The Documentary

Jonny Polonsky, January 2004

I began this trip with an ill-defined role. Was it possible for all my time to be taken up by filming? I assumed I'd film a little here, a little there, and fill the rest of the time cycling, driving, reading, writing, dubbing and logging videos, setting up camp, and just generally enjoying the experience.

Mozambique

This approach sufficed until Mozambique. Knowing that there was more to this story than just filming the arduous task of cycling 10 000 miles, it was decided in Maputo, capital of Mozambique, that I should take a more active role in the story. While Nick led the team further up the country, I remained in Maputo, with the idea I would stay for a day or two, but which, in reality, turned into a fascinating, exciting and rewarding two weeks.

I went first to the SNJ- the National Syndicate of Journalists. There, I met some very helpful people, and some not so helpful. The director was the kind of man who, while being of the kindest and most welcoming variety, was also a pain in the arse. By this point, I had hooked up with a Norwegian journalist who was investigating development projects in Maputo. She introduced me to him, and he told me that we could meet in two days time. I thanked him and left to the bar where I had a second appointment, hearing him tell my friend on my way out that he was too busy to keep his arrangement with her as he had to leave that instant.

Lo and behold, as I sat in the bar, he appeared two mins later, where he ordered a double whisky and proceeded to chat with friends. He was still drinking when I left an hour later.

From my meeting, I learned of two possibilities. The first was the existence of the Human Rights League (HRL), and the second, a lady named Margarida Guitenga, from an organisation called FDC, which is run by Mandela's wife and ex-first lady of Mozambique, Graça Machel.

I began with a shlep up the road to the HRL, where I met a man who told me they do not deal with slavery there- "we only deal with human rights abuses here" he informed me. And there I was labouring under the misapprehension that slavery was a human rights abuse. Silly me.

The other contact, Margarida, turned out to be a very useful and enthusiastic contact, and a co-author of a recent report on modern slavery in Southern Africa. She introduced me to another co-author, Leia Boaventura, of the organisation Terre Des Hommes.

By this point, I had been joined by visionary cameraman and friend of the family Joe DeKadt. Joe and I interviewed Leia, and during which we were informed that a train coming from South Africa, packed with illegal Mozambican immigrant workers being repatriated, was arriving at the border the next day.

This raises an interesting question that I hope to address in the documentary- What exactly, is modern slavery? What forms does it take, and how does one draw a line between slavery and lesser forms of economic exploitation? For example, these repatriated workers have had a rough time, but is it slavery? In many cases, people cross the border illegally, travel to farms in South Africa, where they do a couple of months harvesting. When they begin to question when their pay will be given to them, some farmers telephone the police, informing them of illegal immigrants on their land. They are then carted off to detention centres, from where they are put on a 'repatriation train', having never seen any pay for their months of work. Is this slavery?-work without pay. Well, according to Kevin Bales, the world's authority on modern slavery (see his excellent book, Disposable People), this would not be slavery as such, as the workers have a degree of freedom and choice not afforded to those whose situation can be unambiguously termed slavery.

Anyway, we went down to the border town, where we met a missionary, who explained the story of human trafficking across the border. We learned that gangs operating nearby are involved in trafficking, and there is little the border police can do, even if they wanted to. Indeed, one of the main crossings is located about 500m from the official border post. I find it inconceivable that the police do not know about the daily trafficking of people at this illegal crossing. As we stood there, we saw a woman being led there, where she was to be taken across to the other side. Because of the gang-related nature of trafficking, we were advised by a priest to stop filming and leave.

Afterwards, we headed into SA, to meet a girl who had been taken by a man to Maputo, to be 'cleansed of her demons'. There, she had been abused and was beginning life as a slave, when the FDC, in conjunction with Terre Des Hommes and the Govt., located and liberated her. She was not at home when we called, but spoke to her father. It was a bizarre interview- I asked a question in English, Joe (who is half-Chilean) translated this into Spanish, this was interpreted by the priest (who speaks Portuguese), and this was finally translated into Swazi, which was the language of the father. We did, however, get what was needed.

Malawi

I met back-up with the guys in Tete, northern Mozambique, from where we continued the type of filming we had been getting- footage of cycling through the welcoming towns and villages of Mozambique, group dynamics and concerns, etc. A few days later, we entered Malawi, arriving in Lilongwe. While Rob and Nick rested to recover from their respective fatigue-induced illnesses, Becks and I carried on in the vein of investigations and interviews that had been started in Maputo. We met with UNICEF first, who gave us some idea of the present situation in Malawi. Again, the issue of slavery as opposed to straightforward economic exploitation was raised. In Malawi, a big labour crime is the employment of young children on tobacco and tea estates. They are paid a pittance, and even this is dependent on meeting a certain yearly quota in bushels harvested. If this gargantuan amount is not met, then the whole year's work is for nothing, as the children will receive no pay.

