Household Interviews

Household Interviews

Every Tuesday I travel to Senya to conduct child trafficking interviews and today was no different. I arrived at the school around 10:00 to meet our community volunteer. After checking on the school attendance and our sponsored children, I grabbed my notebook and headed into town. It was not long before we came across a group of men playing Oware (a game similar to mancala).

No one is allowed to fish on Tuesdays which makes it a perfect time to talk to people in the village. Trying not to interrupt the game, we started talking to one of the men who was sitting on the sidelines. His name was Kwame (which means he was born on a Saturday; my name is Kwese). He was a fisherman who had lived in Senya his entire life. He had seven children of which three are still under 18 years old. Even though he had only ever completed third grade, he understood the importance of education and worked hard to pay for all of his children to go to school. He told us that he knew lots of children that were trafficked to Lake Volta and was even approached by traffickers looking to prey on his children, but was determined to keep his children in school. When asked why he did not send his children away with the trafficker, he said that he wanted them to have a better life than he had and that education was answer. He guessed that over 200 children in the village were being trafficked and he knew that poverty was the key issue.

As we were talking several of the other men began to join the conversation. Each individual had something to add. One man said that the problem was that most parents do not know what happens to the children who are trafficked to Lake Volta. Others said that it was fine for children to work, but they would not want to send their own children (although a couple of the men had children who were working).  When we asked the group of men what could be done to stop children from being trafficked, there were many good answers including scholarships, police involvement, government support, but one man was convinced it was adult education. He wanted education class on Tuesday and Sunday for the parents of the children. If the parents can learn to read and write, (which many of them cannot) they will understand the importance of education. He said that many adults cannot even read warning signs on the roads and everyone should be required to read and write. As adults become educated, they will be held in higher esteem by their peers and the entire community will begin to value education. When parents see what education can do, they will keep their children in school and out of the hands of traffickers. I was very impressed by his idea, especially because he could barely read and write. It was incredibly positive to see so many adults in the community passionate about our cause and interested in talking with us.

Unlike other weeks, (sometimes being asked to leave because parents  believe we are here to arrest them, or talking to parents who gave up their children for years only to receive less than $100) we had a second very positive interview with a mother. She had just moved to Senya from Yeji with the hope of better jobs and more work (which if you have seen the employment options in Senya, you may question her logic).  This woman had four children all of which were working in Yeji with their father before moving to Senya. They would wake up early each morning and work with their father pulling nets from 5:00-10:00. When they finished with work, they went to school from 10:00 to 2:00. Now that they are in Senya, their mother wants them to focus on their education fulltime and will try to enroll them in the local government school. It is still expensive for parents (1 cedi or $0.30), but this mother was determined to make her children finish school. When I asked what advice she would give to parents after having lived in Yeji and seen the trafficked children all around town, she said that they need to know about the conditions on the lake. She would never sell her children to the fishermen on Lake Volta. Many of the children would work on an empty stomach, not eating all day, others were bullied and beaten. She said that most of the children working came from all over Ghana, leaving their families to work from sunrise to sunset with the abusive fishermen. It was interesting listening to a parent who actually liked in Yeji and could talk about the treatment of the children first hand.

Slowly interviews are getting easier and I am better at asking the right questions to make the parents or children open up about their experiences or opinions. It is still very difficult having to work with a translator and I am sure that I only get a small amount of the full story, but slowly and surly we are building more and more information to help our report on the trafficking problem in Ghana.