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                         Underground eXperts United

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         [  A Saga Of The African Child  ] [  By Simon Moleke-Njie  ]


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    ____________________________________________________________________



A SAGA OF THE AFRICAN CHILD
by Simon Moleke-Njie


"Zo'o! Zo'o! Get up, it is already 3:30 am. You will be late!" the mother
called. She sleeps in the only room of the plantation apartment, which
consists of a bedroom and parlour. Zo'o sleeps in the parlour, on chair
cushions. They had the flat thanks to the fact that he works with one of
the many sub-contractors who has to supply the necessary man labour to tap
the rubber trees in the large Gabonese rubber company. This is a luxury, as
accommodation poses a serious problem in the overcrowded camps. Aliens from
across sub-Sahara Africa - Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal,
Equatorial Guinea, etc. - are here in their numbers to seek greener pasture.

The 12 year-old kid stretched on his bed, sitting up. He got up, and walked
to the adjacent wall mistaking it for the door. He hit his head and cursed.
"Look where you are going now!" the mother said, "you are still drunk with
sleep, my poor boy!" Zo'o stretched again - like a cat, and released a yawn.
He went to the veranda, to empty his bladder. "Your breakfast is ready. You
should eat it on your way, or you will be really late if you want to eat
here," she said. The breakfast consists of 'baton de manioc' (a local
delicacy made from fermented cassava). He wrapped it in a nylon bag, and
embarked on the 10 km trek to the forest to work in the rubber plantation.
He is the 'carrier' for a taper, and is expected to carry a basket on his
back and walk behind his taper to pick coagulated rubber balls. Before the
morning runs out, he would have walked several kilometres in the to and fro
trips of loading and emptying his basket. He would also have carried several
tens of kilograms of the product, and would return home worn out from
fatigue, stinking of the rubber stench.

Zo'o is a victim of child labour. Now living and working in a rubber
plantation in the central African state of Gabon, revered for its relative
economic prosperity as compared to the other neighbouring countries. He was
withdrawn from primary school to become a bred winner for his family. He has
X-shaped legs. For those who know the game of football, this is a potential
for defensive talent. He is just this; a fantastic footballer who never will
get a chance to exhibit his innate abilities, as he now considers mediocrity
as the highest form of excellence.

Zo'o is from the village of Ndengue, in the South province of Cameroonian.
Born and raised here, there exists an emotional bond between him and his
village. It was a painful divorce when he was forced to travel away from it,
to the neighbouring boarder district of Gabon to work in the rubber
plantation. The decision was reached by his mother who was more interested
in the financial dimension of the adventure, than his feature. He had no
choice whatsoever to decide his fate, and now finds consolation in nostalgic
contemplation. He could sometimes be seen sitting quietly in solitude and
contemplating about Ndengue...

... Ndengue is a typical African village; mud wall huts and thatched roofs
for the average villagers, and block walls and Zinc roofs for the village
bourgeois. The village is without any complications from a rural
perspective. A major third world high way road runs through it, uniting all
the villages along the way from the provincial capital to the river Ntem,
which separates Cameroon from Gabon; a distance of about one hundred
kilometres. The dusty road characterised by pot holes and large stones cuts
through the tick equatorial forest, through rickety bridges and lethal
hills; (quite slippery and muddy during raining seasons), ending on the
banks of the river. Only very old and battered Toyota vehicles, usually
pick-up trucks ply the road. Clusters of bushes and forests separate the
villages. The drivers, mostly young men, take to the wheel usually after a
few glasses of the locally fabricated illicit gin called 'Hah'. It is
dangerous driving all through, with the Speedo-metre fluctuating
nonchalantly between 60 and 180 Km per hour. Dangerous acrobatic swings of
the car tell the expertise of a driver. This is a criterion for judging good
driving according to their ethics and standards. Usually, an illegal rally
would unfold, pitching a driver against the Police. Such a case is quite
common; the Police eager to squeeze money and the driver not willing to part
with anything, especially when he has in his car illegal immigrants heading
for Gabon. The car would end up for repairs afterwards, having overtaxed its
engine with suicidal over speeding. Sobriquets like "Fire-Man" etc. are
boldly printed on rear screens; something the drivers are proud of. "I took
45 minutes from Ebolowa to Ambam", a driver would boast to his friends. This
is a distance that going at 60Km/Hour, would require an hour and half to
cover. It is quite often for them to increase speed in an attempt to hit an
antelope crossing the road. "Ha! We missed it"; "it is a lucky antelope,"
passengers would yell. From time to time, a hit would be made, and the car
would stop in the next village, where the dead antelope would be shared
among the passengers.