But, it was decided that, in most cases, this really does not constitute slavery, criminal as it may be. However, we met with a man from an organisation called ECPAT- End Child Prostitution and Trafficking. We had a fascinating interview, where we learned about the nature of modern slavery networks in Malawi-the most common scenario is that Malawian businesswomen, with Nigerian contacts in Europe, approach vulnerable girls with promises of better futures. They are then taken to Europe, where they are enslaved. After the interview, we were taken to meet such a victim, whose story is all too common and harrowing.

'Brandy', at the age of 19, became friendly with a woman who owned a beauty clinic. This woman told her she needed helpers to go and shop for products for her in Europe. Brandy and a friend agreed, and were given false passports and taken to Blantyre, from where they flew to Amsterdam. Here, they had their passports taken and were told of their real fate- to be prostitutes, sex-slaves. they were enslaved for 5 months, until one of the other slaves, a 14 yr old girl, fell pregnant and escaped. She went to the police, and there was a raid on the house where they were being kept. The girls were flown home, and a prosecution case was brought against the businesswoman. However, she escaped justice, why, no-one knows, but all have some idea- bribery and corruption. This woman, I am told, is now living in Maputo, Mozambique, where she continues to traffick girls to Europe for this purpose, earning up to $40 000 each time.

Brandy is now 23, the same age as both Nick and me. At the same time as we were starting university together, Brandy was beginning the worst time of her life. While we were getting the best possible starts to our adult lives, she went through an ordeal that has clearly left her with trauma she is finding very difficult to deal with. Her mother and former employer told me that she was once a very happy, full-of-life young woman. The world-weary person I met is incredibly downcast and despondent, and spends her life smoking weed and drinking. She herself attributes this to needing a way to forget what she went through. Her friend who shared the ordeal is now dead.

Tanzania

Zanzibar is one of the most important historical slave sites. The Arab slave trade reached its zenith here in the 1800s, with thousands of slaves leaving the island every year, bound for a host of places. I visited the site of the old slave market, and was shocked at the conditions the slaves were kept in. Two small rooms housed 125 people, each layered on top of each other. They were kept in this way, in direct sunlight, for up to 4 days. The weaker were weeded out in a grotesque version of artificial selection, and the stronger taken up to a whipping post. If they screamed, their price was lowered, if not, they were very valuable. It was quite an initiation into their subsequent lives of brutality and servitude.

As for modern slavery, information is less available. With the abolition of slavery the world-over, modern slavery is clandestine, and even the organisations that should know facts and figures do not. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) deal with labour crimes, and have recently called for the abolition of the WFCL- the Worst Forms of Child Labour, of which slavery is one. But in Tanzania, information is scant. The ILO put us in touch with xxxxxxxxx, who informed us that domestic slavery, often in the homes of relatives, is prevalent in Tanzania, as is sex-slavery.

We had a meeting scheduled with an ex-sex slave, but unfortunately that came on the day we discovered the theft of all of the rushes so far. For the first time, the girls had been kept together in order to send them home, and that was the day of the theft. My entire work so far was lost, and I feared that the trip was over, for me at least. I felt unsure as to whether I had the strength to continue and start a new film in the face of such adversity. But we were extremely fortunate, as we had the rushes returned to us that very day. The still camera films that Rob had stolen, however, were never recovered- they had been thrown away the evening they were stolen. As far as the documentary is concerned, we were unbelievably lucky. As we were later told, the thieves throw away anything they can't sell immediately, and had already been told that the rushes were unsellable.

Kenya

As I headed off from Arusha in north Tanzania to the coast to meet my mum, Nick agreed to conduct the interviews with Anti-Slavery's partner organisation ANPPCAN, and to find out a bit more about their work.

Nick in Kenya

Some of the money we have given to Anti-Slavery International will go directly to help one of their partner organisations, ANPPCAN, based just outside the centre of Nairobi. Although we are of course convinced that the work of Anti-Slavery is very worthwhile, this would be a rare opportunity to see exactly where our efforts were directed. The children I hoped to meet had suffered 'conditions akin to slavery' as one of the field officers I met described it, but had benefited from rehabilitation treatment sponsored by our charity, and found ways of remaining with their families and within school.

The response to our trip has varied a little from country to country and from region to region. Children, however, have been unerringly surprised and delighted by the very bizarre and rare sight that we must be. The schools around Nairobi were no exception, but just as the striking poverty of Malawian children distressed us, so these children, who had suffered terribly at the hands of their owners or 'employers', stood out tragically from those around them. A brother and sister, who had been working in the coffee plantations from a very young age, were severely malnourished, looking like 6 or 7 year olds rather than the 12 and 13 years that they were. Another girl was without a nose, and our hosts at the school were reluctant to talk about whether this was a birth defect or not. I also heard the lists of children who had not remained in school, and who had been drawn or coerced back into the labour market. Despite the great efforts of ANPPCAN, there are many families who just cannot afford go without an money from their children.

