THE HUNGER GAMES & SHRINE SLAVERY

I've heard a lot of talk about The Hunger Games book & movie, so recently on my trip home from Ghana, I took advantage of the opportunity to watch the film on the plane.

All the way through, I kept being reminded of the situation we are facing in West Africa with ritual servitude or shrine slavery.  It has many forms and is called by many names--trokosi, fiashidi, worwokye, vaudonsi, yevesi, etc.

First, there was the devastating control of one group of people who had arbitrarily set themselves up over the others.  One of the most striking things about the film was the inhuman, callous way in which the rulers treated the others, the way in which they used them for their own amusement, disregarding the awful, devastating consequences, the suffering and senseless death which resulted.
I see those features played out today in real life in Ghana, Togo and Benin.  Priests and priestesses and shrine owners and elders set themselves up over others.  They send out spirits to hunt down and kill people.  When those same people resort to the shrines for help, they consult those same spirits they sent out to do such mischief and ask them how to stop the mischief they sent them out to do.  Surprise, surprise.  The spirits need another virgin girl to come and suffer in perpetual servitude as a sex slave of the priest who serves them. 

In the Hunger Games we see the callous, inhuman treatment of others, using them as pawn in a game for their own amusement.  In shrine slavery we see girls whipped, forced to kneel on broken glass with their arms raised high for hours, starved, forced to eat off the ground like a dog, stripped naked, forced to sleep on the bare ground stacked in like logs, cut with a razor, denied education and human companionship.  In the Hunger Games we see an MC laugh about every difficulty the victims face.  In shrine slavery we meet priests who repeatedly have sex with these young girls without ever managing to show them one shred of affection.
In the Hunger Games we see a deference to an ancient tradition that could not be questioned just because it was a tradition.  In modern-day West Africa, shrine slavery survives for that very reason.  Although it is illegal in Ghana, the government makes no attempt to enforce the law because it is an ancient tradition.  The Afrikania "Mission" brazenly argues that it should not be challenged because it is their tradition in Ghana.  (Sometimes.  At other times it argues that it is a dying practice and at other times Afrikania denies that it exists.)  But when it is upheld, it is always upheld on the basis of tradition.  Just like the Hunger Games.

The tradition itself is utterly destructive, but this is made palatable by garish costumes and empty, raucous laughter.  So the tradition of ritual servitude is made palatable by traditional costumes or royalty under giant umbrellas, pompous parades and annual festivals that rake in tourist dollars.

The tradition is sadly accepted by the masses.  It's too big to challenge.  The best one can do is to heroically deny the rulers their "winner" for one single year.  Ritual servitude is too widely accepted.  It is passed over too lightly.

In the Hunger Games, the annual victim  is made into a hero who supposedly saves the community for another year.  In trokosi and other forms of ritual servitude, the unfortunate victim is given as a sort of living sacrifice to the gods.  Some traditionalists extol her servitude and suffering as saving the family and the whole community from certain doom.  Yet she never chose to become a heroine or to give her life as an atonement for the sins of her ancestors or family.
In the Hunger Games, there is no evidence that anything dire will happen if the annual games are discontinued.  The need for them is solely in the minds of the rulers who profit from them.  Indeed, so very much like trokosi yevesi, vaudonsi, and other forms of ritual servitude.  The chains that bind the victims are not physical chains but they are perhaps more powerful and profound.  They are the chains of fear, the chains of control, forged tightly about their victims to the profit and pleasure those in control.
Do you think the Hunger Games are far-fetched?  Are you sure we'd never do anything like that, as intelligent, caring human beings?  Before you become too sure, I invite you to come to West Africa and let Every Child Ministries introduce you to victims of ritual servitude.  Listen to their stories.  Then watch the movie again and make your own comparison.

A Secret I've been Hiding

Yea! It's finally done. I can finally talk on my blog about the big secret I've been hiding for so long. For several years now, I've been involved with our African staff in working towards the liberation of other girls and women held in ritual servitude. Too much media attention too soon nearly destroyed our last liberation back in 2005, so this time we were very wary. It was hard--needing the prayer of the saints but not being able to advertise that need widely, writing an abolitionist blog yet unable to talk about the things I had been spending much of my time on.

This week, that liberation finally became a reality. Servants of the thunder god yeve were freed--55 of them. I won't repeat here the details you can read on ECM's website at http://www.ecmafrica.org/504365.ihtml . I'll just talk a little about my own involvement. It's really neat to realize that this could never have been achieved without the commitment, prayers, gifts, and effort of many people on both sides of the ocean. Yet it's also satisfying to realize that I had an important part in it, too. After our first four liberations, I felt an increasing desire to share the Gospel in a much deeper way with everyone involved in the shrines. I began to know the priests and priestesses and shrine devotees of different kinds as individuals, as people just like me. I began to realize that the Gospel had been presented rather superficially if at all to them, and I knew the Gospel was the power that could really free them at the most profound level. Every time I was in Ghana, I tried to make time to visit them, pushing our staff to do the same. During those visits, we were able to see the areas where we already had agreement and the areas where we needed to make the Gospel clearer. God enabled me to develop teaching guides emphasizing certain key areas.