Zo'o sometimes thought about all these events which characterise village
life. His greatest rapture is to think about the third semester school
vacation that lasts for three months. As it brings home the village students
from the cities, it is lively with colourful cultural, social and sporting
activities. It is the period of ' who is who' in the village. College boys
running after young girls dressed in the latest fashion designs are the
talks of such times. Local nightclubs operating only within this period, are
often times the rendezvous points for romantic encounters. And sometimes,
some unfortunate young girls would have their academic dreams shattered by
unscrupulous pregnancy. Zo'o thought often of how they would sneak on
tip-toe silently to peep through holes on the walls of mud houses, when they
see a boy and a girl go inside.

His greatest fantasy centres on the sporting activities, especially
football, which is his favourite game. There is an annual come-together
within this period, which brings all the surrounding villages to vie for a
local football trophy, popularly known as 'inter-village'. He was one of the
kids who helped to wash and clean the village sports equipment, and local
pitch. It is a highly competitive tournament, which unites each village; the
coming together to defend their pride. The 'man of the match' would be the
talk of the moment till the next match. Old men would be seen sitting in the
Village Square talking excitedly about the latest match over local gin and
palm wine. Each would come with something edible to liven up their debates.
It was a moral obligation, sometimes, for Zo'o and his mates to watch and
listen to the old men attentively as they spill wisdom in their narratives
on various subjects about life, their experiences etc, while chewing cola
nut or snuffing tobacco, with bare chests under the heat of the fiercely
burning midday sun. Most of the old men would be simply dressed; usually
with only a half loin on their waist. Zo'o was really missing all these
excitement.

Once after watching him display his soccer skill, he was asked what his
greatest dream was as a potential footballer. "My greatest dream is to go
back to Ndengue someday, and defend my village in the local tournament."
Zo'o now imagines no life outside his village. Each time he watches his
favourite soccer idol (Kunde Emmanuel) on Television, or his photo in
magazines, he affirms the self-conceived fact that there is an unbridgeable
gap between them, willed by the hand of fate. This philosophy he inherited
from his environment that worships excellence as a gift reserved for the
wealthy. Zo'o's fate was weave not by some blind forces, but by his
society's opinion leaders, who shape policies to protect the interests of a
few opportunists. Most of these intellectual dictators take delight in
spreading the epidemic of ignorance so as to manipulate their subjects
without any resistance. Zo'o is considered now 'a non-potential intellectual
risk'. He has being properly dealt with, and many like him have being
conquered for a lifetime; reduced to play the 'tropical tool', at the
services of perverted sadists. With a clustered brain mechanism that
harbours no worthy civilised ambition, he now takes pleasures in ignorant
simplicity - eat, drink and procreate. As if this is not enough for one
lifetime, his path has been marked to pursue vain shadows. No doubt his
parents are directly responsible for his present fate, but they too are even
greater victims of the perpetrators of national economic perversion. Today,
his mother plays the role of his financial secretary. She has a book where
she records all his hours of labour, and at the end of the month, she
collects his salary. Zo'o has no knowledge about his income, nor does he
care. He is satiated with a packed of chocolate, sweet- milk and a bottle of
'Top Orange'; his favourite juice, which his mother flatters him with after
collecting his salary.

Across the length and breadth of his country, it is a common practise for
parents to condemn their children to mediocrity with the assumption of "I
would rather my child learn a trade after primary school, than waste money
in furthering his education. What is the use? Most graduates end up jobless,
some return home to be fed by their parents again like babies. All they have
to show for education are certificates and big grammar. Do we eat
certificates?"