All of the children I met were from poor backgrounds, but some were so poor that their parents could not afford to keep them at school and some so poor that they could not afford to keep them at all. 'Debt bondage', 'child labour' and 'human trafficking' are of course not familiar terms to people who decide that there is no other option than to gain an income, as a lump sum or a wage, from their often very young children, but many of the accounts I heard match those definitions. When we interview people who work for such organisations as ANCPPCAN they of course stress that the fuel for the modern slave trade is poverty and hardship that has often been aggravated by HIV/AIDS. This of course makes people desperate, and desperation creates vulnerability. Of those who are prepared to cruelly exploit this vulnerability we have heard very little, and after spending two days with some of their victims, I would very much like to hear their justification.

I heard stories of girls that had been rescued from labour that ranged from paid domestic service to enslaved prostitution, some of whose reproductive systems were devastated by the sexual abuse they had endured from very young ages, and thousands of boys that ended up on the coffee plantations. As in Malawi, there was also evidence of trade in young children from Kenya to Europe where they would become part of paedophile or prostitution rings, which is always the most shocking news. I am sure that when we reach the European leg of the trip, we will find many young prostitutes that originate from East and North African countries. I spent some of the day with a Kenyan education minister, who proudly emphasized the difference that the new Kibaki government had made to the situation, particularly in passing and enforcing legislation to protect children. One of the local education officers was slightly more sceptical, and although he recognised that there was progress and hope, he also regretted the lack of proper funding for research and treatment structures.

I left the organisation on the third day feeling lucky to have been able to meet so many children that have been found a way out of labour, potentially with the help of our money, but also disturbed by the fact that whatever organisations like Anti-Slavery and ANPPCAN do, it is poverty that forces people into these terrible situations, and I don't think that any amount of cycling is going to solve that.

Aim: A major part of the work of Anti-Slavery International is to raise awareness of slavery and challenge the prevalent belief that this is a problem consigned to history. Consequently, we feel in undertaking this trip that the greater the degree of publicity and exposure that we can gain, the more we will be able to contribute to the work of the charity. One of the best ways of doing this, and of raising further funds, would be to produce a documentary of our trip.

Ideas: After discussing the idea with Ginger, Endeavour and AMT Productions, we have decided that the most effective and entertaining documentary would be one that was not just a record of the events on the trip. Instead we would combine a record of our preparation, our progress and the aftermath of the trip with hundreds of interviews conducted along the way.

Interviews: In passing through 11 different countries of very diverse cultural, economic and historical definition, we feel that we could accumulate a varied and fascinating collection of views and perceptions. We shall ask to interview Africans and Europeans on, first of all, their opinion or experience of slavery – whether or not they have had any contact with the slave trade or suspected the employment of slaves. Or, indeed, if they believe this issue is still relevant in their country. Through this we feel that we can add to the work of ASI and also help inform the British public of the potential gravity of modern slavery. Furthermore, this would be an excellent opportunity to gather information and opinions on the many afflictions of Africa. We shall be travelling through areas disastrously affected by AIDS, famine, drought, civil war and the poverty and suffering that these hardships entail. In asking a very large range of people why they feel these problems are so ubiquitous in Africa and how they feel they should be addressed on an international scale, we believe that our trip can be used as a means of education, progress and creating awareness of global issues. We shall also be able to gain a popular western European perspective on some of these issues, passing through Italy, France and England.

Diary: As well as conducting these interviews we shall also be recording every aspect of the trip itself and each personally keeping video diaries. We shall be attempting to emphasise in this footage the way in which people have reacted to our trip and the differences in our experiences as we move from country to country and region to region. We have no doubt that the incidents that take place during the journey will provide an excellent backdrop to the series of interviews and diaries.

Method: The driver of our support vehicle and Jonny Polonsky, who is participating as a part time cyclist and cameraman will be able to play a major part in recording the trip and conducting the interviews. As this has become a major focus of the trip we shall be spending some time in discussion with ASI and the potential production teams deciding upon the nature of the interviews. Alex Stanhope, the brother of one of the participants, who has recently been working as an Editor of a Hollywood film and previously worked for Scorer Productions, shall also be involved in filming and producing parts of the trip. He hopes to bring his experience to filming some of the most dramatic landscape and terrain we shall encounter in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Production: We have a number of good contacts that we believe will allow us to record the trip on quality equipment and have it produced by experts. Firstly, we have been in contact with Howard Stringer, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sony Corporation of America, who we hope will sponsor the digital camera equipment. Secondly, Peter Laxton, of AMT Productions, has agreed to produce the material on our return and play a major role in its sale and distribution.

The Final Product: With many hours of interviews, diaries, trip footage, sponsorship event coverage and records of the beautiful and diverse scenery through which we shall pass, we have no doubt that the end result will be a very worthwhile and entertaining documentary or set of programs. Any profits beyond expenses (including insurance, production and labour costs) will of course be added to the money we have raised and considerably add to the popular awareness of modern slavery.