Boda Bodas Part II

Butare, Rwanda September 12/2006 (a belated post)

Back in Butare to work at Radio Salus again. Most of the time I make the 30-minute journey on foot but there are times when my pack is too heavy and/or I'm simply too tired so I resort to taking a moto (Rwanda's version of boda-bodas). At least here the drivers carry an extra helmet and the distances are relatively small.

Well, today presented a new challenge. As I walked to the moto stop by the stadium I realized I was wearing a long dress -- yip, and I don't think it would have been cool to hike it up and straddle both the bike and the driver. Shit, I thought, as I beckoned a driver. Then I heard somebody behind me say "muzungu" (white person in Kinyarwanda/kiswahili). I turned. A young man was standing there complete with a broken bottle held up in his hand. Coming right at me. I wanted to run or at least turn away. Instead, I smiled. We greeted, shook hands. I relaxed except for the nagging thought in my mind of the side saddle ride I'd have to do shortly.

The bottle-wielding man beckoned a moto. I grabbed the driver's shoulders and slid my ever-widening butt onto what seemed a pathetically inadequate "seat". My feet flopped around resembling fish caugh on dry land. I grabbed a small handle at the end of the seat and began to wonder waht was going to prevent me from sliding off or worse flung off (nothing, would be the correct answer!).

I decide I wouldn't move a muscle (balance, you know) before we reached our destination. And I didn't. Well, except holding the bar as tight as I could and moving my eyeballs to glance up as we passed a huge truck with a guy in the passenger seat looking down on me with a bemused (or amused?) look on his face. And he wasn't alone. As we whizzed down the main street there were more looks -- amused, bemused, shocked, horrified. But at least, I thought, I was providing some entertainment.

A few days later when presented with the same predicament (the long dress scenario), I realized I didn't want to balance anymore. So I just hopped on, skirt hiked up (but a reasonable hike) and straddled. Now that was more like it!

Trafficked Kids

My afternoon was spent with children who'd been trafficked and just recently rescued. Yes, basically kids in servitude here in Ghana by fellow Ghanaians. I interviewed two of them but there were 25 of them who had been released and are going to be reunited with their families tomorrow. Some of these kids were as young as 5 or 6. Many of the older ones (13-15) had been in servitude since they were 5 or 6. One of the boys told me he didn't know how old he was when he was taken away (purportedly to be given the chance to go to school) but went to bring in a smaller boy and said "this is how big I was when I was taken away."

Rejoice, our housekeeper, had wanted to come with me and I'm glad she did. She too is from the Volta region where these kids were from and so was able to translate from Ewe to English. A couple of times she started crying as she translated.

The story goes like this. Many of these kids are born into poor, large families with many kids and with not enough food or enough money to put them in school. Someone will come along and say they'll take one or two of the kids and put them into school. The parents agree (sometimes they're given a small sum of money). The kid goes with the man who puts them into school for a week or so. After one week, the man takes them out of school and takes them away, forcing them to do work.

Both boys and girls are taken. The girls will be forced to cook, to collect firewood and water and various other tasks while the boys are usually forced to work in the fishing industry. Some die. Why? Because their job is to dive to the bottom of Lake Volta to untangle the nets that have gotten caught on the tree stumps in the lake. Some of the boys get eaten by crocodiles, some get stuck in the sucking mud and can't get up for air. Others, like Kwame's brother James, just disappeared until his dead, bloated body showed up 3 days later.

Kwame is one of the boys that I interviewed. He's 15. He's the one who said he had no idea of how old he was when he was taken from his family but showed me by the size of another young boy. I'm guessing he was around 6 or 7 when he was taken. He hasn't seen his family in 8 years. But he'll get to see them for the first time in 8 years tomorrow.

These 25 kids were rescued by an organization called APPLE several weeks ago. They spend a few weeks at the Social Welfare Center before they're reunited with their families.

I think one of the things that astounded me the most was that Kwame just spoke so easily about the whole ordeal. I mean 8 years of his life as a slave. His childhood gone forever. Yet he is hopeful about he future. He wants to be a carpenter. And he wants to make sure that no other kid should have to endure what he did.