Like this, the demise of education gathers strength. Who is responsible for
this pessimistic school of thought? Could J.S. Mill's question on Liberty be
raised here, that 'is it not a self-evident axiom that the state should
compel the education up to a certain standard of every human being who is
born its citizen?' Perhaps the most detrimental dimension of this tragic
philosophy is the forced marriage imposed by a disillusioned society between
education and financial prosperity. Of course one should get a job after
education to end an honest living, but is this the greatest aim of
education? ... Many philosophers of the past propounded theories on the
subject; Epictetus in his Discourse, said 'we must not believe the man who
says that free persons only ought to be educated, but we should rather
believe the philosophers who say that the educated only are free'. This is a
serious challenge that faces any legitimate regime, as Rousseau, on
Political Economy said 'Public education is one of the fundamental rules of
popular or legitimate government'.

A bad Educational Policy is a moral crime against a state. The consequences
might be misted by the present, but only a fool would underestimate the
long-term impact. A nation inherited by a mediocre intelligentsia is doomed
to become the boot-licker of her superiors - 'wisdom is the fruit of a
balanced development. It is this balance growth of individuality which it
should be the aim of education to secure', Whitehead said in his Science and
the Modern World. When citizens pursue a strictly financially oriented
education, the criminal class is being strengthened, and evil geniuses are
brewed- patriotism then faces extinction.

'That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of the
state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of this public
education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which
remain to be considered' - Aristotle.

Polemics would do little for Zo'o now. He is the victim of a moral ailment;
a socio-political system which has dehumanised the fibres of national
ethics. His greatest teacher now is the world; his lessons are geared toward
making more money. Parochial heroes influence his dreams, and his ambitions
are fuelled by the desire to go back to Ndengue someday, and be the village
idol.  His psyche will never pulsate to the thoughts of great minds from the
past found behind the sacred leafs of books... he cannot read!

The story however is slightly different for the 7 year old Adjua, in the
West African state of Ghana...

... It is noon, and Adjua is back from school. She rushes through a meagre
lunch of kenkey and pepper, with the head of a little fried fish (a luxury
to her). She unbuttons her school uniform, and searches around for her old
dress, which usually hangs on a nail by the wall. She is surprised that it
isn't there, and this inflates her annoyance provoked by the very hot
weather, which zoomed within 40 degrees. There is nowhere else to look for
it, as she lives with her parents and six brothers and sisters in this
single little room. They all sleep on floor mats, except for her mother, who
sleeps with their baby on a little bed. It is difficult to discern this fact
except at night, as during the day, they all leave like birds to the
different 'worlds' of city life; with one aim, to try and make a few
dollars. And now, back from school, she has to play her role of selling
chilled water to support the home.

She finally sees her old dress under the bed. "Certainly it was dragged
there by some hungry rat," she reasoned with herself silently. The building
is infested by them. She dresses and collects a bucket of chilled water in
little plastic bags from a neighbour's house. They employ the service of his
refrigerator, and pay for it weekly. With the bucket on her head, she heads
for the busiest spot of the city- the car station full of travellers and
petty vendors. She does not forget her popular cry of "ice water here",
that she employs to attract the thirsty. It is her only medium of publicity.
This is a routine, and Adjua would return home usually at night. A bag of
ice water was 50 cedis; and a return of 1000 cedis is considered a
successful day indeed. It is worth noting that a 1000 cedis is not worth
half a dollar, as a US dollar is the equivalent of 2500 cedis. Adjua has
been trained to employ dishonesty to increase her return. This is usually
employed through a lie. She uses her judgement to detect a client who would
not bother about parting with a few cedis. When a potential victim gives say
100 cedis and ask for a bag of water, it is normal for Adjua to persuade
with the words "sorry sir, but I no get change." Most often the victim
would simply leave it behind. Her mother taught her this trick. It is a
common practise among elders as well. "The total amount of 50, and 100 cedis
I have left with you on the excuse of you not having 'change', would buy me
a new suit in six months," a client once told a food vendor. "This no be
true," was her reply. No qualm is felt about this, and the gnashing economic
quagmire justifies this petty misconduct, according to the verdict of public
judgement.

Like in Zo'o's case, who would fathom the moral consequences this will have
on Adjua? But Adjua would perhaps be considered the luckiest, while Zo'o's
case would pale into insignificance, when one reads through an interesting
News article once carried....

On November 26th 1997, the foreign page of a popular Ghanaian weekly
Newspaper carried a story sub-titled 'Child Slavery hits West and Central
Africa'. The story was quite moving...

