A contemporary leap at childhood: Ghana’s secure home for trafficking survivors

Eight-year-old Charity by no means selected to be a house assist. Who would? No college, unrelenting work, minimal meals and 0 pay. Plus, common beatings from her sadistic boss.

The selection was her father’s. A contact advised him {that a} lady on Ghana’s Lake Volta was on the lookout for an additional pair of palms round the home. Charity doesn’t know if he bought paid. She simply is aware of someday that somebody got here to take her and her youthful sister away. Neither have seen their dad and mom since.

“All day we spent washing and cleansing. Typically we’d take meals to her husband who fished on the lake,” Charity remembers. “Something we did mistaken, she’d cane us. If she was actually aggravated, she’d put floor ginger in our bottoms.”

Charity and her sister are amongst 1000’s of kids throughout Ghana who’re trafficked yearly into pressured labour or pushed into abusive work by their dad and mom or guardians. The issue is pervasive throughout the financial system, however notably endemic in labour-intensive sectors resembling farming, mining and fishing.

On the route of the issue is poverty, says Rosemary Afedzie, coordinator at a secure home for rescued youngsters run by the Ghanaian charity Difficult Heights. “The traffickers and middlemen principally deceive the dad and mom by giving them false guarantees of a luxurious life for his or her youngsters, and since they’re poor, they’re simply satisfied,”she explains. “In different instances, they’re in debt bondage and hand over their youngsters to repay their money owed.”

Drawing on tipoffs from members of the group, Difficult Heights identifies youngsters who’re trapped in abusive work conditions and, along with the police and different authorities, coordinates rescue missions

“Typically the slave masters don’t need to surrender the kids, however usually after they see our males in uniform and with arms, they’re scared and provides them over,” says William Ayaregah, head of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service. A lot of the 81 youngsters at the moment within the dwelling, which is situated in a spacious, unmarked compound close to a rural city about three hours’ drive west of the capital Accra, had been collected from fishing communities round Lake Volta in south-central Ghana.

Once they arrive, they’re usually very traumatised and withdrawn, explains Afedzie, who, like a Ghanaian Pied Piper, at all times has half a dozen youngsters clinging to her skirt or holding her hand. She’s identified affectionately as ‘Madam Panyin’, from the phrase for ‘elder’ within the native Fante language.

All the kids have an grownup caregiver assigned to them who we seek advice from as ‘moms’ and ‘fathers’ of the home. It’s essential for them to have this sense of being a part of a household once more

With help from the house’s staff of eight social employees and counsellors, the rescued youngsters progressively discover the boldness to open up and begin speaking about their experiences. That’s the place the therapeutic begins, Afedzie explains.

It may well make for exhausting listening, she admits. She by no means cries in entrance of the kids, however readily admits to going to her room, shutting the door and letting the tears stream. “However then seeing them smile after a couple of weeks – nicely, that simply makes me so comfortable and motivates me to push on.”

Medical checks are one other precedence. The overwhelming majority of kids arrive with scabies or different pores and skin ailments: the results of persistently poor hygiene. Rotten enamel, ear infections and blurred imaginative and prescient are additionally frequent complaints. With out exception, all are malnourished.

The house, which is constructed round a big central courtyard with tall dormitory blocks on both aspect, is provided with a small sick bay for check-ups and checks. Some want therapy for sexually transmitted ailments, Afedzie explains. It’s not unknown for women to reach pregnant both.

Even so, Madam Panyin seems to be proper: it’s not lengthy earlier than smiles reappear. Separated from visitors and close by neighbours, the prevailing sound is that of kids laughing at cartoons within the upstairs TV room or operating round within the courtyard.

An enormous poster throughout one full wall of the administrator’s offce captures the overall pleasure of the place. It exhibits dozens of images of grinning youngsters in good college uniforms, some chatting away on the dinner desk (“jollof rice is their favorite”), some at their desks in one of many half dozen school rooms, and, in a couple of fortunate instances, some amassing presents from a bushy-bearded Santa Claus throughout a Christmas get together.

“All the kids have an grownup caregiver assigned to them who we seek advice from as ‘moms’ and ‘fathers’ of the home,” Afedzie explains. “It’s essential for them to have this sense of being a part of a household once more.”

It’s not all plain crusing. Some take longer than others to settle in. Fights escape every so often. To show the kids that “palms will not be for hitting”, they’re inspired to attract and do hand-printing. The anecdotal proof appears optimistic: blotched palms and fingers in brilliant colors adorn nearly each wall.

Separated from visitors and close by neighbours, the prevailing sound is that of kids laughing or operating round within the courtyard

When occasions are robust, Mohammed – a cheerful 12-year-old – thinks of his grandmother. At an early age, he was put to work by his personal father on the household fishing boat. His granny is the one fond reminiscence he has from an in any other case grim and violent childhood. “Along with her,” he says matter-of-factly, “I really feel secure.”

However the day will come when Mohammed wants to maneuver on. The identical is true for the greater than 1,800 youngsters who’ve handed by way of the centre because it was arrange in 2012. Even when they wished the kids to remain, assets forestall it: the house prices round US$500,000 (£400,000) a yr to run and Difficult Heights is fully funded by donors.

However maintaining them there’s not the target anyway. As soon as the kids are thought of rehabilitated, which might take anyplace from six months to 2 years, the thought is to resettle them again into the group. The coverage is rooted within the story of the charity’s personal founder, James Kofi Annan. Himself a toddler slave on Lake Volta, Annan was trafficked as a six-year-old and spent the following seven working in distant fishing communities across the lake. Three of the 5 youngsters who had been trafficked with him by no means lived to inform their story.

However Annan did. After lastly escaping aged 13, he had a single purpose: to return dwelling and get an training. Initially, he taught himself to learn and write from pre-school books, earlier than occurring to high school after which ultimately to school.

After graduating with a grasp’s diploma, he landed a job at Barclay’s Financial institution of Ghana, however gave it as much as arrange Difficult Heights. Since then, he’s devoted himself to serving to survivors like himself, choosing up quite a few worldwide awards for his anti-trafficking efforts within the course of.

As for the reintegration of the centre’s present-day expenses, the perfect is for them to return to their dad and mom, Afedzie explains. If that’s not doable, both as a result of they will’t be situated or as a result of the dangers of re-abuse are too excessive, efforts are made to put them with a relative or household good friend. Failing that, Difficult Heights works with the related state businesses to search out adopted houses for them.

For now, the long run for Mohammed is unsure. His grandmother is already taking care of two of his youthful siblings and is judged to be too previous to have a full of life pre-teen in her care. He’s philosophical: wherever he finally ends up, he causes, it will possibly’t be worse than returning to the house he grew up in.

And his hopes for when he’s older? “I’d prefer to earn a lot of cash,” he says. “That approach, I may help different youngsters who face hardships.

Pictures: Difficult Heights