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...