(Above, a newly freed little girl is comforted)

    A Swiss-based Christian human rights group bought the freedom of 4,300 more black African slaves in Sudan, mainly women and children who returned to their families in the south. They said these people generally sold for about 33 to 50 dollars.

(Left, a little boy and his mother celebrate their chance at life)

    The Christian Solidarity International (CSI) rescued 4,400. According to an article in the New York Times, approximately 17 million children live in bondage, but conditions are arguably the harshest in Sudan.

                                                             One 12 year old boy, Yak, told of how he'd been kidnapped from his village by Arab raiders the year before and enslaved on a farm in the north of Matar.  He told the story of how on a day he had been too sick to work, his master chopped off all the fingers on one of his hands as punishment.

(Sources: The East African, and Teen People; September 2001)

Part of "Poems for the Abids"

1.

I cannot recover from this truth

And its being a truth:

That I am here,

You are there.

I am wrapped in perfumed flannel sheets, a downy comforter, cotton bedclothes,

The wisdom of a college education, all these books, paper, a pencil, a lamp,

You

And when I write it I will cry

Are a slave.

A slave.

A slave.

A slave.

You are an “Abid”

the word “used virtually synonymously with ‘black person.’”

You sleep on the ground.  Bugs crawl all over your body and make you itch. You are 14 years old,

a woman.  You miss your mother, whom you knew and may never know again.

Your uterus rumbles and you’ll bleed and ache and throw up, but keep working, keep living, keep working, living, workliving, worving

What for, Earth Goddess? What for, Sad Child of Mud?

I am working a job at a video store called Blockbuster.  I put tapes away and ring people up.  I eat nice vegetarian lunches with tomatoes from our garden

And cucumbers, lettuce, onions, basil.  Sometimes my arms ache from the videotape stacks I carry, or my back will pinch and moan from leaning over the register.  I

Hate the pain.  I fear all work. 

You felt too sick to tend your master’s goats, one afternoon, two years ago.  The big family man gave his daughter a lollipop while he went to go get his saw.  He claimed your fingers for punishment.  This is truth,

I know.  I read it in my Teen Magazine

Which was purchased for $4.99.

And by the way, you are currently worth $33 US dollars.

As your fingers fall away

like leaves shed in this; your fall

season,

your small chance could be purchased

for half of what I make in a day.

"I was continuously beaten because whenever I would stop to feed my baby
with my breast milk, somebody would get angry and say I wasn't working."
said Anuat Majak Dhum, who was abducted with her baby girl four years
ago. (CNN.com)

INFORMATION IS KEY

To become an abolistionist, or to read about slavery today, visit here!!!
Click here for videos and read about how people are buying slaves their freedom!
Read about the paradox of buying slaves their freedom (giving the slave retrievers money feeds the arms market, hence making them more powerful) click here!
CNN reports on sudan slavery here!
Another group is buying freedom for the slaves!
Read about small children sold off as slaves to work for marajuana tycoons!