Slavery, being a slave, what is it exactly to be a slave?
If you key in define slave in Google you get:
Noun: A person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them
Verb: Work excessively hard: "slaving away for all those years".
Lately in the news, we hear about children who work on Cocoa field as child slave. They are slave because, they are “force” to work and are not “remunerated adequately or not at all” for the job done.
So now, “Hershey pledges $10 million to improve West African cocoa farming, fight child labor”.
As my father told me “I am “leftist”” what does it mean I don’t know but I would guess, I am always in opposition with the masses.
There is no child slavery (at least when it comes to children learning a skill)
When it comes to children slavery, in my opinion there is the one, which builds the spirit and the one, which breaks the spirit.
“Slavery” that builds your inner self
I have never met those children who work on the cocoa field, I have never talked to them, but they look like every child you will encounter in your life, Innocent, full of life and energy. They look like those children I see on the highway (in Abidjan) begging for money, selling everything they can to feed themselves.
The difference with the children on the cocoa field and the one begging on the street is that those on the field are learning something of value. They are learning the skills of becoming a farmer. I call that specialized knowledge, and the cocoa field, I call it, a specialized public school, where you attend the course and learn by doing and in return, you get food and cloth.
If we want to think that those children are slave and we have to protect them by taking them away from the field, the other question to ask; what will they do once “saved” from the supposed “slavery”?
Those who are “fighting against” slavery are from the North (developed countries), most do not even know the reality that we live here in the South (poor and/or developing countries). In developed countries, children live in a “good environment”, they are surrounded with love, and care.
Education being a right in developed countries (and everywhere in the world); children can attend public schools and get an education even if their parents cannot afford it. Children are trained to become the leader of tomorrow, at least to answer to the need of their society when they grow up. Here in Africa, we may not be able to build schools, but we have plenty of spaces where children can learn what matter to our society, our economy and our development. In Africa, at least in Côte d’Ivoire, most of our economy relies on agriculture, and if we want to train the future generation, we have to train them on the field.
Our public schools= what the western world calls “child slavery” Being on the field and learning. On the field those children are being useful, not only to the person they work for but to themselves. They learn an activity, they receive a specialized knowledge and that’s what is being given to children from the Western world, a specialized education through school, which enables them to breakthrough in society.
If you may want to “fight children slavery”, you have to ask yourself those questions:
• What would happen to those children if you stop buying the cocoa to make chocolate?
• What would happen to those children once they are “freed from their oppressor”?
• Is being on the street begging better than being on the field and learning a skill?
The Western world has to understand something, in Africa and in other part of the world we have our own way of doing things. What you in the West call “slavery”, we, in Africa have a different name for it. In Occident it might be unacceptable for a child to work when they are under a certain age, in Africa it might be unacceptable to pay a child for the teaching that is being transmitted to him/her. In developed countries, children go to school and do not get paid and get an education. May be our schools in Africa are the plantation where those children go and learn a skill.
You might say, “But in developed countries we do not make money on our children who go to school”, and I would say,” yes you may be right, but they are projects that your children do at school during school year to support their activities. It can be a bake sale that will finance a school trip, or car wash to organize a party”
So if in Africa, our farms represent our public school, and cocoa is being sold and farmers make a lot of money out of it and those children who work on the field do not benefit from it; the real change that need to be done will be to dedicate part of this money to better the life of those children not to “fight children slavery”, because there is no slavery but transfer of knowledge.
How to better the life of the children working on the field?
• Some of the revenue(or profit) of the cocoa should be
o used to build schools, which focus on agriculture
o used to buy proper food and cloth for those children
o used to build shelter for children who work on the field but have nowhere to stay
That’s my opinion!!
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