Filhos do Coração

Two days ago a friend of mine asked me if I had heard of children slavery here in Ghana. My innocent answer was “well, it’s pretty clear that every kid works since a very young age. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re talking about”. How fool of me.

She explained me that there is a Portuguese journalist who has been telling this story to the world for some years now. Apparently in the Volta Lake, the biggest artificial lake in the world, there are moms who are selling their children to fishermen to work for them.

This journalist founded an NGO who buys the kids to the fishermen and provides them proper accommodation and pays them the next 10 years of education.

I opened their website. I read it. I cried.

I have been there. Just like any other futile tourist I went on a boat trip in the lake to see how “beautiful” it is. I just didn´t see how ugly is what’s behind it.

I have been there and I didn´t see it. It’s not like as if I was back home reading it on a website and being thousands of kilometers away. I have been there, so close, and I didn´t notice it.

I know, how could I notice it? It’s not something we just see. But still… it made me feel futile and useless.

02/09/2012