southworld

You must pay for all the evil you have done to me", Joy repeats relentlessly, with tears in her eyes. The same phrase, overflowing from the swamp of suffering, fear, anger and pain that goes into it. She was repatriated to Lagos, Nigeria. She accepted this solution because she had no other choice. Joy went from Brescia to Rome, where she was hosted by the Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles, and welcomed by the Caritas listening centre. She also received a residence permit, yet she realized she had no future in Italy.

Erma Marinelli, a Sister who followed her for months at Caritas in Rome, is happy to meet her again in Lagos. "When she came to us, she made everyone crazy. She would scream and fall in a tantrum. We sent her to a psychologist. But she repeated: ‘I'm not crazy. You must pay for all the evil made to me’. We thought she had experienced violence in the street. We knew nothing of her life". Joy said she worked as a caregiver, but she soon left the job. She was hosted by nuns, but then she went to work in the streets. What really ruined her life, even more than the life on the street, was the shame that has marked her forever. Sister Erma says: "It is likely that they forced her to act in a pornographic film. Occasionally, she alluded to it, screaming obscenities in anger, a tragedy from which she has never recovered”. Before returning to Nigeria, she enquired if the family would receive her with the little money she had (1,500 Euros). They said yes, and this was a liberation for her. She changed her attitude and regained some dignity. She could return knowing that someone was waiting. But nothing will ever be enough to compensate for all the evil she suffered".
Something is surely broken also in Mary.  Beautiful, tall, wrapped in an elegant traditional dress, a sweet face, the 37 years old mother of three has spent eyes, she seems lost. She returned home four years ago, after eleven years in Italy. She left Nigeria to go to Italy to work. "I thought I was going to be a waitress or a hairdresser – she says - but .... " She does not want to talk about her life on the street. Since she returned, the parents and relatives do not want to see her. Even the eldest daughter refuses her, only the two younger children are close to her. She now works as a cleaner in a library, but lives in a confused state, in constant need of medication.
Eric Okoje, lawyer, is among the founders of Cosudow, Committee to support the dignity of women, created by Nigerian religious. Although he has been working on this subject for over a decade, he still feels anger and indignation. “Why do we allow an entire generation of our young people to be enslaved? We need to fight with all our strength this evil, but it is not easy. There is a problem of poverty, of impunity and even loss of values. When foundations are gone, one cannot build anything, and hungry persons only listen to their stomach”.
Faith comes from a poor village in Ondo State. Like many, she trusted an uncle who promised to take her to Europe. She left in a group of 85 girls and 72 boys. Travelling on land, they crossed Niger and then the Sahara Desert. They ended up in Morocco. Faith remembers: “We stayed four months in the desert and nine months in Morocco. Three of us died during the crossing of the Sahara, one died in Morocco. I wanted to go back. I know that three more have died crossing the Mediterranean”. In Morocco, they were locked up in two rooms, one for boys and one for girls. “I did not want to become prostitute. I wanted to go back, but they would not let me go. I managed to escape and went to the police. The police mistreated and deported me to Nigeria. I found that my uncle was planning another trip and wanted me to go away again. This time I said no!”
Kathy was one of the first to return to Benin City in 2000. “My family was told that I could go to Europe to work. I arrived in Italy via France, and ended up in Rome. I was kept locked up in the house of a madam. One day, I was entrusted to another girl to take me to work. I guessed what it was. We were on a bus. Suddenly, I run away and took another bus. I did not know where I was going. When I heard a bell, I got out and looked for the church. I wanted to meet a priest. Two women helped me to find him. He took me to the embassy, but it was already closed. So he escorted me to a hostel run by Sisters”. With their help, Kathy was able to return to Benin City, resume her studies and graduate in business management. In 2010 year, she managed to get a degree in psychology. "Now I would like to help other girls who have experienced trafficking and have been less fortunate than me”.

The whole world was moved and indignant when it learned of the presumed kidnapping of 33 children during the full-blown crisis of the Haitian people caused by the powerful earthquake of January 12, 2010. The government of Haiti was annoyed by the public media attention that this news received. Perhaps unconsciously, this governmental reaction revealed an acknowledgement of what they assume as the normal state of affairs. Why? Because “everyone in this country knows about the trafficking of children: there are the mafias of lawyers, the leaders of sects, the small, established ‘ad hoc’ power groups, the fraudulent doctors … - says Fr. Miguel Jean Baptiste, a parish priest in Haiti - this is the normal state of affairs in this country”. It is nothing new; international trafficking has been present in Haiti since the time of French colonialism. In this Haiti is no different from other poor countries. People are vulnerable, even more so if they are children and orphans.

In Haiti, it is common to send small children from poor families to richer homes in towns. There, they work for a pittance, without rights or rest. They are called restavek, a slang word from the French rester avec - stay with – and they are a new form of slaves. These children, of various ages, have poverty in common. In their new “residence” they eat little, rarely sleep and work a lot, according to persons directly familiar with the reality. Some of these children end up being sold to people who take them outside the country. They might in turn be illegally adopted by a family in the States, or ‘bought’ by one of the many cartels controlling the sex trade in the Caribbean.
Since independence, the various governments that led Haiti paid little attention to the life of peasants. There was never an agrarian policy, and the poorest are left to fend for themselves. Haitians are poor, much more so the rural population. There are no adequate schools or educational centres for children. Families have no money to support their children. This is why many do not hesitate to give their children away. This is the hard reality in so many poor countries.
In Haiti, it is often the ‘religious intermediary’ of a sect that collects children from the countryside and places them in the care of ‘good families’ in Port au Prince. Parents usually know that they will never see them again, but they would give the children over to these people again, since they are not able to support them. This is the tragedy for many families of this country who are not able to neither give their children a piece of bread nor take them to school. This is the phenomenon that repeats itself over and over. The reason is that since the independence of Haiti there has not been a clear effort to free its people from a mentality of slavery. In fact, it has been cultivated.
It is calculated that there are some 300,000 restaveks. While not all of them are victims of mistreatment, a disturbingly high percentage of them are. Ages range from 5 to 17 years old. Almost 70 per cent are girls; the majority subjected to even greater abuse. Between January, 2007 and June, 2008, 238 rapes were documented. In reality there are many more. These young boys and girls are “the poor of the poor.” The look in the eyes of these children is the saddest in Haiti. The only positive aspect is that many “welcoming families” have experienced what it is to be restavek.
Alongside these families that take in as many children as they can into their homes, there are persons who dedicate their lives for these unfortunate little ones. Fr. Miguel Jean Baptiste is one of them. His parish is poor but it is very rich in humanitarian commitment and in fraternity. There, on the heights of a hillside, sunny and dusty, surrounded by pitiable housing, is his parish and his work. Among the many good things there, he has created a shelter for the restaveks, in the Carrefour area of Port-au-Prince. This shelter cares for almost 400 children. There, they are given food, taught to read and write, and given affection, which is what these children need most. Tragically, some of them disappeared forever with the earthquake. A few of them died and were buried in mass graves; other found their way to the States or other countries where unscrupulous people took them for personal profit.