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I watched them coming toward me, mouth jerking as in worked by wires, eyes open
with beggarliness, arms stretching in violent outreaching, eye milky drawing on me,
killing me with my thoughts.The view of trafficked children working on the streets,
children not yet in their teens, hawking along the busy road, how many have met
their death? How many have been exploited and abused and used?
I read about them in the foreign media, and I wondered why not in my own country are
there publications on the subject? Yet I read on the BBC website that UNICEF estimates
that human trafficking is the most lucrative trade in West Africa. Why? This discovery will
shock you when you realize the support that human trafficking enjoys at almost every
level of the Nigerian society, and more shocking is the fact that the trafficked children
were rented out with the collaboration of the victims' own immediate families, Many of the
victims are too young to understand their rights or are illegally recruited from the north or
the poorer village tribes by individuals; forced to work as hired hands and forced to work
against their will,
What does a house help mean? What is the hidden meaning behind the words, what does
a slave, mean, is there any difference between the two, and maybe we are ignorant of
these terms but are we really? Are we really ignorant about our past, is the government
blind to the plight of these children being taken into 'slavery' or when their immediate
parents, aunts and uncles were being tricked into taking a loan, a loan that may tie them
into the bondage of slavery forever children work in exploitative and/or dangerous
conditions.
According to the United Nations census (UNICEF ) there are no fewer that 15 million
children working in exploitative labor in Nigeria, but they are wrong, as an African and a
traveling nomad I can paint a bigger picture of the "21st century slave trade."
I had my first intimate sexual encounter when I was but seven years old with a house help
not yet in her teens. Children not yet in their teens are forced to learn about sex or to
work in the sex industry.
As the writer in me grows, so does the knowledge grow that this trade will continue and as
it continues , it will continue to use new terms even though it is illegal under international
law. Trafficking is the fastest growing form of slavery in the third world nation today, yet
protection for the victims of this crime is never there.
Written by Urdeen
a deaf poet from Africa
The Frontiers of Fear ( On the Nigerian Ritual Killings)
By the armpit of the beautiful hills
By the pastoral realm of still waters
Lies the deity of a traditional facade
Older than the birth of Jesus Christ
A culture bound with no spirit rule
Dressed up lying in a coffin
Magnifies the concept of the ancient
The scheme in its entire charade
Perfectly arranged were the human head
On high pole by the vegetable garden
Weeded and adorned with flowers
The worms creeps the flies feasted
Scanning the trophy of his triumph
Where each pole that has a corpse pinned
Gracefully standing guard was the child
Carrying a skull bigger than his frame
Finding feet creeping and running
Amid the slew of many corpses
The captive ran to be captured again
Its vacant stare mimics a nation fear
Urdeen Sylvester 2004
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