Late last year we learned that one of the priests had accepted the Gospel so thoroughly that he WANTED to free his shrine servants. I went to Ghana recently in hopes of helping our staff through arranging all the details of a liberation. Three weeks was hard to take out of my regular duties, but I thought that with that amount of time we would be sure to be able to get the job done. I was wrong. We ran into technical difficulties with one of the area officials, and were not able to resolve the problem. At least, not in time. It was an intense time. Besides the gigantic job of interviewing 55 women in depth, we were running back and forth with reports and letters. When I left Ghana, the necessary information had been gathered to begin helping the women after the liberation, the details of the liberation were decided upon and paid for, and an overall strategy was agreed upon. It was bitterly disappointing not to be able to see it and to rejoice with the women. This was the first liberation I did not personally attend. However, the really important thing is not whether I got to see it, but that it happened.

This was Every Child Ministries' first time freeing servants of the thunder god called yeve (the shrine servants called yevesi). As far as I know, it may be the first time any were ever liberated, although FESLIM (Fetish Slaves Liberation Movement) has advertised "The thunder god next!" for many years.

Well, now I am ungagged. I can talk, and will write more about the liberation in future posts.

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!

The Day I Became an Abolitionist

The date was 1999. Boy, was I naive. I was training Sunday school teachers in Ghana with Every Child Ministries. At break time, a young man walked up and handed the members of our team t-shirts saying "Stop Trokosi Now" or something like that.

"OK, what's trokosi?" I asked.

He explained that it was a practice of slavery in his country whereby girls were given as slaves to priests in traditional shrines.

I hardly believed him. I thought slavery ended with the American Civil War. I didn't know there were slaves still today. Certainly not in a modern country like Ghana. Boy, was I naive!

When I got home, I began checking out "trokosi" on the internet. I was surprised by the amount of information I found. I made a trip back to Ghana and investigated the matter for myself. I talked with a former trokosi and with a priest who until recently kept trokosi slaves.

Since then I have talked with many former trokosi and many priests who have kept such slaves. I have learned that trokosi is only one form of slavery and that there are more people in slavery today than ever before in history.

But the day I become an abolitionist was the day I sat in Anna's* bamboo shelter and heard her story. She was 13, attending school and living a happy, normal life in the village when her parents announced that they'd be going to visit another village. It was a long walk, but as they got closer, Anna noticed that they were not really going to the place her parents had mentioned. Instead, somehow they ended up at a shrine. Her parents told her to wait outside. She was not too frightened until she overheard her parents talking with the priest and realized that she was going to be left there. Her parents left by another way without saying goodbye or giving her any kind of explanation. But then, what could they really say to explain what was about to happen?

The priest was an old man. He called her in, told her she'd be staying at the shrine, and ordered her to strip.

Now, I remember how shy and confused I was at 13. If the things that happened to Anna had happened to me, I don't think there's a chance in the world I ever could be normal once again.

Anna was paraded around naked and ashamed--a new wife of the gods. Her duties were to put white powder on the idols every morning, sweep the compound, work in the priest's fields all day, and serve him sexually at night. At least, whenever he wanted. There were lots of other trokosi, too.

"Anna, didn't you ever just tell him no?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," she said. "We all told him no."

"What happened then?" I asked.

"Then," she said, "he laid two items in front of us--a leather whip made from the dried penis of a bull, and a bunch of sharp, broken bottles. That was the only time we had a choice in the shrine," she said.

"A choice?" I asked.

"Yes, we could be whipped. When they whipped us, several of the shrine elders came in and held us down. He whipped us long and hard, but it was forbidden to cry. If you cried, you just got more punishment."

"Or?" I asked.

"Or, we could kneel on the broken bottles and hold our hands up in the air for hours." She showed me cuts on her knees from doing so.

Anna's story was horrific, but the worst thing was her face. They had carved her cheeks at the shrine to show their ownership, but worse than those scars was the pain that still showed through so clearly.

When I went back to my hotel room that night, I sat in the dark and tried to absorb it emotionally. I felt as if I had lifted just a corner off the lid of the pit of hell and looked in.

I didn't immediately see how I could get involved with all my other commitments, but I knew I had to do something. That was the day I become an abolitionist.

by Lorella Rouster
Every Child Ministries
www.ecmafrica.org