   The slave trade is not over yet! In the central African State of Gabon,
   the buying and selling of children to do hard labour without salary was
   recently reported. According to reports from Radio Africa N0.1,
   Libreville Gabon, the case of a Togolese 17 year old was recently
   uncovered. This child, as investigations reveal, was sold by a relative
   to a Gabonese household for the sum of 50,000 CFA (about 85 US dollars).
   The relative had earlier on promised the parent of the child that she was
   taking him to Nigeria to continue his education.

   The child was 7 years old then. He worked for ten years as a slave, until
   early this year when he ran from home, and was advised to go to the
   Police, who took up the matter. As he narrated his story to Africa N0.1,
   he did all the menial jobs in the house, slept on the floor, and had
   enough food only when there was leftovers.

   The Police are still looking for the perpetrators of this unholy trade,
   who when caught would be brought to book, according to Gabonese law. As
   sources disclosed, the child would be paid ten years salary as stipulated
   by the Gabonese labour constitution, which fixes a minimum monthly salary
   at 60.000CFA ($100 US). This will net him about 7.2 million CFA a decade,
   about $13.000 US.

   He was sent to Togo by the Gabonese authorities, while investigations
   continued. The authorities are trying to crack down on the unholy trade
   which reports say, is greatly practised in West Africa. Children are
   kidnapped or stolen and smuggled from especially Togo, Benin, and Nigeria
   to be sold in Gabon for between fifty and seventy-five thousand CFA, to
   do all sorts of menial jobs including house cleaning, to selling for
   their masters.

A Stringer in one part of the continent was going through the three cases.
The case of the Togolese kid forced tears from his eyes. He thought about
children in other parts of the world who had total freed of choice...
choosing what they wanted to be in life, in the centre of countless
possibilities. For the first time in his career, he wept as a result of a
story. He felt even worse upon thinking that such cases are lost to the
larger world. And that the unholy trade is going on while he is writing his
story, and would go on still. He felt bad that his story would just create a
'nine-day wonder', and pale into insignificance. He knew there is nothing he
could do, or anyone, to arrest the situation. The Stringer pondered over all
these cases. He realised that the culpable culprit is a monster with
indefatigable tentacles buried in the conscience of the perpetrators -
people ready to do anything to earn money, even at the expense of their
fellow beings, and their very souls! "What is the root cause of it all?" he
asked himself; "could it be greed?, ignorance?, is it the result of
deliberately misapplied Political and economic rules?; or still could it be
the repercussion of violated natural laws; the working of things arcane -
the consequences of deeds buried in the abyss of manifested evil, far
removed than the rational mind would fathom?"

He sat behind his typewriter to punch the keys for a story; he did not know
how to start. For a long time he was lost in thought. Finally, struck by an
idea, the intro in his head took a philosophical literary form...

   There was a pause. A fatal, unearthly pause that stretched beyond time
   and space. For a brief moment the fate of Christ rested in the hands of
   the people, by virtue of their constitution which conferred on public
   opinion the mandate to decide the fate of a condemned criminal on the
   day of the Sabbath feast; the power to mete out death or freedom. On
   this day, it was to be Christ the Messiah or Barabbas the murderer.
   When Pontius Pilate asked for their verdict, the axe of death fell on
   divinity. For the second time mankind betrayed 'Truth', and let loose
   'Evil'. The first was in the Garden of Eden when prototypal parenthood;
   Adam and Eve, sacrificed immortality for a ball of apple.

   At that crucial point in time and history, when the people demonstrated
   their democratic rights as stipulated by their ancient constitution by
   opting for the release of Barabbas the murderer to the death of Christ,
   a fatal blow was dealt the archetypal conscience of mankind which caged
   truth, and liberated evil. And when in sadistic ignorance the people
   echoed this with the shout of "his blood be upon us and our children!",
   what better way to describe the infernal consequences than Marie
   Correlie; that - 'the hideous, withering, irrevocable curse rose
   shudderingly up to Heaven  - there to be inscribed by the Recording
   Angel in letters of flame, as the self-invoked doom of a people...

What better...

The Stringer was at this point with his intro, when a vexing electrical
blackout announced its unwelcome presence.


MOL SIMON.

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