Kids wait to be reunited with relatives

The sun beats down on the small huts in the fishing village of Immuna in southern Ghana. A dozen men chant as they haul a wooden fishing boat onto the wide, sandy beach. Women in colourful dresses line one side of a dirt field, smiling and jostling each other. Men sit quietly under a canopy to the side.

About 90 children in white T-shirts sit under an orange tent on the other side of the field, listless and fidgeting. They’re as young as six, and up to 14 years old, and many are traumatized from years of hard labour and disease.

This is a family reunion of a different sort: children sent away to work in fishing communities across the country are being reunited with their relatives. Some were sold for about $200. The trafficking of children in Ghana is still not a crime.

Kwabena and his mother

Kwabena Mensah was given over to fishermen in Yeji, a town on the Volta River about 500 km away. The 14-year-old stands with his hands behind his back, eyes vacant. He’s already spent half his life working 15-hour days.

“Over there, the working conditions were terrible, even getting food to eat was a problem. It was very tough on us,” he says.

Now, the young man is being returned to the mother who let him go. Her name – Ama Eduaba – is tattooed on her arm. She’s illiterate. To make ends meet, the mother of five sells kenkey (fermented corn dough).

“I’m a widow so I’m financially disadvantaged,” she says. When my husband died, his family refused to support me. That was the reason why I gave my son away to work and bring home money. The people who came for him told me he’d return after two years. But he was gone for seven years.”

Eduaba adds that, in the end, she didn’t get any money. She’s not alone. For the past 60 years, families here have been selling their children for labour, seeking extra money to keep themselves afloat. Many people rely on fishing for income. But it’s seasonal work, so poverty is rampant.

The International Organization for Migration is orchestrating this reunion. It’s saved more than 500 children through the Yeji Trafficked Children Project. Fishermen receive training and micro-credits to help improve fishing techniques, or go into another field of work. School uniforms and supplies are given to the children, and their school fees are paid for. Families get vocational training and loans to support small businesses.

IOM’s Solomon Asare says they’re also educated about the rights of the child.

“They don’t see it being an offence or against the law, because sometimes they are taken away by family members to go and live with them. Sometimes they might be strangers but they usually know the person one way or the other,” he says. So that makes it very, very complicated to draw the line between a trafficked child as somebody who’s been abducted and a trafficked child who’s just been given away willingly by the parents.”

To make sure families don’t resell their children, officials monitor them for two years. But there are reports some trafficked children return to their former work.

Joseph Rispoli is the project’s manager. He says the same 10 to 12 communities in Ghana’s central region are sending children away. Child trafficking, he says, won’t stop until they figure out why that is.

“We have an idea of the root causes – the push and pull factor – but we don’t have any credible or accurate estimates of the magnitude of child trafficking in Ghana in any sector. We’d like to get it in all sectors by next year so that it can culminate in a national plan of action.”

Mothers waiting for their children

Meanwhile, local police officers are stepping in to protect the community’s children. They’ve imposed a curfew: no one under 18 can go out after 8 p.m. District crime officer Patrick Yeboah says police are now also arresting men who impregnate girls under the age of 12. He says it encourages child trafficking.

“She wouldn’t go to school anymore, she would stay at home. She wouldn’t take care of her child, or what she’d do is sell the baby into this slavery. We are doing this to deter them from so doing,” he says, punching his hand for emphasis.

The Child Trafficking Bill is expected to become law this year. Yeboah says it will make his job easier. Then, he won’t just be slapping the wrists of people guilty of buying and selling children – he’ll be arresting them.

Back at the ceremony, an IOM official calls out the names of the children, then their relatives. Kwabena Mensah’s name is called out: once, twice. He stands up and saunters over to receive his plastic package of school supplies. His grinning mother embraces him for the requisite photo. He admits he’s not so sure about this new life.

“The hardship I experienced was so great. I’m glad to be back home, but I don’t know much about my mother since I haven’t lived with her most of my life. So, we’ll just see how it goes,” he says.

The young man looks at the white waves crashing onto the shore. If nothing else, he’s determined to break from the past seven years on the water. He wants to study to become … a pilot.

Colleen Ross is a national news producer for CBC Radio in Toronto. She lived in Ghana in 2005, working with Journalists for Human Rights and freelancing for the CBC and BBC. She has an M.A. in both English Literature and Journalism, winning a scholarship to CBC Newsworld. Colleen is trilingual, and taught at a German university before entering journalism. She is originally from Fruitvale, B.C.

Photography credits: Emilee Irwin (top), CBC news (all other photos)