized after all? Have we really become so depraved that our leaders can be excited and put into a state of desire by the availability of sex with slave children?

Why is such a man still in any position of leadership in France? Shameful. Digusting. Revolting.
God help us.

Investigating modern-day slavery cases-Looking Deeper

Last night we took a bus and then a train called BART to Berkeley for an optional dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant. After dinner we walked about two blocks and then we stopped on the sidewalk and our leader read the first couple paragraphs of their book, NOT FOR SALE. It said that the Not for Sale movement started when one of their leaders read in the newspaper that their favorite Indian restaurant was the center of a human trafficking operation that had brought in 500 slaves from India. The cooks and servers who had been serving their food were all slaves. We looked across the street and there the restaurant was. It was closed on Monday evenings, but still in operation. The owner, a wealthy man who owns multiple apartment complexes & other buildings in Berkeley, got off on a plea bargain for a lesser charge and is still in business.

The crime came to light when one of the girls, who were all kept locked up in one of the owner's apartment buildings, died from a gas leak in the building. They rolled her body up in a carpet and were just about to load it into a van when the police happened by and noticed suspicious activity. The message was one we've heard over and over in just these first two days: Ask more questions. Look deeper. Think about what you are seeing. It could save someone's life.

Some of the leaders in NFS told about how they were seeing slavery right under their noses but not seeing it because they didn't yet have eyes to see it. I thought about how I saw the market boys in Congo for years before I realized that after dark, they crawl under those outdoor stalls and go to sleep. I didn't know they were street children. Yes, Lord, give me eyes to see. I thought of how many people write that they traveled through the Volta Region in Ghana and didn't see any such thing as trokosi slaves. Yes, Lord, give them eyes to see.

The encouraging part of the Indian slaves story is that Dave Batstone didn't just say "Imagine that. We were being served by slaves," and look the other way. For him it was a wake up call that lead him into the heart of the abolitionist movement. For me, it the wake up call was when a young man walked up to me during a break in my very first Christian ed seminars in Ghana in 1999 and handed me a T shirt that said, "Stop Trokosi". When he told me that trokosi was a form of modern-day slavery in his country, I was shocked. I began to investigate, and what I heard and saw shocked me so much that I once described the experience as lifting up the lid of hell itself to peer inside a little.

So here I am. This morning we learned how to use the internet and public records to investigate cases of human trafficking or modern day slavery. We had an assignment to find and document one case in our area. Tomorrow we will discuss them and then put them up on SlaveMap.com. Some people had a hard time, but rather quickly I picked up on the case of Dick Drost, former owner of Naked City near Roselawn, IN & originator of Miss Nude Teeny Bopper Universe Pageant. It was disgusting and infuriating reading about the case. He had a long string of charges against him at least three times, but got off through a plea bargain on one of the least of the charges. He went to CA and opened the same kind of place, and he was clearly guilty of human trafficking. He is suing the State of IN for $1Billion and New County for $50Million for violation of his human rights. His lawyer said that his prosecution was just fundamentalist Christians trying to establish their religion.
Getting off with very light sentences under plea bargains is something we are seeing a lot. What on earth are we thinking?

It was another interesting & worthwhile day at Abolitonist Investigator Academy.

Abolitionist Academy

Here I am at Abolitionist Academy in San Francisco. Our training in researching, documenting & intervening in modern-slavery starts tomorrow, but already I have enjoyed such stimulating conversation with others who are on the front lines of the abolitionist movement. My roommate works with a ministry that rescues girls in Houston, trafficked into prostitution. Another gal I've met is trying to find out what has happened to a long string of Native American girls who have disappeared along a certain highway in Canada.

I am hoping to learn from others' experiences and to go home with new ideas & skills to help us move on in our own efforts to free trokosi slaves in Ghana, Togo and Benin. We are also interested in child trafficking from the major markets in Ghana where we already have a well-established street ministry, in trafficking of children to dive for oysters in the Volta River (a practice that not infrequently results in their deaths and they get tangled in the fishing nets), and in sex/labor trafficking between Gulu, Uganda and Juba, Sudan. Lord, each child is a human life full of potential and promise, a child You love. Help us to know what to do to snatch them from those who would abuse them for their own profit and pleasure. You who came to set the captives free (Isaiah 61), do it again. In the next two weeks, let me not miss one lesson You would want to teach me. Thank You, Jesus! Amen.

Celebrating Day of the African Child

I was feeling a bit down yesterday, realizing that it was the Day of the African Child and we had been so taken up with the David Lubaale issue that we had not arranged any big celebration.

But as I thought about it, the Lord showed me that it was OK. Every Child Ministries has always been far more about steady, faithful commitment to African children over the long haul than it has been about big events.

It was the Day of the African Child. Our Gayaza sponsorship club met as usual in the garage of our National Ministry Center here in Uganda. In the afternoon, boys met for soccer practice. In Congo, orphans met for Bible teaching and a meal. Sunday school teachers prepared for their lessons in over 2300 churches. In Ghana, our Haven of Hope family played on the playground--50 of them rescued from slavery, street life, and all kinds of terrible situations. Yes, Every Child Ministries DID celebrate the Day of the African child!

Day of the African Child--Slave Children Have Nothing to Celebrate

Day of the African Child. A day to Celebrate the worth of African children. A day to remember how far we have come and how far we still have to go. Many of our sponsored children from the Kamwokya slum here in Uganda where I am writing this participate today in a wonderful program--probably their first. They will sing and dance and recite and smile at officials.

But as I write, I remember those unable to celebrate. Those in ritual servitude in idol shrines in Ghana, Togo, and Benin will not be celebrating. There is nothing to celebrate in their lives. Can they celebrate hunger? Being set apart as less than human? Beatings? Rape?

In Ghana at least the practice (called trokosi there) has been outlawed since 1998. A mandatory three year prison term has been attached. Yet it continues. It continues because people choose to ignore it for the most part, or to blame it only on one tribe, as if other groups could never do anything like THAT! It continues because people let it continue.

God help us. I look forward to a REAL Day of the African Child--a day when ALL Africa's children will have something to celebrate!