Slave trade booms as poverty bites

A group of young are gathered behind a makeshift structure where they have been living on edge. They have been sitting idle for the some hours. Their discussion returns to poverty, and how to overcome it. Sweats are beading on their worried foreheads.

Indeed, if there is a poverty-stricken place near Garissa Town, it is Bulla Masalani Village. The sun sets gently, leaving a cloudless sky and the first hints of cool air begin to blow through the thatched houses that make most homes.

“The sun rises everyday and it sets everyday, and like that sun, poverty rises here everyday, making us a lost generation,” says a 20-year-old youth we shall call Sheikh.

Seek asylum

“The only option now is to move out of this county and seek asylum.” For months Sheikh has been weighing the possibility of making the long journey to Africa’s biggest economy: South Africa. “We know that the journey is dangerous, but I cannot allow myself to be consumed by poverty. I better die elsewhere.

“We cannot further our education here, we cannot do business, we cannot get meals, so why should we stay in this horrible condition,” he asks the man who completed secondary school two years ago. He has borrowed the money required for the voyage South, now he has only few weeks the journey with human traffickers this month.

“Many friends and relatives have already gone, some died on the way and others are surviving. The one important thing is to run away from Kenya,” he says. Human trafficking business in the North Eastern region is getting bolder with every passing day.

“Of course we will have to seek better life elsewhere. We are concerned. Living conditions are getting worse by the day” says, Ahmed 19. Human traffickers have established a strong network to make money from those who are fleeing the sheer crumbling economy and the shocking unemployment that has ravaged most of Kenyan youth.

And here in the North, the scale of human trafficking is alarming. “Trafficking of people is very rampant here. It is a multi-million dollar business that is getting bold in much of the Great lakes and Horn of Africa region,” says Mr Abdullahi Hirsi, the executive director of Northern Heritage, a local aid agency in Garissa.

“In the past few years alone, because of droughts, we have seen a huge number of economic refugees targeted by human traffickers with a promise of better life elsewhere,” he said. A spot-check in Garissa, Wajir and Mandera shows that the illegal business is conducted daily, final arrangements done in Nairobi.

“In Garissa, at least five persons are trafficked in each of the more than 10 buses plying the route to Nairobi. You can imagine the number of people on sale everyday — more than 50,” says an anti-trafficking activist who sought anonymity due to security reasons. “This depicts a completely worrying picture.”

Nairobi’s’ Eastleigh has been the hub of the internationally denounced trade. Economic and conflict refugees from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya are sold in the sprawling commercial centre to move to other countries. “Eastleigh is a connection point for most victims. It is where the journey starts and it is where most monies exchange hands,” says Amina Kinsi of Ngazi Moja Foundation, a lobby group in Eastleigh.

According to a recent report released by US State Department in June 2009, Kenya is a source, transit and a destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purpose of better lives, forced labour and sexual exploitation. Victims take tedious routes to South Africa and sometimes to some European countries. Traffickers make millions of dollars every month by arranging and directing the journey to South Africa. Some victims end their travels with shocking deaths.

The cheapest illegal migration goes well over $600 while the most expensive takes more than $2,000 for a journey that sometimes takes several months. “Sometimes, you become stranded in a town where you know no one. I spent more than a week in Zambia as I had run out of cash,” said Farah, who returned from South Africa at the height of Xenophobia against Somalis.

“I reached Johannesburg after more than three weeks of journeying. It was the worst journey ever for me.”