I spent last week in the capital city of Lome attempting to meet with NGOs working on the issue of child trafficking in Togo. I was able to meet with a person from UNICEF, but it was difficult to set up meetings with other NGOs. From this meeting I learned that with the help of UNICEF, the Togolese government has been able to reform many of its laws concerning childs rights and trafficking but the laws are not being realized on the ground. Hardly anyone I talked to in the "sending" village of Farende even knew there were laws criminalizing child trafficking. So, it seems that some stuff is being done on the bureaucratic level but almost nothing in the villages most affected. This, however, is difficult in itself since the biggest reason for kids leaving the villages is poverty and the desire to gain money or goods for labor. These cannot be provided for young people in subsistence villages where commerce and development is difficult to implement without money and also without electricity. This week I also intervied tzo young men who had left to work in Nigeria when they were 18-20 and then brought kids over themselves. One of the men stopped leaving the village and is completely against this migrant labor and said he didnt gain anything from the experience. The other man is still trafficking youths over the border to Nigeria where he owns his own plot of land. He has the youths work two jobs - one on his farm to pay back the "debt" of smuggling them over the border and the other as the actual job to earn money or a motorcycle. He had a very different and more positive opinion on the practice although his responses might have been more biased since he still brings kids to Nigeria from the village.

So far its been really interesting talking to people, but I still have so many more interviews to conduct and different types of people to discuss this with. Ive started thinking about what could be done to prevent young people from leaving the village, but its difficult since the root fo the problem seems to be poverty, but theres no cash/money to be earned by anyone in the village either. hmmm...

week 1

Hi all!

So for the past week I have been settling in on top of a mountain in northern Togo. The mountain is great! On Sunday I read on these rocks that are positioned like a lounge chair with a really nice cross breeze - amazing. The food here is really good. The sauces are awesome and everything is made from ingredients either cultivated by the family or from the plants nearby. Ive grown to love rice and beans but still getting used to the sorghum pate that you eat with your hands and then dip in the sauce. I suppose its an acquired taste.

Yesterday along with my translator/assistant/advisor Jespere I interviewed several people in the valley village of Farende about child trafficking in the area. I spoke with 2 grandparents, the host father of Rui (another Duke student), a shop owner, and two others in the market. All were vehemently opposed to the trafficking since it leaves their family shorthanded when their livelihood depends on subsistence farming. If the kids return from Nigeria, etc they often come back only with a menial amount of money (for school fees) or materialistic and thus useless goods likes videos, tvs, motorcycles, etc. Even if they could be harnessed to create an income, it would take to long to turn that around for it to be meaningful to the family. The people I interviewed were older (parent-aged) and seemed more traditional and so the kids breaking their ties and allegiances to the family was very hurtful to them. Sometimes kids (who leave around ages 14-15) return with mills. These types of goods that could benefit the family and the entire village immediately received a mixture of reactions - people did not want to accept the children secretly leaving the village but they did not want to deny the huge benefits of a local mill. One person said that if the child left, returned with something beneficial, and then stayed in the village then that was sort of okay but if the child kept leaving for Nigeria then that was detrimental. I was also surprised by the number of girls who left the village for housekeeping jobs both internationally and domestically, and by the impact trafficking has had concerning the spread of disease namely HIV in the village.

The main response for the cause of the trafficking was poverty. Everyone so far believes that if parents were better able to support their children in the education, health, etc that the kids would stay in the village and help their families. One person even suggested family planning as a way to help prevent trafficking, which I think is incredibly interesting. He said that if families had less kids, then they would have more money to keep them in school, the kids would then be better educated and be able to bring modernization (like tractors) back to the family, which would in turn improve their life styles and harvest returns. This is interesting considering that in school when we learn about the "demographic transition," it is often inferred that agricultural lifestyles are a reason for having more children (more laborers) - but what this man was saying is that the families could do without all of the kids working on the farm and that what is needed is better family planning access and education.

This week I am back in the south in the capital city Lomé to speak with NGOs about what they are doing concerning the issue.

Arrived in Togo!

I arrived safely in Togo on Tuesday! I am currently staying in the north in the village (Kuwde) where I will be spending the majority of my time. I knew that it would be remote where I am staying and I had prepared myself for or rather expected differences in lifestyle (eg no running water or electricity, mud brick huts/buildings) but I am still amazed at how functional, clean, and "modern" the housing is considering when Americans think of mud huts its not usually in a positive light... The village is situated on top of a mountain ridge the overlooks this huge plain the view is beautiful, and the weather is great its hot but with a nice breeze. I already got slightly sunburned but no surprised there...

At lunch today I met a guy named Kojo who works with a childs rights NGO in a nearby city and so I will be able to visit his NGO and orphanage and one of the border towns that all the trafficked kids pass through. Exciting!

Sorry I dont have a lot of time but better/more interesting (hopefully) posts to come!

Pre-Departure

For those interested, here is the abstract of my project to get an idea of what exactly I will be attempting to accomplish... 

Abstract:

This research project will examine the international trafficking of children from the village of Kuwdé in northern Togo to Nigeria and its health implications, and will be used to organize a community-based prevention program. Trafficking of children from the northern villages is a growing health and human rights concern, as it is grounded in exploitation, poverty, and the loss of income from disease. Although NGOs and human rights organizations have already worked with community leaders, parents, and teachers to fight trafficking, the children themselves have not been targeted by these efforts. Through interviews and participant observation, the research project will approach this pressing issue by exploring what factors allow for the presence of trafficking and the participation by the children, and how the children view their health in relationship to trafficking. The research will then be presented to the community, and used in a collaboration to create trafficking prevention workshops for vulnerable children.