Kwesi was ten years old when he taken from his family and made to work as a slave on a fishing boat on Lake Volta in Ghana. He says: “The man hardly fed us, and if we were given food it was never meat or fish”.

His workday began at eleven o’clock at night, when he and other boys cast nets until six in the morning, when they gathered in the nets again and gutted the fish until late afternoon.

It was very dangerous work. Kwesi often had to dive down deep in the water to untangle nets that had got caught on branches below the surface. Some children got tangled up in the net themselves and drowned.

“The slave owner often beat us”, says Kwesi. “He got angry with us for the tiniest mistake. Sometimes, he used the heavy boat paddle to beat me.

Kwesi and the other boys dreamt of escape. “We tried to run away to our mothers several times. But we always failed”, he says. “But once, I dived into the water and started to swim”.

Trees save Kwesi

Kwesi was in the middle of the huge lake Volta, miles from land. But under the surface, there were many large dead trees. Here and there, treetops reached up out of the water. Kwesi swam to the closest tree and hung on to a branch. After resting, he had the strength to carry on. By swimming from tree to tree, Kwesi finally reached an island, where he collapsed on the hot sand. Here, he was found by a local man but instead of saving Kwesi, the man took him right back to the fisher man.

Kwesi is rescued

Three years passed until one day… “One day, James came and rescued me”, says Kwesi. James Kofi Annan is a Child Rights Hero who fights for the rights of children in slavery. As a small child, he was himself a slave on a fishing boat.

After seven years in slavery, James managed to escape. He went to school and college and got a good job as a bank manager. But he could never forget about the children. Finally, he gave up his job and started an organization to fight child slavery.

The slavery that James and Kwesi suffered is called debt slavery. It usually starts with parents living in poverty having to borrow money, perhaps to pay a doctor or to buy food. The interest on these loans is very high. When parents can’t pay the loan back, the slave traders take their children. This is illegal in Ghana, but still, hundreds of thousands of trafficked children are stuck in slavery. James believes that poverty, which is the basis of slavery, can only be tackled with education.

Rescued children are first taken to a safe house where they are given support to process their horrible experiences. When they feel better, they are reunited with their families. Kwesi stayed at the home for almost a year.

Finally home

“James took me home to my mum”, says Kwesi. “She cried when she saw the scars on my body and the large bump on his lip from when the slave owner split it with his paddle”. Kwesi goes to school now. His favourite subject is match and he dreams of becoming a bank manager, just like James was. He says: “The world should help put a stop to child slavery in the fishing villages and everywhere else.