The Man At The 'maid Market' Wanted £15. A Rip-Off, We Said. The Going Rate Is Only £5. And The Girl’s For Sale? They've Been Promised A Free Education In The West
BY ADRIAN ADDISON AND ANGUS STICKLER
THE neon advertising signs - for household-name Western companies that dominate the skyline above Abidjan affirm that fact that the capital of the Ivory Coast prides itself on being one of Africa's more forwardlooking cities. But penetrate the surface and it soon becomes clear that Abidjan has yet to turn the final page on Africa's bleakest chapter.
For the slave trade is alive and well, albeit in a different guise - under concrete and corrugated iron instead of mud and straw huts.
In Adjame, the capital's bustling market district, you can buy old car tyres and engine parts, fruit and veg, live chickens, radios - and human beings. Among the tangle of ramshackle huts on a dust track stands what locals euphemistically call 'the maid market'. We'd come here, for the Today programme, to see how easily we could buy a human slave. We left our car, nervous our tape recorder would drop clumsily to the floor, and entered the shack. Inside were about a dozen young girls, lined up on two benches on either side of the roasting, tiny room. A man told us the girls, all preening and desperate to be picked like yapping puppies in a pet shop, were 15. None appeared older than 13; one was barely 10.
The proprietor, young and viperlike, cigarette perched in the corner of his lip like a corny gangster, set his price: Pounds 15. Our translator told us this was a rip-off. The going rate, she told us, is a fiver. We mumbled an excuse and left.
The next step in our hypothetical smuggling operation was to get the necessary documents to get a girl to Britain. In Abidjan, a number of government offices are packed into small compound around a central dusty, tree-lined car park. One of the government offices is the Ministry of the Child, Welfare and the Family.
Our African producer approached the concrete faaade nervously. A man appeared and asked which ministry he wanted.He was a tout.
Unbelievably, within 10 minutes, deal had been struck to make the girl officially our man's daughter. All the documents would be legitimate not forged - courtesy of a bribed official. All the tout needed was eight hours and USDollars 500.
This was an exercise to prove point we already knew. Save the Children and other charities are becoming increasingly concerned that children are being trafficked from West African countries to the UK and across Europe. We found as many cases as we needed to make our point, though some, understandably, were deeply afraid of speaking on the record.
Mostly children are trafficked to Europe by relatives or family friends - though, increasingly, they are being taken abroad by total strangers.
They are told they are visiting something close to The Promised Land a life of beautiful food, all the Western privileges and, above all else, an education. But many become domestic slaves who never set foot in a classroom.
Some end up beaten and sexually abused.
Eight-year-old Victoria Climbie was taken from Abidjan to a dingy London flat by her aunt, Marie Therese Kouao, in the spring of 1999.
She was beaten, burned, tied up and made to lie naked in a freezing cold bath in winter. When she died, after seven months of torture, there were 128 injuries on her body. Kouao and her lover Carl Manning have both been jailed for life, and an inquiry is under way to find out how the British authorities failed Victoria so badly.
There are thought to be 10,000 West African children living with strangers in the UK, many of whom may not be enjoying the lives they had been promised.
Mary was brought to London from Benin by a stranger at the age of 10 and worked 17 hours a day for 10 years.
She was regularly beaten and starved, sometimes for days on end.
When she asked why she had been brought to Britain, she was told it was 'business' - meaning the woman could claim child benefits.
'I always feel angry about why this has happened to me. It hurts,' she told us. 'I just pray to God to give me strength.' Mary is still in Britain, but many others flee back to their native countries as soon as they get the chance. DEBE was taken, aged 13, to Italy by a white friend of his father.
For three years he was a sex slave to the man and his paedophile friends.
He was beaten daily and forced to eat cat food. He finally ran away to the Ivorian Embassy in Rome and was returned home.
'I am a victim, I am in pain,' he said. 'I can't even look at myself in the mirror.' Debe, now in his late teens, is not well, physically or mentally. He smokes incessantly and his face has the locked expression of a grown man permanently fighting tears, trying to be strong for his family.
It is hard to suppress rage at the thought of what these people did to him.
Karin Astrom, head of Save the Children in the Ivory Coast, says gangs across West Africa are trafficking children, with the collusion of government officials.'Certainly it is organised, with involvement at high levels - even government in some countries. But, like all mafia or cartels, it's difficult to know.'
Meanwhile Victoria Climbie's family are still trying to come to terms with the horrific death of their beloved daughter. Her parents are in London. In the cement hut which the Climbie family call home, in the Abidjan suburb of Anyma, a girl called Victoria Ackohi clutches a huge portrait of little Victoria Climbie, who was tortured to death by the aunt she barely knew.
The resemblance is uncanny this Victoria was the one the murdered little girl was named after, and the pain of the death of her namesake is as strong as ever.
'I hope Victoria didn't die in vain,' she said. 'I hope some good will come out of it.'
Adrian Addison and Angus Stickler work for Radio 4's Today programme.
Evening Standard (London, England) November 9, 2001
