Ghana

An article by Sharon LaFreniere in today's New York Times documents the prevalence of slave labor in West Africa. Her focus is on Ghana, where destitute parents sometimes sell their young children into bondage for a pittance. The children work long hours on little nourishment and may seldom--or never--see their parents. They are often mistreated and abused. According to LaFreniere, "Ghana, an Oregon-size nation of 21 million people, has yet to prosecute anyone under the new antitrafficking law it adopted last December. But the government has taken other steps — including eliminating school fees that forced youngsters out of classrooms, increasing birth registrations so that children have legal identities and extending small loans to about 1,200 mothers to give them alternatives to leasing out their children."

I served as a Peace Corps secondary school English teacher 1967-69. In 1995, I founded Friends of Ghana, an affiliate of the National Peace Corps Association (a group for returned PC volunteers), and became its first president. Currently, I edit Talking Drum, our quarterly newsletter. Despite severe economic and political disruption, especially in the 1980s, Ghana has been relatively stable, and since 1961 the Peace Corps has had a strong presence there. Friends of Ghana contributes to worthy projects and scholarship funds in Ghana, but when I read articles such as the one on slave labor in a country where many live on less than $1 per day, I realize our efforts are feeble. Perhaps after retirement in a few years, I'll be able to return to Ghana with my wife Janne and teach for a while.

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The rack, the screw,

the hook with pointed end and eye,

smoldering sticks, cloth in oil,

the jag of an old man's tooth,

the stake, an arm of rope,

the crushing hammer and the claw,

the wooden yolk, horses

sent in different directions,

rocks dashed to the head and some to the sky,

recitation of saints most would not remember,

skin stripped from the body,

public inquisition,

the strong man and his pick, fire:

these are what little girls are made of.

-- from "Jeanne in the Presence of Instruments" by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett in Roam

On the Road

Steps at Machu Picchu - May 2005

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Twice a week I drive from Columbia to Florence: east on I-20 to I-95 and then south on 327 to Francis Marion University. It takes about 90 minutes door to door. Thursday the blue sky was furled with rippling clouds, formations in giant Vs narrowing eastward. In this season the route takes me past vast stretches of unpicked cotton, boles exagerratedly bright against the brown shriveled stalks, seemingly reflected in the bleached sky. I wore a black shirt over a white undershirt. I listened to Uncle Tom's Cabin, the section in which Tom, in shackles is being taken down the river by the cruel slave trader Haley, who sells a young child belonging to the slave Lucy. Just before I reach campus, the despairing Lucy hurls herself overboard in the early morning. Meanwhile, Eliza and her child are for now safe in Ohio, having crossed the icy river to at least temporary freedom.
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"Forget all the posturing--the poetry industry is made of regular folks like you and me. Get your poems off the page and in the mouth, ear, and body. Know your voice will change and that this is no cause for embarrassment. Support your fellow poets in any way you can. Wait. Know that persistence is the truest form of art."
-- Susan B. A. Sommers-Willett, author of Roam, quoted in Poets and Writers (Nov-Dec 2006)